One hour into the trip, the 2014 Toyota Sienna that Josh and I parked half a mile from Costco’s Kailua-Kona warehouse refused to start. Two hours into the trip—after flooding the engine, communing with Chat, and last gasp slamming down both brake and gas—she roared to life. So we took a victory lap, trotting the triumph around the lot until Scott gained on our course and waved us into his lot, to its back, to Ernesto, whose son taught me how to pop the hood and gently explained that radiators do not float in antifreeze, and that his father’s amusement meant we needed a new car. Three hours into the trip, we rolled stylishly out of Scott’s lot in an unregistered 2003 Cadillac CTS, and three hours and three minutes into the trip, I released her parking brake.
She was a beater, he said. We didn’t like his cynicism and set out on the 9,000 foot ascent of Mauna Kea. Clouds and showers had kicked us out of the bay beside the apartment, and the visitor center’s livestream promised we could make it above them for a clear night without moonlight. We picked up food at Da Broke Mouth Grindz, packed into the CTS with heaping plates of well seasoned meat and rice, and started the navigation. Maps suggested an hour and a half ride, but Maps wasn’t familiar with our game. We discovered early that going a decimal over 40 caused the CTS to shake uncontrollably, so we cruised at 39, taunting law enforcement though the 40-minimums and splitting the cloud cover with the virulence of Icarus were he depressed.
We arrived at 9:00pm and for the last part of the drive batted off hard the urges to look past the specks hanging on the horizon and splattering our windshield like bugs, and committed still to a true first sight, stole up an outcropping with our eyes trained on the glow my phone could get to the ground. It was windy. The gusts belayed us about despite their 30% less effective oxygen content and no less effectively struck into me fear. Forgive me, please, conceptually: a lion’s share up the tallest mountain on Earth, stranded by some 2,400 miles of gruesome water and air and panting on pitch black, nerves kicked out my knees. I am lucky Josh kicked them on. We made the peak and burrowed behind some rocks before looking up.
What to do with a night sky? This was not a matter of white dotting black but bright dotting light, flowers—Rigel, Sirius, them all—topping the hazy undergrowth like drips on brush sweeps: North South East and West spinning did not discriminate, the patterns stretched to every horizon even though we had to because in the sea you don't soften your gaze and float on a blur, you pick on the darting fish and chase the schools and dive deep into the crevices where the anemones bloom—I jumped at Orion at the shooting stars flitting beneath his belt teeming across my hands while Josh clawed long by me up a boulder yelling down the hunter’s great dog, the canine’s teeth bared and snarling at our intrusion then our retreat behind the Ursas, our recollection of bearings in Jupiter’s eye on our long arc West borne by the current of the galaxy toward the trail of Vega falling over the edge of the world for Lyra all left in our minds the choice.
I couldn’t sleep that night. As we walked down the hill not more than once did we shoot our heads back in ridiculous ambush, too weak to appreciate the nature of our revolution and too in awe that looking up didn’t somehow turn off the sky. Admittedly we hadn’t really begun the return. After it in bed my breath remained short and hostile; no rhythm of exhale could change the fact that at sea level you must trust she is still above you, that it has not dissipated—those few glimmers to survive the distance are not all there is left, and that parting with vibrance until tomorrow or tomorrow will not preclude you from seeing it again.
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Around 4:00am I moved to the balcony and held 100 Years of Solitude to my chest until dawn made it light enough to read. The mornings in Kailua-Kona are tame. The island’s volcanic spine protects the west side from sunrise and channels its harshest lights into the clouds. After watering Hilo, the northeast trade winds push what is left over the mountains to be burnt off by noon, but not before blazing a brilliant pink and gold in a dying announcement of Kona’s day. Josh rose to it, and we regrouped with my laptop.
In deference to the CTS’s age, we abridged the expedition planned for the Sienna and cut Volcanoes National Park from a southern itinerary now solely focused on Papakōlea Beach. For fuel we stopped at Kaya’s Coffee in Captain Cook, where Josh put away a salted caramel brownie and I three bananas. We were confident we could make the hour and a half drive in two, and to pass the time, we had each other. More importantly, we had Sasha K. of The Beat. Her station crackled into range the night before and turned an instant classic by playing KPop Demon Hunters banger “Golden” three times in a row. The station knew what we wanted (all the hits), when we wanted them (now), and at that The Beat (93.9 FM “All the Hits, Now”) excelled, running only three ads an hour (the same three) around Abbey Road-esque mixes of Taylor Swift, Lola Young, and Sia.
We left the highway to the opening chords of “The Fate of Ophelia” and bore south down a winding yellow line to South Point, the southern most of both Hawaii and the United States. Though the beach is not accessible by road, families rent out the beds of their pickup trucks at a makeshift lot three miles west, and every forty minutes or so, one of the beasts will pitch along a groove in the landscape, grinding in deeper a wide braid of routes that have come to scar the scrubland orange, exposing more basaltic iron for pulverization and oxidization by the seemingly endless southern gale. We knew it well as we hiked the coast, splitting shore rock and pastures in one long lean against the blast that was quite proficient at finding the right silts for our eyes, which otherwise made out barren gorgeous.
