Been there just once for less than a week, but I’m good with that. Though if I had the airfare and both knees working, I’d go again. Anywhere on that far northern Hawaiian outpost just to experience being at the end of the world one more time. I know Maui is supposedly similarly beautiful, but if you close your eyes on Kauaʻi, you’re alone more times than not.

I’ve lived my life from Florida to Connecticut on the eastern edge of a well-populated—perhaps a too well-populated—continent. Semi-ocean front to be sure. So when we made the third jet-lagged leg descending into paradise, I was happy to get off that turboprop with my teeth still unengaged with the seat in front of me. They make those planes to test the intrepid or the innocent.

What cured me of any romantic feelings about flying were the 7+ years of bimonthly trips to and from Le Guardia for the project from hell. Especially on winter days when the runway was not too well cleared, and the water waited just at the end. From National to Le Guardia in a half hour when they threw pretzel packs at you, then rushed back down the aisle to collect the trash—it’s insane we don’t have a real high speed train running the Eastern Seaboard. Even the French have one of those.

Though the airport terminal at Kauaʻi has rain chains in lieu of gutters; Le Guardia doesn’t. It showers frequently on the ‘garden isle,’ and when it’s not raining, the humidity doesn’t leave off. The number of places on the island you can view waterfalls cascading down mountain slopes is unremarkable in the sense they are everywhere. As are the flowers growing wild.

The island is believed to be the second oldest in the Hawaiian chain, and the slopes of its dormant volcanoes are mostly green, Waimea Canyon the large exception.

On Kauaʻi, you drive the coast to reach the scattering of populated places. You can head either direction from the airport outside of Lihue, but the two-lane Kuhio Highway runs out for the last quarter of the island on the northwest coast, and there’s no cutting across unless you have a helicopter.

We had directions and a reservation for a B&B advertised as being surrounded by a nature reserve in Hanalei Valley on the northeastern coast. Just past the turnoff, the village of Hanalei sits on the beach side of the highway.

We followed a narrow road skirting the Hanalei River a fair distance up the valley to reach our destination. Stepping out, we were surrounded by rising mountains and a million birds. It wasn’t like the main highway was choked with development, but deep in the valley what we found was even quieter.

Kauaʻi is visibly divided between the tourist resorts clustered by the water and the one-story island homes with tin roofs sheltering low-slung structures. Modest and otherwise not unlike rural places on the mainland. This was farm country below the wrinkled mountains.

If your sprawling farm is set in a valley on an island that erupted from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, albeit a few millennia ago, no ocean in sight, do you feel secure? And was it what you were looking for?

The proprietors—he an ex-surfer dude from California and she a native in the Hawaiian legislature—the ex-surfer dude said he left California in his teen years. Because it wasn’t far enough away? I asked him one evening while we admired his bonsais standing a proud row on his outdoor work tables. Coastal California is a world from anywhere I had lived, but he said he was looking further out. He’d taken up construction, because it’s what boys did with little education, though he had parlayed years of working with his hands into a successful construction business.

Waking up the next day at sunrise in Hanalei Valley, standing naked to shower outdoors facing a valley still in shadows though already erupting in birdsong. The sun had yet to rise above the mountains. Something pleasantly illicit about that outdoor shower, and I didn’t care. The birds in that valley didn’t care either who heard them.

No photos to convey the feeling.

By evening we’d wandered into Hanalei and found the beach.

Kalalau Trail

The southern coast holds the largest cluster of resorts. So we had driven north until the road ran out.

We hiked the Kalalau Trail along the Na Pali (northern) coast, and left even the last vestiges of the modern—cars, road, signs and people—to work the red dirt edge rising and falling beside the verdant walls climbing the mountainside, frequently interrupted by clefts and waterfalls. Some of these the trail skirted, and others we followed back away from the ocean before returning, ever higher. In the tourist shops they sold red dirt T-shirts; we were staining our shoes, socks, even our legs in the same dry dust.

Arriving a few miles later, we saw a oversized sign on the beach—more a billboard—saying we finally made the beach we’d been working toward, Hanakapi’ai. The sign warned “do not turn your back to the ocean.” Something about large waves coming in too fast to get away from, and then you’re out in the Pacific Ocean being pulled to Japan. Not at all like East Coast surf, even the Outer Banks—this water was deep and the currents weren’t to be messed with.

“Hanakapi’ai Beach is only accessible during the summer months–primarily from May through September. This is because heavier surf in the winter tends to pull the sand out from the shore. Note that swimming in the ocean here is strongly discouraged. Most deaths along the Kalalau Trail occur as a result of drowning (rather than from falls).”
from Ultimate Guide to the Kalalau Trail, Kauai by Jamie Compos

“Most deaths,” he says. Jamie Compos’s photos of the Kalalau Trail better show what’s entailed; I was breathing too hard to take too many shots. We were day hiking, so eight miles out and back was it—and we were fried. Eight miles as a Hawaiian crow might fly, but we earth bound creatures had to hike it.

All the warnings about the Na Pali coast seemed extreme until a day sail we took, and listened to the captain’s story about the time he was out on these same gorgeous waters and he looked out at a boy waving frantically—he almost hadn’t seen him—on a sailboard and caught in the current heading to Japan. He brought about his sailboat full of tourists and rescued the very grateful boy.

You don’t get those monster waves on the East Coast without a monster storm stirring them, but then you’re not living on the top of a semi-dormant volcanic mountain range rising from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Miles into the hike, we reached the trail heading inland to the Hanakapi’ai Falls. Mile and a half of jungle meandering through a bamboo forest by ourselves. Not that we’d seen too many hikers along the coastal trail. This was hot, muggy work and reaching the falls, I took the only obvious relief.

We were day hiking, so eight miles +/- was it—and we were fried. Eight miles as an Hawaiian crow might fly, but we earth bound creatures had to hike it.

All the warnings about the Na Pali coast seemed extreme until the day sail we took, and listened to the captain’s story about the time he was out on these same gorgeous waters and he looked out at a boy waving frantically—he almost hadn’t seen him—on a sailboard and caught in the current heading to Japan. He brought about his sailboat full of tourists and rescued the very grateful boy.

You don’t get those monster waves on the East Coast without a monster storm stirring them, but then you’re not on the top of a semi-dormant volcanic mountain range rising from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Waimea Canyon offers no shelter from the sun, so our hike that day was brutally hot, stumbling down red dirt and volcanic rock. I have no record of how far we made it into the canyon, but it seemed as far as we went, the faint trail just continued. We went as far as my knee and our water supply lasted and turned back.

We had been married the previous year. D would run her marathon in the fall. She had won the trip to Kauaʻi for top sales at a computer company, the first of a number of times since. The several days we spent in the unremarkable beach resort with her peers followed our several days of hiking. Being recognized as a top performer means your work is recognized—and unlike some professions, computer folks know it’s a big deal. Though the exploring we did on our own, the hours talking to islanders, and hiking the Na Pali coast is what I remember most.

Kalalau Trail

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