Here They Come...

Two weeks ago on Maui, dark-grayish humpback whales began arriving in its waters. Likewise, barely-off-white North American vacationers commenced to fill its shores.

Winters of palm tree lined beaches, vine wrapped tropics, tank-top temperatures, and warm crystal blue and teal seas attract life from thousands of miles away.  An estimated 20,000 swimmers will play, slap, and perform sexual escapades in Hawaii’s gigantic lap pool from November to April.  And that’s just the whales.

Guides herd groups of twenty to forty tourists onto cruise boats to head off-shore.  There, she dips a microphone through the ocean’s plane, amplifying melodically soothing whale songs, serenading vacationers, validating each dollar spent to get here.  

Just the male whales sing, and each song is repetitive and unique.  Humans don’t know the why or the meaning of this testosterone crowd’s songs, not yet at least.  But research and speculation run rampant.

Female humpbacks give birth in the warmth of this lustful sea after almost a full year of pregnancy.  Then in this same winter’s playground, the female will most likely conceive again before leading her calf back to frigid Northern Pacific waters for a six-month multi-ton feast on fish and krill.

Last March we sailed this Maui sea with only winded sails pushing us parallel to a pod of whales.  Picture a peace so diametrically opposed to the hostility of Melville’s “Moby Dick.” No spears, no weapons, no need to eat, or use, or wear, these animals.  Curiosity and respect were mutual between sailors and swimmers.  And it all happened in silence.  Only the majestic and powerful ocean broke quiet’s enchantment by lapping at our boat, or reacting to a whale’s fin slap, or to an even more spectacular breach as a beautiful forty-ton being leapt out of then crashed through the ocean’s surface.

As for the newly arrived, barely-off-white North Americans, they are confiscating the entire inventory of carts at Safeway. (Like I am now ‘not like them’ for some unreasoned reason.) So this flip-flopped-me maneuvers through a bumper car ride of a grocery store with sandaled, black-socked and Bermuda short-wearing obstacles at every turn.  

And I am only into two months of entitlement as a resident of Hawaii. Who am I to move in then expect the grocery aisle to be mine, and only mine? I plead with my readers: I have suffered the cost of moving here. I have paid the price of admission.  Four times have I crossed the island because of confusing state requirements before I could register my car.  Five times have I traveled the Valley Isle to qualify for a driver’s license. The written test was simple.  The proof of human existence, excruciating.

What I do day-to-day this Maui November is a camping story in and of itself. Suffice it to say, Tom and I wake up each morning and force our selves off the floor and our makeshift air mattress bed; I go from reclined, to a down-dog yoga position, then eventually to vertical, after stacking vertebrae one at a time.

We eat our homemade meals on a patio table sitting on our yard’s red dirt.  Five days ago, our kitchen became operational.  Four days ago, our main bath.  Two days ago, our washer and dryer.  We keep our furniture in storage, away from the dust.  But it’s like Tom giving me the 12-days of Christmas in November, where I get something new each day. During construction we neglect why we moved here, and only plow forward.

But yesterday we took time off from construction to go to the beach.  It is on the beach where the barely-off-white vacationers remind us to be as happy as they are. 

The little things brilliant about Hawaiian life are so prevalent on these sands; a thrilling sea turtle swims by. A sunbather lounges and reads a book then pauses to glance up and out across blue crashing waves.  I look where she looks and think ‘yes, of course it’s beautiful.’  A father helps his two daughters build a sandcastle.  A dog gleefully runs into the surf to retrieve a ball his owner has thrown, and as I watch I anticipate the day five weeks away when we bring our little dog Chester here to also play.  

But the greatest reminder of Maui happiness is when we see a couple our age heading to the beach with expressions of incredible contentment and anticipation as they venture to enjoy one more of the seven all-too-short days of their island visit.  And I kick myself for even being in a bad mood, even briefly, over red dirt and a low-lying bed.

