Hawaii Blue, Part Three: A Sense Of Place

One of the best qualities about Hawaii is that it is so tangibly there.

This is a deceptively difficult task. A strip mall, for instance, is not really anywhere in particular, so you can't say you are somewhere. The same is true of a suburb, Danville or San Ramon, for instance. Lots of nice houses, well-kept lawns, expensive cement fountains and colorful flower beds, but no sense of place.

When you get over the sense that you are watching a travelogue or computer screen saver, you never feel that you aren't somewhere interesting in Hawaii, at least not where we were for the majority of trip. The last two nights were spent at the Waikoloa Beach Marriott, which was a typical resort and therefore subject to some insularity, but otherwise, Hawaii was definitely there, whether we were looking at
tropical greenery and flowers, such as





or the 420 foot drop of Akaka Falls, pictured above.

When you near the end of the concrete walkway at Akaka Falls State Park, you experience the falls as a vibration, a roar that is more than sound, a buzz that runs up and down your spine. It is this sort of sensation that marks so many experiences in Hawaii; for instance, when you look over the caldera at the top of Kilauea, you feel alone, alienated in a literal sense, because the stark and blasted ground below you hints at something totally different from anything you've experienced before.





There is something in the Hawaiian air that draws a certain temperament, or maybe it creates that temperament once you get there. Either way, that temperament is apparently also quite common in the Bay Area. In the small town just neighboring Akaka Falls State Park, we fell into conversation with a graying, pony-tailed hippie who moved there from Berkeley: apparently, his current neighbor used to run a grocery store in Berkeley, but the two never met until moving to the Big Island. Their only prior connection, according to the hippie, was that the store owner used to bust the hippie's friends for shoplifting, which would have made for a good ice-breaker, I suppose, when they were getting to know each other.

Not that there aren't some irritating elements of isolation. On our first Sunday in Hawaii, we went into a Borders in Kona looking for the New York Times. The clerk seemed puzzled by my request, as if she doubted such a thing existed. "The New . . . York . . . Times?" she repeated. "Yes, the newspaper. Do you have it?" "No."

And they call themselves a chain bookstore.

We did find the paper for $8 at a Safeway, having had the good fortune to meet at the local farmers' market that morning a woman who transplanted to Hawaii from New York after being bought out from her job as a union negotiator, apparently because she was too effective, or something. Of course she knew exactly where to find a Sunday New York Times, and was able to direct us in her distinctive New York accent.

Sometimes, the sense of the place you are in at the moment isn't enough, and you need a sense of the place from which you have come.

For me, though, the sense of Hawaii was a magical thing, especially when we were sitting in wicker chairs at Don The Beachcomber's Tiki Bar, drinking Mai Tais and watching the sun sink into the broad, flat expanse of the Hawaiian ocean waters. I was definitely there.