By Ben Zoltak
[Hiked December 2022 – essay published January 2023]
I patiently waited decades to explore Hawai’i and I’m so thankful I had the chance to finally explore Maui with my daughter and her local friends.
Recently I had the pleasure of going to a place I had lived for a year, fifty years ago, the Hawai’ian Island chain, specifically, Maui. I was born on Oahu but spent the majority of my life in Wisconsin and a decade in Illinois. My lovely daughter Isabella has been living in Maui for five years, and I finally bought the round-trip ticket for my fiftieth birthday this last summer to pay her a visit and explore.
A few days before flying to Maui, I was driving Lyft, taking people to and from the airport as I often do. Feeling just a little bit of fomo every time. This time two oceanside-tan looking women jumped in my cab and asked me, “Are you Hawai’ian?”
“No. I was born in Oahu, but I haven’t been back in 50 years.” I said, a story I’ve told thousands of times.
“Oh, we’re born and raised Hawai’ian and we saw your bumper sticker, we thought you were Hawai’ian. Malama Pono, keep the aina ono!”
“Yes, that’s from my lovely daughter Bella, who has lived on the island for almost five years and runs her own cleaning business here. I love the translation of that sticker.”
The woman with long black hair and clothes more fit for the tropics said to me, “It means protect the land, keep the land good.”
I chimed in, “or keep the land yummy.”
“Yes…” Her friend chimed in, “it could also be interpreted that way… yummy.”
I opined, “I like the second version, yummy. Just because it brings some humor to a topic people are usually very serious about.”
They both nodded their heads as if in acceptance of that then finally the older of the two said, “yes, that makes sense.”
Then the younger lady (whose name I knew at the time, but I’m afraid I can’t recall) said, “I’ve read that etymologists have connected languages of the indigenous people of the mainland in the US with the indigenous people of Hawai’i.”
“Thanks for sharing that, I love it.” I said, and we continued to have some of the usual banter, enjoying the anticipation feeling that goes with people about to travel.
I drove them to the Madison Airport and dropped them off. They both chimed in,
“Have fun in Hawai’i!”
(Hiking along one of Haleakala’s switchback trails – photo cred Ben Zoltak)
Finally, I found myself on the plane to Kahului Airport full of excitement and with a hurricane of feelings rushing through my mind. Only a week ago I was jumping into 36F water in a little lake in south central Wisconsin, soon I knew I’d be body surfing and snorkeling into 80F “winter” waters on the beaches of Maui. Visiting my daughter for the first time, meeting her friends, seeing sights I’ve only seen in pictures for decades, visiting the state of my birth for the first time since being born in Oahu in the 1970s. It was a lot, and I was loving every moment of it.
The trip to Haleakala was one my daughter and I talked about often before I arrived. She made plans with her good friend and her dad to join us for a long hike through the park. Thusly, Daughters and Dads of Haleakala Informal Hike was born, thankfully we were all there with open hearts, to feel and honor the land here that is kapu (sacred), this land of the deities, the Na Akua.
On about the third day Bella and I met her friend and dad and we drove up the sides of the crater and parked near the top of Haleakala National Park. On the way up it’s a visual smorgasbord of vast planes of varying dark greys and reds in gravel and lava stone.
I wouldn’t hike so close to the edge!
As we began our descent the huge vistas of gravely lava flows stood out in every direction. It’s somewhat mind-boggling, speaking with one of your hiking buddies on the trail, looking at their eyes, while just a few inches to the right of their nose lay tens of thousands of square feet of rich, textured lava flow, cooled and dried and in hundreds of varied, subtle, hues and forms. We enjoyed one another’s company, talking about all things Hawai’i, volcanoes, surfing, wildlife and lack thereof, local food, and the occasional tangential convo about life choices…luckily for our daughters neither myself nor the other dad indulged in any dad jokes. It was a fun hike, and as I heard often during my ten-day trip, it felt very much like being on another planet. For me the hike through this wild and fantastic landscape was the culmination of decades of hearing about how amazing Hawai’i is, it was deeply satisfying to experience firsthand. It was dry and the air was just a bit thinner than seaside, at the 10,023-foot summit, the altitude was dizzying.
