Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.
Onomea Bay. Papaikou, HI. Saturday. July 4, 2015
Hilo was first visited by New England Christian missionaries in 1820. The landfall quickly developed into a busy port-of-call for Yankee Whalers, and the point of embarkation for shipments of molasses and Macadamia nuts. After Columbus planted sugarcane carried from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola, the sugar industry grew into one of the largest and most profitable on the planet. The sweetener that built vast fortunes also fueled a booming secondary industry–chattel bondage. When indigenous laborers succumbed to the arduous toil, planters had the bright idea to import slaves from where the crop was first sourced: Africa.
Hilo from the Bay. James Gay Hawkins. 1852.Honolulu Academy of Arts. (Reproduced under Fair Use, etc.) During our visit to the Big Island we only once saw the peaks free of clouds. From this prospect, Mauna Loa (13,678′) is on the left, Mauna Kea (13,803′) on the right.
Seven miles north of Hilo along the Hamakua Coast on the Big Island of Hawai’I is Onomea Bay, a small cove sheltered on the north side by a rocky finger of land. Leaving the main road at Papaikou, we follow Old Mamalahoa Road past former sugar plantations. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thousands of workers emigrated from Japan to the Hawai’ian islands as agricultural laborers. Ironically, many of their overseers were Portuguese. Kayo Hatta’s 1994 film Picture Bride unfolds a touching tribute to the all women who made that journey.
Founded in 1997 by Dan and Pauline Lutkenhouse, Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens is a private nature preserve. Designed to disrupt as little of the existing vegetation as possible, improved trails descend to Onomea Bay, leading visitors on self-guided tours through a series of botanical displays interpreted by informational signage. One of the features which intrigued me was a precipitous cascade, crashing down a volcanic gorge on its way to the sea.
Onomea Falls. Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Gardens. Papaikou, HI. Saturday. July 4, 2015. 1:30 pm
Onomea Creek flows into the Pacific from the eastern slopes of Mauna Kea (elevation 13,803 feet). Measuring 33,500 feet above the sea-floor, the mountain would be the tallest on earth. Capped with snow year-round, the peak has become a flash-point for conflict between newcomers and the indigenous majority, which opposed the construction of a new thirty-meter telescope at its summit. Mauna Kea is one of a number of mountains sacred to Native Americans. Others include Bear’s House/Devil’s Tower, Wyoming; Bear Butte, South Dakota; San Francisco Mountains, Arizona; Mount Taylor, New Mexico; Blanca Peak, Colorado; and others.
Indigenous prayer-monument opposing the desecration of the sacred mountain Mauna Kea. July 10, 2016. 6:36 pm. (Detail below)
Driving between Hilo and Kona, Kathie and I noticed opposite the entrance to the Mauna Kea access road a large, altar-like cairn on a shelf of lava along the south side of the highway. Secured to it was a long staff, cut from a tree-branch draped with strips of cloth and a small national flag of the type used to decorate veterans’ graves. Flowers and other prayer-offerings lay around it.
Route 200, locally known as the Saddle-Road is named for the late senator and Congressional Medal-of-Honor winner and U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inoue. A descendant of Japanese farm-workers, Inoue joined the 442nd Combat Infantry Team in 1943. Composed entirely of Japanese-American men, fighting for the same flag that flew over the internment camps where their families were imprisoned. Fighting in Italy, “Go-For-Broke” Four-Four-Two became the most highly decorated unit in the American military during World War Two. Over the years I had the honor of knowing some of its members, including the late Philadelphia painter Ben Kamihira, whose elegant gentle demeanor revealed nothing of the horrors he and his fellow Nisei soldiers had witnessed.
Mauna Kea from the south shoulder of Route 200. Daniel K. Inoue Highway. Island of Hawai’i
From the Native-protest-prayer-monument, we drove up the access road toward the summit, only to be met with a barricade and warnings not to proceed. Vast grasslands blanket ancient lava-fields. Resembling at once the North American Great Plains and parts of Iceland, (which like Hawai’I is one of the most actively volcanic places on earth), the windswept saddle-lands between Mauna Kea in the north and Mauna Loa are both gorgeous and desolate. Like popcorn Zeppelins, herds of blinding-white cumulus clouds race across a lapis sky. Darkened by their shadow, the volcano’s looming bulk stands patient, majestic. If gods there be, here will you find them, keeping company with the shades of heroes.
Mauna Loa from SSW 190 degrees from 19.7482 x 155.5260. Wednesday July 8, 2015.
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com