Running from a Gorilla

Even with year-round 82-degree temperatures and succulent air, two Maui venues still require the need for a parka.  One is Haleakala’s peak at 10,000 feet above sea level.  And the second of course is Safeway.

To visit Haleakala’s summit, expect strong, refrigerated winds tumbling across course blackish-red sand on a Mars like surface. You, yourself, sometimes need to tilt into the headwind to make your way to the observation museum.  The seven by two mile crater is spectacular, especially when viewed from a hoodie’s head-cinched orifice.  

Haleakala Crater, Maui, Hawaii

On a trip to Safeway, the greatest rush comes from entering the building, where arctic air greets you.   The deepest nip shivers you in produce; second, the obvious freezer goods section; third, everywhere else.  Those who unwittingly drive here directly from the beach in swimsuits and flip-flops must dash to the rotisserie chicken heat lamp to thaw. 

Haleakala gets its chill for free.  I’d hate to see Safeway’s electric bill.

Other microclimates exist on Maui.  Stark desert heat, brown shrubbery, and cacti define the island’s undeveloped south side.  Four Seasons, Marriott, Fairmont Kea Lani, and the Hilton Grand Wailea with transplanted palm trees, meticulously trimmed and defined crab grass, forty-foot tall Moneypod trees as umbrellas, and greener than green golf courses, all grown from sprinkler systems, define the south side’s “developed” microclimate.  Green meets brown.

On the north shore, in contrast, tropical moisture stirs plants--any variety--to grow by a mere welcome to the neighborhood.  Or mid-climates: specific towns developed at a strategic height above sea level with specifications such as nine to 12 inches of annual rain and an average temp of 77.3 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can see where requirements are met by viewing at night conglomerations of lights on the sides of Haleakala and the West Maui Mountains.

It is this assortment of microclimates that I depend upon to thwart any thoughts of island fever.  Island fever is when you start feeling you are trapped, like Gilligan, perpetually surrounded by water, driving/walking/biking, running from a gorilla, around the same-ole, same-ole tropical paradise. 

If I can go to 10,000 feet to experience magnificent desolation, or drive to rain, or to a lush utopia with vines hanging above the road; or to a marina, a beach, a hippie town, a locals town, or a cruise-ship-unloading town, to people watch and people chat, I think this diversity will be my immunization against feeling constrained.   

And in a hot flash, if I cannot get to Haleakala’s summit, at least I have Safeway.

   

Myna Birds on a Motorcycle

Riding at fifty miles an hour, Hawaii’s hot trade wind flaps my shirt and pushes my full-head motorcycle helmet to and fro, but I grip tight. I am only anywhere from twelve to forty-eight inches away from streaking pavement, from a surface that could end our lives in a serious glitch.  It’s exhilarating. I hug Tom’s stomach with my right arm, and fist my left hand around the bar under my seat, knuckles white, fingers red, my arm tense, as we ride.  I have only me to hold me on.

Our bike is glossy red and black, sporty, and completely contrary to the mostly Harley Davidson motorcycle crowd on Maui’s roads.  But then, we are completely cut against the grain anyway. A shiny red Kawasaki labels us well.

Last week our condominium manager asked Tom to describe his bike in order to register for a parking space.  Tom responded with, "It’s a Versys, four-stroke, fuel injected, 6-speed, liquid cooled.”  I piped in, “I think she wants to know the color.”  We’re now squared away.

When riding, I try to avoid looking at the dizzying payment.  And this particular day my eyes wander to sugar cane fields, then to my right, Haleakala, with massive green slopes meeting a flat horizontal line of dark clouds hiding the volcanic peak.  Then to my left I take in also-green-sloped cities on the West Maui Mountains.  The views are breathtaking.   You’d think I’d be used to this scene by now--that I would take it for granted--but I do not.  And of course breezing through Maui’s valley, completely open to the environment at fifty miles an hour, how could I not feel awe?