At one point I hiked near a ledge, pretty close to the very edge of one of the cliff-like trails. My daughters’ friend warned, “I wouldn’t hike so close to the edge!”
She was right and I backed off. Most of my experience hiking anything like this coming from more stable boulders at the terminal end of a long dried up glacier in Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin. Occasionally she would go with her dad, and they’d have their chats alone, and my daughter and I too, it was as pleasant as could be really. We arrived at the bottom of the crater after some time. We all did some yogic stretching as various other hikers passed by envious of our clearing, “Nice spot!” Shouted one man as he and his companion passed by with fully dedicated hiker regalia, including walking sticks and backpack water canteens.
The grass at the bottom of the crater was prairie-like, long and interspersed with shrubs. Our particular little patch was near a horse tie-post, so we shared various hypothese on what we all thought may have shortened the length of the grass of our clearing.
“Probably hikers all stopping here…. probably something in the soil around here that stunts its growth…probably the horses chewing it up in a ruminant-esque, kind of way…”
Bella’s friend then brought out what is locally well known as Musubi, aka Spam Sushi. One bite of these is all it takes for me to become a real convert to Spam and I’ve been a longtime fan of seaweed, so this is truly a heavenly bite.
By now it’s been two hours and we got a little late start than we first planned. Our daughters measured this hike out at four hours so we gathered our things and began the hike back up thew switchbacks, our spines a little more supple from stretching and seaweed wrapped Spam delights.
You begin to feel the incline on the way back up, the trail seems a little steeper…
On the way back up there was less talking. I can’t speak for the other three members of our hiking party, but I was feeling a little grouchy. Before the pandemic I was a weekly runner, usually going at least once or twice a week, putting in a few dozen miles every month. But I rolled my ankle just before quarantine and have since nearly given up cardio, so I felt a little tired and grumpy. I lead the way out of the crater, fueled by the aforementioned dichotomy. You begin to feel the incline on the way back up, the trail seems a little steeper, but with some umph you somehow go faster up than down it seems. After a couple hours of mostly nonplussed hiking we made it back to the top.
Once back by the cars we finally saw a Nene and one of it’s young. These Hawai’ian goose relatives were relatively friendly and photogenic. They wandered by us and weaved in and out of the various cars in the lot. We snapped a few pics then packed ourselves back into the car for the meandering drive out.
Just as the sun was going down, we watched as car after car pulled over to take a snap of the impossibly beautiful oceanic sunset as we left the park. The light curled and weaved fantastically, the red sun dipped like a cinnamon candy into a bright lava of orange hoops and whorls. A good farewell from the Hawai’ian god Maui, who it is said, trapped the sun inside Haleakala to make the day longer for everyone. Kind of ironic now that I think about it, in so much as Hawai’i is the only state that doesn’t observe daylight savings time. The sun continued to dip further into the Pacific, my daughter quietly said to me, “sunsets into the ocean are known for having unpredictable and strangle effects, ” Bella sighed, “I’ve never seen such a beautiful sunset, so unique looking sunset.”
This ended our daughters and dads hiking trip along beautiful Haleakala crater. It was a wonderful experience, seeing the aftermath of lava flows and mother nature gradually working soil into the dark stone and pebbles, watching just a few woodpecker-like birds dart off in the distance, seeing just a few blooms in this warm and humid Hawai’ian winter day. As a scientifically minded person, I enjoyed seeing results of volcanism firsthand, the churning of raw earth brought out to our outermost layer, this lovely island ship seemingly meandering across the Pacific Ocean. We hope we carried with us, only the Kumulipo, the precious tradition of observing the relationships between people and the land, between the spiritual sentient part of ourselves to the physical realm. This was my first-hand experience with Kuleanana energy that I hope others will share with their loved ones. It was an honor to share time with another dad and his daughter as we open our senses to the wonder of the natural world expressed in such rugged and delicate contrast at Haleakala.
