For over ten years, I've wanted to go.
Maui sunset
When an opportunity for a trip to Hawai'i came up a month ago, hosted by local social presence and facilitator Ron Bearden, I only hesitated for a second. I've wanted to travel for so long, but arrangements, tickets, connections, and just overall travel kenning was a brand new area of learning for me! Here was a full-arrangements-made trip in the presence of a group, and thus possible safety: In short, an ideal way to get my foot wet in expanding my horizons. . . . in this case, literally.
Camp Olowalu on Maui
So, nervous as a twitching leaf, I booked my first-ever airline ticket (not one booked by my parents, that is). I paid the organizer the fee by PayPal. Then I prepared, by buying several lightweight, floaty shirts, skirts, and a bundle of bikinis, a few key pieces of jewelry (we were told there was to be dancing), and the requisite sunblock, sunglasses and sandals. Finally, I went to sports stores, and found water-shoes and a discount-but-new snorkeling kit. I wanted to cover as many options as possible, and be as Hawai'i as possible in my style, yet not check a bag. Time would tell how well I'd packed!
I stuffed a late tax payment into the mail slot on the way to PDX Airport, got there early, and used the odd little self-confirmation machine. Soon I was waving ID, gutting my bag, and taking off my shoes for Security, nervous about contraband items . . . including the glass dropper bottle in my toiletries pouch.
Then we loaded, me alone on my first air trip since 2003. Mindful, too, of the carbon cost of jet flight, for petroleum awareness is one of the lessons of Naftha, and jet use is one I will feel called to compensate for later.
A little gift for a great spirit:
a withered flower lei on an ancient tree
I wasn't alone for long. The older man beside me said something that made me ask, "Going camping?" "Glamping," he replied drily. So I met Lin, former pilot, camp co-fellow and all round wit.
We chased the sunset round the globe, losing the race and arriving in Maui by night. Below me at last, I saw the lights of land: white lights, yellow sodium lights, weird orange flickery lights I imagined romantically (and pretty realistically, it turned out) as tiki torches, and a beautiful single, long, winding snake of red and white lights that proclaimed itself as a main highway. I was here, in Hawai'i!!!
They say the smell of a place holds the deepest memory. I passed ranks of souvenir shops filled with tikis and hula stuff, and then as I stepped out the airport door, I got my first breath of Maui: Hot, humid, yet quite mild and sweet --- utterly tropical, in other words. "Whuh!" I said, impressed. Lin got me a ride to camp with his rather flaky but firecracker friend Penelope Sue, and I knew I was in for a ride then!
After grabbing some food and wine at Costco, we arrived at Camp Olowalu, a dear place with tents, "tentalow" wood and cloth bungalow-type accommodations, and the six A-frame cabins plus cooking lodge that our group had rented.
Insects chirped in the balmy night, and the stars overhead were bright as any I'd seen since growing up on my own little islands far away.
In the main lodge, stumbling in late with Penelope, I saw fleetingly my fellow campers in this large group: most of them on the Boomer or at least Gen-X age sector, and rather on the wealthier-seeming end by their grooming, but a couple of Asians and Latin-looking folks as well, and two who were as young or younger than me in age. It came as no surprise how many appeared to be in Ron's age and income demographic, but I would try to remain open: This was merely my ticket here, but I might get a friend out of it yet!
Morning presented swaying palms that rattled softly in the breeze, some of them loaded with fat coconuts that could dent a skull if they fell on you; rhythmic waves over black and red lava pebbles and white coral; copious birdsong from the trees, and the crowing of feral roosters; and an all-embracing tropical heat, radiating from the brilliant golden sphere rising over the vast ocean. This was quickly followed by a hubbub in the kitchen as campers organized loosely to make pancakes and omelettes. This was camping in style --- and it was time to show off my own! On with skirt, bikini, and sheer flowery cover blouse. I ate my omelette outside in the sun at a picnic table.
The next few days were alternately packed with action, nauseous with tedium of driving and "that new-car smell", and oddly detached from my own expectation clashing with reality and logic doing its best. Not able to rent a car, I had to rely on others', and totally didn't think of Maui's bus system. Penelope had latched onto me as a partner on the road, and we ended up one byway and down another, checking out possible hikes, beaches of pale ivory sand, and once, way out on the South Hana Highway, which petered out to a dinky little potholed one-lane job that required a jeep.