It is Tom and I together in a new land for 36 days now.  The two of us twenty-four-seven, like Hawaii’s myna birds travelling in pairs all day.  The avian couples fly right next to our lanai (patio) every evening just before sunset.  They fly toward us from the ocean, then pass us through a gulch filled with lush greenery forty feet deep off the edge of our lanai. The pairs fly right at eye level or below, two by two, here and there, throughout a thirty-minute duration before sunset.  Their goal is to gather in the bamboo thicket on the mauka (up-mountain) side of our place. 

Myna Birds, Similar to those we see on Maui

Arrival is constant.  Some pairs appear early, many in middle-time, and some scurry in at the last minute before sundown to make it to their safety zone before dark.  Hundreds merge into one bamboo high-rise nature complex. 

And the noise, the noise does not permit you to hear your own conversation.  The birds chat it up, telling each and all of their adventure that day.  It’s their proverbial own homeowners association meeting.  Someone initiates a gripe to stir the rest into a steadfast chime.   At sunset, the congregation continues conversation.  Then, within ten minutes after orange and blue leave the sky, turning to grey, then black, the chirping quiets, except for a rustle here or there in the night. 

(Continued below.)

Sound of Myna Birds in Bamboo by our Place

There are no predators for these birds, so why, why do they need to travel miles back to here before dark?  But then, we do the same.  We rendezvous.  Tom and I venture out for the day as a couple then come home to chirp or converse on our lanai (branch) of a 120-unit condo thicket.  Many other people also come home to their lanais--their branches--and roost.  And we all jabber, recalling our day.  We then become quiet for the night.  How odd is life anyway?

Every so often I see a myna bird fly home solo.  I look and look to see if I am mistaken, to see if I can see another, but I don’t.  What happened?  What is the story behind this singular bird?  It moves me to think I am so fortunate to have Tom as my myna bird partner, to travel together in the day, and chirp prolifically about politics and life during our evenings.    

I wonder if myna birds have their own politics?  Probably.  I suspect the arguments are much simpler, more focused on raw survivability.  They ask for little in their quest for cooperation.

Moving swiftly at fifty miles an hour across the island on a red and black six-cylinder fuel injected machine, I hug Tom tightly and appreciate the moment as just that.  I breathe in lush, fresh air, and embrace my loved one as we fly at a thrilling speed, just like myna birds. 

Watching Star Trek is Futile

“Your movie will download in 27 hours 15 minutes,” said iTunes three seconds after I press yes to approve the $5.99 purchase.  Tom has popcorn ready to watch “Star Trek Into Darkness.”  My sci-fi fan of a son Josh would be proud of our selection.  We usually choose a dark, subtitled French drama guaranteeing an ambiguous ending so that we may discuss the possibilities for days.  This night, four days ago, we'll have to stash the popcorn to wait for the download.

--

It has been seven days since we flew to Maui with one-way tickets out of San Diego; a very symbolic move.  We’re here. We’re at our new home.  Round trips will now formally originate out of Maui.  And, after a summer of chaos checking huge to-do’s off a life-transition list we weren’t sure we could achieve, we ended up red-checking each and heading to paradise.

We landed last Sunday at 9:36 a.m.  Once off the plane, Tom and I kiss in front of the terminal and say, “welcome home.”  But we ride in the shuttle van across the valley ignoring Maui’s sugar cane fields waving hello to us.  We ride without passion, without the familiar renovation toilet in the rear of the vehicle.  We just ride.

Tom usually unpacks his suitcase at the same speed as it takes a rodeo cowboy to: lasso a calf out of the shoot, jump off his horse, throw the calf on its back, and lash three of the bovine’s four legs together, to then raise his hand in the air in achievement at 6.7 seconds flat.  

Although I have not yet seen Tom raise his hand in the air at the 6.7 seconds flat mark it takes him to successfully unpack, I always watch impressively and feel guilty over my own negligence in just opening a hotel luggage rack, throwing my suitcase on top, and calling it good. I once mentioned to Tom as he filled the hotel dresser drawers and bathroom medicine cabinet that we will be checking out by ten the next morning.  “And?” was his response.

