Rainbows and Kittens, Lessons and Love

Dixie Maru Beach, West End, Moloka'i, where I spent many afternoons,
most of the time, the only one there.

Don't change Moloka'i, let Moloka'i change you.

* * *

You don't choose Moloka'i, Moloka'i chooses you.

I landed on Moloka'i almost ten years ago in the middle of one of the biggest wild fires they had had in decades. The smell of smoke was everywhere, helicopters were taking off and landing, dropping sea water on the flames, firefighters covered in soot crowded the isles in the tiny grocery store. It seemed that I hadn't simply landed on Mars, I had landed on Mars and it was on fire. 

Symbolically it was appropriate, given I was there because my own life had burnt to the ground. But I didn't know that it would be like an alien planet. I did know that there were no signal lights, no buildings taller than a palm tree, that two cars lined up at the four-way stop in town was considered rush hour traffic; that they have a tragic and also moving history marked by the leprosy (properly Hansen's Disease) colony on the remote and beautiful peninsula, Kalapaupa; plus the longest white sand beach in all of the islands, and the highest sea cliffs in the world. All in all the perfect sounding place for a save-your-life sequester. I assumed it would be a lot like Maui, my favorite place on earth, just smaller and calmer. How different could they be, after all, they are sister islands in the same county, separated by a mere seven-and-one-half-mile channel.

When I woke up on my first morning there I wondered how in the world I was going to get out of my three-month contract for the admittedly decent little place that I had arrived at disoriented and deeply disturbed the afternoon before. I couldn't fathom spending even two nights there much less ninety. It was dry and dusty, like an island desert, with red dirt everywhere, rumors of modern day nocturnal Menehune marches to the sea, and deer that barked at night. Plus the owner had not been truthful about its proximity to the ocean or the ability to hear the surf from the condo. As day broke an hour later, I found my way out of the sprawling complex on a small-o-odyssey to find the beach. I ambled down a small, half-paved road littered with dozens of flattened toads, past the shells of abandoned, rotting resort buildings, through a dead-brown golf course, around a drained, neglected swimming pool. When I arrived at the shore and plopped down on the damp sand, I wondered how I was ever going to heal my own grief in a place that was so barren, so broken itself, when suddenly materializing out of seemingly nowhere was a rainbow. And not just any rainbow, but the kind only imaginable in a magical fairytale land, fully saturated, full-on double arches anchored in the lava cliff at the edge of the beach, stretching up, and over, and then cascading like a colorful waterfall into the ocean far out in the middle of the sea.

And that in a nutshell is Moloka'i.

One minute you think you can't stay another second, the next, you know in your every cell that you are there because somehow it's the right place to be; and later, after she has grown on you in ways you could never imagine or see coming, you weep at the prospect of ever having to leave. When she welcomes you, it's a full-on embrace that will mark you forever. Time and again I was told that I didn't choose Moloka'i, that she chose me; she either welcomes you with open arms or she doesn't, and you'll know it. I heard of people getting off the plane and making a one-eighty right back onto it. She is strange and magical, homely and gorgeous, passionate and indifferent, weary and welcoming, acrimonious and loving, and yes, deeply healing. She is a loving but not so patient teacher, with an aloha spirit that will flat-out knock your socks off. She, born of the goddess Hina, is the real deal, and those who call her home will go to any length to protect who they are and what they have, and I heard time and again, in fact, it's memorialized in song: look what they've done to our sister Maui... . Hence, the hand painted signs as you drive from the airport, the toppled trees suddenly blocking certain roads that are being desecrated, their reputation as the island people voted most likely to give you the stink-eye as you drive cavalierly around their sacred home in your rental car.

(Which is why you rent a beat up old clunker, that loses water constantly then overheats and leaves you stranded on the side of the two-lane road at least once a week, waiting for it to cool so you can add the water you carry around in the trunk for that purpose. But that's okay, because first of all, this is serious island time, I mean what's the hurry, and second, never once, no matter what time of day or how remote an area, did a car pass me by without stopping to ask if I needed help, offer me their own drinking water for my radiator, or a ride somewhere~unless of course it was said tourists in a rental flying by.)

When I flew from Oakland to Honolulu and then on to Moloka'i, I was deep in mourning, and when I landed back in Oakland three months later, it enveloped me again as though I had never been away. But in between, for those ninety days (minus the first day of course) she gave me an unbelievable gift, a respite from the long journey of recovery from just too many losses in too short a period of time. She gave me sunshine and warm ocean water, fishes and turtles, a calm sea and a raging one, which I loved with equal passion. She offered exotic flowers and scents and insects and birds, especially the barn owl sitting on the rotting fence post, the only owl I've ever seen in the wild, especially the Lesser White Fronted Goose who appeared as if by magic on the beach one morning, apparently having been blown far off her migration course, especially the zebra dove whose haunting coo woke me each and every dawn without fail. Painted skies at sunrise and sunset, the full moon setting over the ocean as the sun rose on the other side of the small land. Words and images and music, Old Style; feral kitties needing food and water and care, and people. Incredible experiences with incredible, loving people who somehow recognized me, my need, my own aloha spirit, my own love for them and their island, caring for me and embracing me as their o'hana, bringing me so generously into their Moloka'i family.