At the crest of the bay, olivine joined the mix for a sharper lashing. Josh dove under it and sprinted down the 60% grade of tinted sand for a smooth dive into the surf. More calculated than me on land and sea, I climbed down the western edge to maximum gristle and a slick bending in the first major breaks. It was awesome: the swim was what we needed: teal on olive washed the dirt off our faces and in pristine form refracted long white rays that stretched unbroken from its surface to the ground.
We hung in the swells refracted too for a while until the delight of refresh turned into the delight of play and a joyful cadence of crest rides into low returns into crest rides dissolved into a calmer rhythm, and I landed on point break—wanting a tough smash on the way out, but at that peak hit sand, twisted into a wall of solid foam and lost my head over my arms in a barrel tide—body, my body kept the idea of jamming a foot in the coarse and wavering up a lean on the horizon, there to be smacked again by a cap that barely left my chest out of the marine now running shining pink. Sun dries by exhausting the water and bleaching less than sand I, collapsing in the next strike watched sea and shore blend, tackled into ebb onto ebb until laying back and looking straight at the sun making salt in my ears, watched the steady heat beat better, better, better in the crashing extremes bearing not from cliffs depth or earth really, really, really not choosing place but who. Lifting my hair run rigid black eying that frame of fire squinting on I saw.
Back, land stretched surreal. Windless and in the northern fence, we pushed the boat launch until even in her there were no words, none as the horsediggers diagonaled our plod and none as Josh pushed the CTS, finding that quiet settled over her with us after 60. Home, Josh says I ate tuna and milk, I he a quarter caesar salad, and surprise we sans caloric survival instinct had sans caloric survival instinct, feeding on the Last Crusade, crushing weakened in the cycles of dreams.
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Exhausted? I pray less than this prose but more than we who rewound by hate for the three pounds of milk and almonds in our fridge drove to Costco for breakfast. An executive membership apparently gets you hot dogs 30 minutes before everyone else. We ate those with two cold brew mocha freezes while reviewing the medley that was supposed to start high and end low. The high was the Makāula ʻŌʻoma Trail system that lay directly above Kona and run rife through a cloud forest known for coffee plantations. Neverminding the artisan drips available at every turn along the way, we showed up to the trailhead with half our freezes to go because their sweetness made us chase every sip with water. We didn’t blame the freezes for this. Like both the CTS and The Beat, (the former now emitting a plume of white smoke every time we parked her), they made no pretense of being anything but themselves.
The trails showed far more discretion. Their biggest boon of bird song never betrayed a source. Indeed, despite thicketing every path with shrill and colorful clattering, we made out with as many wings as quiet moments as harmonies. The hike was very nice, the ecosystem we were told but did not verify Jurassic, and our shoes muddy as we later descended to the middle part of Honokohau Beach, known regionally as Turtle Beach for its high volume of turtles. There, Josh and I saw many turtles—(wouldn’t you know it: they are one of Josh’s favorite animals)—and also one of the animals that I know: a tiger shark, swimming alongside the jetty that split us from the harbor. I was happy to see the tiger shark there because it meant it was not currently in Kealakekua Bay.
A short time later we descended 1,400 feet into Kealakekua Bay. A succession of grass, rock, rubble, and dirt brought us to Captain Cook's Monument, erected a year after his death in 1874, and some stone to one of the healthiest reefs in the state. Kealakekua is protected on land by its approach and in sea by spinner dolphins. Its clarity is ensured through overcast skies by springs that feed it freshwater. We suited up, dove in, and stared down for a long time: banking south where the reef gradually slides into a large blue crater. I’d never really done anything like this—snorkeled, yes, but not through a metropolis, or while undulating like a fish myself, involved with so many numbers or types: clear to long to rainbow. By the last I mean parrotfish. I followed one around for a while watching him preen the reef and bite off coral, turning its whole body always just to angle its mouth. Watching I felt my presence and my height—it should have been a clue that we can only hear a crackle underwater—air bubbles apparently—if we were really attuned I know our ears would ring with the cries and squaws of the trees. What else to be rising from this urban alien life.
Two photographers on the trip but it seems this one is for us. Even had our cameras worked underwater, I would have taken more photos of us. You rarely see a body so suspended. Josh, ahead of me, was cast in the blue by all number of movements, together in inertia making out slow and powerful strokes. Freedom: up and down as pleased... far clunkier on land, weighed down by wet packs that we bore faster than my heart desired, dominated by relentless grade, loose rocks, and towels great at conducting heat. Fighting on with quick steps, none concerned with gravity, goats clambered out to watch us, and a black one studied our last stop. Behind him the sky was setting dark and white through vales of showers. We pushed, switching paces then leads then breaths then turns, save at the final heights, where I finally recognized it better to give all the last to Josh.
We made it to the CTS dripping wet, carried the last portion by Tahitian limeade, and aggressive on the downhill tried to catch the last of the sun now holding court over a kingdown of orange. We would have Black Rock Pizza later before a flight, riding winds on the steep downhill, multiplying The Beat blaring already our butchered chorus and in rapture deciding the fate of, which? We did not know. We had only tried to keep it one hundred, on the land, the sea, the sky.