--

“Your movie will download in 7 hours 45 minutes,” iTunes informs us three nights ago.  “Next time we recommend you use a lower resolution download,” iTunes admonishes us.  We put the popcorn away, again.

--

We moved emotionless that Sunday after arrival.  So much so, Tom moved our luggage into the condo and it sat untouched for 24 hours.  A rodeo calf would find relief in this.  Yet Tom and I in all our lethargy felt like we should “do something.”  We felt obligated to enjoy paradise, so we managed to throw two beach chairs in the car and drive to a familiar shady beach spot.

After parking, we walk past a buff young man sunning himself, covered only by a red speedo, or rather, purposefully displaying his libido like a peacock, a point of purchase display, if you will.  Tom and I just walk. We walk past a wedding celebration overlooking the ocean with big white canopies, palm fronds, and people dressed in white.  And we just sit.  Tom takes a dip in the ocean.  I walk up to the aqua blue waves and dip my feet to at least say I did so on Day One of my new home. 

With waves lapping at my shins, I see many people bobbing in the ocean.  On just this beach alone, I count fifty to my left, and thirty to my right.  My mind is engaged enough to do the numbers.  Say, 5,000 tasty morsel-people have bobbed for a period of time in the waters around Maui today.  That calculates to 150,000 tempting nuggets in a month. In August, tiger sharks tasted four people in Maui’s sea stew of tourists.  That’s a .0026 percent chance any one person will be attacked in September.  I may try snorkeling this month, I think.  I walk back to my chair and just sit.

Kamaole Beach Chair View, Sunday, September 8

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“Your video will download in 17 hours 3 minutes,” iTunes notifies us two nights ago.  What!  The download time increased.  Fortunately we did not get the popcorn out until we checked.  We’ll wait.  After all, we have all the time in the world without a departure date from Maui.

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I could not read my book last Sunday on that beach.  I just sat. That’s the best I could do. That same evening, I could not stay awake to enjoy the sunset with Tom.  I remember him telling me he’d like to go.  Fortunately, the next day Tom told me it was only a 6 out of 10 on the Maui sunset beauty scale.  We’re getting particular, I tell myself.   We did the same in Utah.  Living nine miles from world-famous powder snow ski resorts, we would choose "perfect days" to ski.

It has been one week now and we’re tuned into Maui.  My greatest anxiety is leaving my family and friends, and dog Chester.  It is only Tom and I here, for now.  We have friends on Maui but they cannot replace our other friends.  I call my grandkids as much as I can.  I am getting my family tuned into Skype. 

My politically active friends think I will do something political out here.  I’m thinking a geothermal energy plant or something as a project.  I’ll contact Larry Ellison, the billionaire new owner of the island of Lanai, to get started.  I’ll wait a few days to have my people contact his people. 

--

“45 minutes until your download is complete.”  Oh, progress last night.  “Let’s watch an episode of The Daily Show and then Star Trek should be ready to view,” Tom says.  “Great.”  We watch Jon Stewart and switch back to iTunes for the movie. 

“Your movie will download in 6 hours 3 minutes,” it says.  We just stare at the screen.  Reacting is futile.  It’s okay. We had refused to get the popcorn out anyway.  “Maybe we could try to leave the TV power on through the night, not just the AppleTV,” Tom says.  We do.

It simply does not matter when we watch Star Trek, I think.  For starters, we're on Maui, and secondly, time is not of the essence anymore.  We’ve got to remember this after a summer of craziness.

--

This morning I walk into the living room and press “menu” on the AppleTV.

“You have 45 minutes until your movie downloads,” it says.  I start laughing.  “Tom, Tom, look we have 45 more minutes!”  I keep laughing and click the “power off” button on the remote.  We walk to Stella Blues Café to split a Sunday morning omelet.  Life is good.

The Grieving Coyote Countdown

I listened to a coyote die Friday night; the first and I hope last time I ever experience this sadness.  So unusual.  But then, my life is nothing but unusual lately.  I move robotic-like, exhaustively sorting through possessions, crossing one thing at a time off the thousand-item to-do list, deciding what stays and goes in our move to Hawaii.  

