chillin with some hedo peeps
Kehena Beach: Microcosm of the Counterculture
I’ve been meaning to write about Kehena beach for a while now. It’s a tough task because Kehena is so baffling and quick to shift- like the liminal space between sea and coast- it’s a hard place to pin down with words. So, I’m just going to sketch it out free-association style…
Kehena Beach. The last black sand beach in Puna district. There was a bigger, calmer black sand oasis close by: it was taken out by Pele’s lava 20 years ago. Now, just Kehena remains, about 15 miles from the carnage of the lost beach at Kalapana.
Kehena Beach. Naked hippies dance ecstatically to the deep, generator beats of the kettle drums. A woman belly dances; the tambourine bells on her skirt make sweet music. An ancient man plays a chaotic, shamanic flute. Two women and their respective didgeridoos face one another, droning symbiotically.
Kehena Beach. I dive into the violent surf. The force of the waves are staggering; I always feel right on the edge of fear here. Then, past the break, the waves rise and fall. There, a 20-foot wall. There again, a series of calm pleasant swells. Wait for the lull, then swim back in. Focus your feet on the rocks. Just a little bit of blood. A good day.
Kehena Beach. Trading chocolate for coconuts. Trading stories, hitching rides. There, a few hundred yards out, the iridescent fins of dolphins. Beyond that, the scimitar horizon curving outward and inward on itself.
Kalalau Valley
First things first: this is gonna be ironic. A blog post about wanting to unplug from modern electronic living. Ok, now that we’ve addressed that…
I want to unplug. After discovering that Oracle’s CEO just purchased the Hawaiian island of Lanai. That for me was a sort of a last straw. Just so emblematic of how warped our priorities are as a society: that someone can trade a bunch of green paper for an ancient island with 3,200 permanent residents. Residents who fish and hunt there. Residents unused to fences and street lights, much less condo-plexes. Dopey CEO man says he wants to “create jobs and stimulate tourism” on Lanai. Gross. Truly, nothing is sacred anymore.
Which leads me to wanting to unplug. I feel like as long as I am functioning within the glare of modern consumable information society, I will never be unplugged. If I have access to the matrix, I am going to be interacting with the matrix on some level. I want to see what it feels like to really, truly, toss those fetters away.
There is a remote valley on the island of Kauai. I have been dreaming and dreaming of walking into this secret place. No cell phone service, no wi-fi. Just my bow and a backpack. Perhaps a friend or two. And then: Trust. That the world keeps spinning, news cycles keep cycling but I won’t know… put a tarp up, watch time move, forage and hunt in the warm and verdant hearth of the North Pacific Ocean.
The Experience of Eating Homemade Bananas Foster
The first taste that hits you
is that of the banana. After that,
it’s the rum that’s in the fruit, and the caramel
from the flame that burnt the rum off. The caramel! It colors
the vanilla ice cream.
Taken altogether,
the bananas, the burnt rum, the ice cream, they
dance new kinds of dancing on your tongue.
The Story of Midnight the Warrior Cat
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
— Mark Twain
It seems paradoxical to start a story about a cat with a quote about a dog, but so be it. The quote fits.
This is the first draft of a short story about a cat named Midnight.
Midnight is a jet black cat with flecks of grey sprinkled around his coat. He’s been living at the Hedo property for about 4 years. Midnight is a lazy cat. He will routinely nap between 18-22 hours a day. He will position himself not on the side of a couch, but square in the middle. He’ll lie down on his back not beside a chair, but directly in a line of foot traffic in a common area. And he will not move. You can pick him up, if you wish, but Midnight won’t move unless he wants to. If you pass by Midnight and happen to wake him from a nap, he will shoot you a cursory “mmmrrow” of greeting. He is a loving cat, but not an ambitious cat. Very occasionally he’ll catch a rat and show it to you, but he does so halfheartedly. Midnight likes to eat and sleep and sometimes snuggle. And also fight.
Midnight is highly territorial. He will fight to protect his territory, night or day, rain or shine. Mongoose, pig, other cats, he takes all comers. His ears are so beat up from scraps they make Sly Stallone’s face from Rocky look well put together. He always has a fresh scratch somewhere, and often we’ll have to treat a wound to prevent it from becoming infected.
Midnight has a cat friend named Khalifa. Khalifa is a lady cat, and she is very pretty in a tiny leopard sort of way, and also very fierce (poor geckos- they are Khalifa’s favorite). Khalifa is the one cat Midnight has allowed to co-exist within his kingdom. They mostly ignore each other, but sometimes you’ll catch Khalifa licking a fresh scrape on Midnight’s ear while he eats.