Maui style: brought and purchased local
We went through the town of Lahaina, where I got charms for a special Olowalu souvenir, and to Ross for a few gorgeous sarongs. We also looked at an ancient grandmother banyan tree, with a great spreading canopy from which aerial roots drooped to the grounf and started new twisty trunks. It was fun, with some lovely photo-ops, but also exhausting! I lamented not being able to explore alone. One drawback of this trip: Being in that large group. I needed time and space alone, to connect to the land and the spirits.
Highway 37 south around Haleakala to Hana. Oh, those crazy roads!
Young shores: where aina (land) and moana (ocean) meet with crashing power
Beautiful mother ocean. Here, feeling tears, I made my first offering to the local spirits
Fagged out from the South Road, Penelope and I still stopped at little Papalaua Beach Park, where we took a stroll in the sand (and a swing). We collected both corals and garbage off the beach, and I found a pair of pink dress sandals, just my size, abandoned on the sand. The dancing shoes I hadn't packed: A gift from moana! Better with me than as trash in the water. There and on our home camp beach, I began to collect rocks and corals with holes.
A few days in, I finally had my chance. One of my earliest goals for this trip was to try to connect with and honor the spirits here --- including Pele, the goddess of volcanoes. And these islands are all volcanic! I'd heard legends: You shouldn't take rocks or anything else, at least not without giving something in return, for Pele is a jealous type (as she should be; her sister is always trying to wash her islands away). Even without the legends, it changes you inside, to acknowledge a place and show it respect. Being both a collector-geologist sort as well as spiritual, I was determined to try an approach of honor and gifts. (I feel it's when outward posing, benefitting from the public, or getting money come into play that working with the deities of a place not your own homeland bleeds into "cultural appropriation": Am I some kind of tiki priestess now? No.)
That night, the campfire burned low, and, having done some research (thank goodness I had internet!), prepared a prayer offering on a piece of palm husk, I chanted into it: "E ola mau, e Pele e . . . eli eli kau mai. . . ." But I didn't want to burn it in front of the other people at the fireside, knowing they might make jokes about my spiritual path.
Next morning, I woke up at four, long before the first light, and decided to watch the sunrise. And the campfire log was still flickering with flame! I ran back and got the palm paper offering, plus the glass bottle I'd mixed while back in Portland: a blend of gin, which I heard Pele likes; Fireball cinnamon whisky; and my own menses, which I'd collected my last period and saved just for this purpose.
I murmured the prayer again: Long life to you, Pele! Long life indeed, for the fire to still burn. I poured the potion on the coals in parts, and whuumf! whuumf! rose the flame. Then I burned the offering. I thought about saving some back in case another offering opportunity came up --- I'd already offered some on the South Road, to the land and ocean there --- then I remembered Pele is a jealous goddess and I gave her all the rest.
The rising of the sun over Haleakala volcano was lovely. As soon as it peeked over the horizon I felt its heat and power, and in that same first two seconds, one of the feral cockerels went off somewhere, and I laughed.
This trip was all about Hawai'i, and all about Pele. My own underworld goddess was, if anything, older than these islands, working her magic inside the continental crust and with the algal sludge piling up on the ocean floor, not with the young lava that poured over it to form the Hawai'ian islands, and so She did not live here; these porous igneous rocks were not her home. But Aliria-Naphtha still found a way to sneak in, for it was her oil that got me across the sea to Hawai'i, and powered our tourist butts all over Maui, She rolling her eyes as we wasted her precious fuel driving in idiot circles trying to find the road to a beach.
That morning I glanced at the picnic table and snorted: Water bottles, coffee mugs and camp chairs are common items in such a setting, but a bottle of Pennzoil?! Did we have a Gen show up in the night, one of Naphtha's children? A cyborg, perhaps? Then I remembered: the chainsaw! For the firewood. But the image of a wild night party with otherworldly guests put me in a merry mood at breakfast, making me crack jokes at sleepy Lin about who had drunk the stuff last night, or who should drink it to jump-start the day.
My adventures weren't over, nor was my plotting or efforts to connect with this amazing new place. It wasn't enough to merely buy souvenirs; I wanted to make things. Talismanic items, jewelry, ways to feel the spirit of Olowalu and Maui long after I had gone. My rocks, coral, palm husks, a broken coconut shell, and various bits were all swimming into place as I imagined ways to create things from them --- I read Pele likes creativity --- and, in the process, finagle them home to continue the magic.
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