No roll of packing tape in this world can be as demonic as the one that twisted, stuck, rolled too much, submitted too little, and scraped my left thumb repeatedly this past week.  No demonic roll of tape has heard as many foul words as mine lately.  But it is okay. If someone hears any one of my creatively conjoined strings of profane nouns and verbs, so be it.  I can only look up, stare, then go back to work.  I am so tired I cannot even react to myself.

Earlier Friday, we packed our bed first in the shipment container heading to Maui. The moment was so definitive, so final; and me, so desperate to load possessions most needed and cherished into one 20-foot vessel. We loaded around Tom’s motorcycle centerpiece, which could be another blog post.  

It’s hard to sort and shrink my material life, and yet I think we all should do this more often.  How many moments have I opened boxes to read my mother’s poems?  How many pictures had I forgotten about until now? How many times have I unlatched my childhood jewelry box to find my watch, leather hair band, and handwritten letters from friends I now only communicate with on Facebook? 

“I should document this stuff, detail it, digitize it, give it dates and names,” I say to myself as I put photos in the “to-go-with-us” box, saving my grandiose archiving idea for yet a later date.

So Friday night, as I tried to sleep in the alternate basement bedroom for the first time in seven years, the coyote howled and grieved outside… somewhere close.  He seemed caught in a trap, as near as I could tell set by the water management district, past the creek bed and over the barbed wire fence behind our home. 

The canine wailed for two hours.  His calls were unique, bellowing louder and deeper from the gut of wild.  At first, neighborhood dogs chimed in, instinctually reacting, knowing a fellow needs a response, telling their comrade they desire him to be okay. Then they gave up.  I wondered: is this coyote traveling in a pack? Could they even help?  Or is he a loner finally reaching out to anything, anyone in his desperation?  

Two hours, 120 minutes, 7,200 seconds of thinking about his containment and he became quiet.

My time as a Utah resident is now measured.  I countdown in minutes the number of boxes placed in our shipping container.  I countdown in seconds my sweeps of the storage room floor, which had previously stockpiled dusty memorabilia.  I will never sweep this floor again.  I think about so many people who moved in this Great Recession against their will.  They probably did not sweep.

Four months, 122 days, 2,928 hours since we had set our countdown.  In this time, we cleaned and staged our Utah home to sell. We sold it.  We traveled to a memorial in Michigan, to San Diego too. I moved my son Daniel to Vancouver, Canada; dropped him off at college, as I had to say goodbye.  Tom renovated a rental home in Salt Lake to sell.  We spent two two-week periods on Maui during our countdown to start renovating our eventual home.  We still have much to finish. 

Our countdown in Utah approaches its quiet in three days. We say goodbye to friends and family.  I cannot cry anymore… I am now that robot.

I know this is our grand adventure.  This time, it’s a one-way ticket over the Pacific.  When I set foot on Maui and drive across the sugarcane fields swaying with the wind, it will be good.  I will be ready to live there.  The time before is just, simply, hard.

I must have watched the Hawaiian movie “The Descendants” ten times this summer.  I needed to.  I did not watch it for the plot.  I watched it for validation.  I watched George Clooney stop in his urgency to remove or slip on shoes while going in or out of hales (homes).  I watched their canoe floating in familiar aqua water as the family spread the mother’s ashes.  I listened to the music of John Cruz and other Hawaiian artists.  I heard the gecko call in the background during two scene shots.  This is the Hawaii I said I wanted to experience.  So I watch the movie repeatedly to remind myself of why.  I cannot discount the wonder and beauty of Utah.  Maybe the beehive state offers a little more wonder than beauty, but one place cannot replace the other.

The coyote I so wanted to help went quiet Friday night.  Those who know me, know, whether here or there, Utah or Hawaii or Katmandu, I will never be quiet.  I could just use some temporary peace about now.