Moloka'i Again

                                    The after yoga rainbow...

Yesterday I went to yoga on the beach. I lay there, unable to keep my eyes closed in various poses because I was more interested in watching the clouds constantly changing form as they moved across the island and back out to sea. How beautiful they were! Pure white against a deep blue sky, then the moist gray ones moving through, letting go of a few drops, then back to wispy white. I remembered suddenly how as a kid I would lay on the grass and watch the sky, seeing objects form and then unform, as my mind wondered about all sorts of things. But what I remembered most of all was the sense of absolute wonder that would accompany something so simple.

I’ve lost that sense of wonder. Decades ago, I think, left behind along with skinned knees and roller skating too fast down hills. Though there have been respites; sitting in my garden watching the birds splash in the fountain, when the all too rare tiger swallowtail or monarch butterfly would happen through, when the true perennials would poke their little shoots back through the soil again in spring; my daughters’ fingers and toes when they were babies; starring into Crater Lake or standing on Happy Isles in Yosemite. Still, if mere clouds drifting across the sky can induce it, why then has it become such a rarity?

Moloka'i is a good cure for lack of wonderment. Though even here, I have whole days where it is absent, nearly whole days where I miss the beauty, where the challenges seem infinitely greater than the gifts. This is an altogether different trip than my first one. Last trip was about true retreat, about just being, about opening the door to begin healing. This trip seems more about getting lessons, and they are abundant, and sometimes difficult. Some days just staying is the success. Still, once I got it that even this is her divine grace, possibly even perfectly orchestrated, I could bow in humbleness, even to the wonder of it all.

Some of the many moods of Moloka'i

For more photos of Moloka'i, click here for my Snapshots blog.