So, this brings us up to an evening three weeks ago, a Friday night, here in the Puna district of Hawaii. Puna has a lot of feral pigs. And specifically our property has three feral pigs who root and snuffle around all night, waking people up in their bed spaces and decimating our system of gardens. Before I agreed to hunt the pigs, the owners outsourced the task to locals. The deal was, if you kill the pig, you can eat the meat. The owners have one solid relationship with a Hawaiian guy they’ve known for several years, and who has taken out a few pigs for them in the past. He was scheduled to come out to the property and do some tracking that weekend, so when a pick up truck drove up the driveway just before dusk, we all assumed it was the pig hunter. Instead, it turned out to be three local guys we didn’t know.
“Heyo bruddah! Heard you got some pigs! We can take ‘em out for ya!”
They had three pit bulls in the back of the pick up, and before we really knew what was going on, they were out of the truck and sniffing around the property. It all happened fast. Just as I thought to myself: “Where are the cats? I hope they know to stay away,” I heard a loud hiss, a muted growl, a tussle, and a panicked voice.
“They have the CAT!!!!! They have the CAT!!!!!!”
By the time I ran to where to where the dogs were, they had been dragged away by their owners. I saw out of the corner of my eye Midnight raggedly limping into the volcanic crater on the property. It appeared his shoulder was dislocated, and I could see blood on the ground and all over the face of one of the hunting dogs. The pig hunters fell silent, apologized, and sheepishly left in their truck. On the way back down the driveway, I heard one of them say: “Dat’s the first time I see a cat attack a dog.”
What had happened was this: The dogs had surprised Midnight and Khalifa, who were lounging in the lawn behind the barn when they started sniffing around the property for pigs. Khalifa had a traumatic experience with hunting dogs two years ago, so she got scared when she saw them. In her fright she had run right out in front of the dogs, towards the neighboring property, and spooked the pit bulls. They had made a move toward Khalifa, and that’s when Midnight sprang to action. Not only had these three hunting dogs invaded his territory, they were now threatening his lady friend. So, he attacked. A small black cat attacked three pit bull hunting dogs. He got a few claws in on one dog, which was the source of the blood on one dog’s face. But we didn’t know what had happened to Midnight.
A small group of us went down into the crater with flashlights and tuna fish, calling out his name. We left some tuna on the side of the trail in two spots and waited. Nothing. No sight of Midnight, no sound of Midnight. Just the chirping of the coqui frogs and the pitter patter of the evening rain on the banana leaves. I felt sad, but I decided that no matter what had become of Midnight, he had gone out in a blaze of glory, protecting his land and his lady. I climbed out of the crater and went to bed, expecting never to see Midnight again.
Two nights later, I was brushing my teeth at the open-air sink, when I heard a yell of joy emanating from the barn.
“Midnight!!! Midnight’s back!!!”
Sure enough. There was Midnight. With a limp in his front foreleg and a couple already-healed puncture wounds in his shoulder. He was hungry. And after he ate, he slept.
And so it goes that Midnight, the small black cat who likes to eat and sleep, took on three trained hunting dogs head on and lived to tell the tale. He even made one of those pit bulls pay with a bloody face. Cats are amazing animals.
Thoughts on Nature, Relaxation, and Stress
I could write a book about the importance of relaxation. I feel that relaxation is a state of being. It’s a way of approaching the world, not just an adjective. And certainly not something we ‘achieve’ by going to the spa or having a drink with dinner. Relaxation is a perspective, not a goal attached to an activity. It’s not lazy or complacent to be relaxed. In fact, I feel I’m more productive when I’m working in a relaxed manner, with a relaxed mind, in a relaxed atmosphere. Not to mention happiness and overall quality of life. When human beings feel relaxed, human beings are in their element! The lions and lionesses of the African Savannah will relax most of the day, just kickin it, lying in the shade. Then, when it’s time to hunt, they hunt (well, mostly the Lionesses hunt). But they don’t waste energy spazzing out about it.
The lionesses aren’t lying beneath the baobab tree worrying: What if I Don’t Catch a Gazelle!? The Gazelles Have Been So Wily Lately! What If I’ve Lost My Game!?! No way. The lionesses are not wasting precious resources on something as useless as fretting. Rather, they are in a state of relaxation, because that’s the best way for them to save energy for when they need it, like the hunt.
As with everything else, Nature shows us how to be in harmony with the Universe. Even the colorful little geckos here on Hawaii will kick back and relax when they’re not looking for food or escaping attack. They’ll even crawl on the roof of the barn when the sun is out and just, well, relax! And these are little geckos, living in a world with cats and mongooses. These little dudes really have things to worry about. But still, they find a way to relax. It’s natural! The sun, the moon and the tides are never in a rush, nor do they worry about when it’s time to rise or fall.
Stress is also natural, but it’s not natural to be stressed out all the time. The body releases all sorts of hormones and adrenaline and such when it feels stressed out, as a sort of fight or flight self-preservation mechanism. But it’s only natural for the body to do that when it’s in real circumstances of real stress. Like, actual self-preservation moments.
Here’s what I think: As a society, we’ve become a bit more disconnected from Nature, especially in urban life. And because folks are often so busy and not getting enough sleep, nutrition, etc., the body gets confused and starts sending out increasingly frequent and erratic “stress signals,” even when the stresser is something relatively innocuous, like a deadline at work or a loud, busy intersection (excuse the run-on sentence there). It’s the body’s way of saying: “I’m confused. Get me into a more natural setting so I can harmonize with the Universe, please.”
Almost every town in the U.S. has a forest, desert, river, mountain, nature preserve, or city park somewhere nearby. Go to it! Sit with Nature, just for a few moments. If you have an open mind, Nature is a dynamic teacher for how to live well in the world.
The Wild and Wonderful World of Puna
I live in the Puna district on the east side of the Big Island. Puna is one of the most eclectic, erratic and abruptly beautiful places I’ve ever been to. It’s also rough around the edges. The peculiar Puna combination of locals, hippies, bikers, veterans, queers, Hare Krishnas and Christians (just to name a few of the more distinct demographics) make for a buoyant tapestry of vibes and cultures so diverse and unpredictable that there’s never, truly, a dull moment.
Just today, I hitched back to Lower Puna from Hilo. It took 3 rides. My first ride was a veteran in a blue pick up who had just finished his service after 14 years. He said he couldn’t wait to get to Pahoa and finally cut loose. My second ride was a dude in a VW bus. I asked him how long he’d been on the island. “Uhh 4, 6, 7 years. Somethin’ like that. It all starts blending in for me.” And my final ride was an ancient man with massive spectacles and a dashboard full of incense sticks and rolled cigarettes. “C’mon man! Get in! Can’t let it stop!” And he motioned for me to hop in his still slowly rolling dying old Dodge two-door. “Yeah can’t let it stop… might not start back up.” And I hopped out at my stop of his still rolling old Dodge and heard the engine labor with its heavy knocking as he flashed me a shaka out the passenger window.
That was just two hours this afternoon.
Puna district lies on the thinnest tectonic plate in the world, and much of the area is designated “Lava Zone 1,” meaning it is most likely to have an active lava flow. This geothermal reality deeply impacts the district in many ways. One, it allows land to remain affordable, even on Hawaii. Two, it engenders a sort of Buddhist non-attachment in folks who choose to live and build here. There are no big box stores or massive development projects in Puna. Condos? No way. If all you care about is profit, you’re not going to invest in the most seismically active corner of the Hawaiian Islands. Rather, you have a flowering of modest dwellings, intentional communities, farmers markets and the like. And always in the background is the reality of Pele’s Kiluaea, which could change its lava course at any time and take out everything you’ve made. Love and let it go- the Puna way.
The motor vehicles in Puna district are straight out of a beater museum. Some cars I’ve seen running here appear to be running on pure magic. Puna is a rainforest, so everything gets rusted out. Including everyone’s car. But as a hitch hiker, you like to see a lot of old cars. It means you have a better chance of being picked up. Newer shiny cars rarely stop- they are too attached to the shine. These folks are almost always tourists passing though in a rental car or someone from Hilo visiting for the day. In Puna the vibe is this: make it work for today, because it may not be here tomorrow.
Waikiki beach is a universe away in Puna. We have rough black sand, not smooth white sand beaches. We have chain smoking ancient homeless hippies loitering in front of First Hawaii Bank. We have turf battles in front of the Pahoa Village Club. We have hidden steam vents, deliciously calming warm ponds, deep baby jungle (the land is so young- it’s still figuring out what it looks like), we have lava tubes and lava flows and the smoking, lurid face of Pele. For a time two years ago a resident’s lawn was literally on fire. She used to charge tourists 10 bucks for the chance to poke at lava with a stick. Even with the lava in her front yard she insisted in sleeping in her house. One night while she was out to dinner her house went up in flame. C’est la vie. C’est la Pele. Pure Puna. Big Island Love.
