Untitled Document

25 February 2001

Ka'Ena Point

We started the day in the concrete of Waikiki. It was sunny, as usual. A day for a road trip. Our rental car was trapped in the garage by the Dr. King Parade down Kalakaua Boulevard, so we decided to get with the spirit and watch the festivities. There were marching bands and officials, not the Governor, but the Mayor. Army and Air Force high school ROTC, the Radford HS Rams.

The Boy Scouts were there, and notable local civil-rights personalities. Then along came a delegation from the Trinity Baptist Church, a largely African-American congregation, with a banner out front. It had an interesting message. It said: "We Do Not Support Gay Liberation." Then came ten gay organizations, everything from Gay Friends of the Environment to the Men's Chorus to P-FLAG.

I wondered if there was some tension in the march, and at the juxtaposition of Trinity and the Gay, Lesbian and Trans-gendered Veterans. It seems like there might be a contrary view of exactly what constitutes "I have a dream."

Finally the last group straggled proudly past. Hawaii loves a parade and everyone likes to be in it. We needed a little tranquility after twenty-four hours amid the hotel towers. There are four ways to get to tranquility- one of them brand new.

From town, you can take the Pali or Like-Like passes over the Ko'olaus. The grade uphill is significant but gradual. Near the top you enter into a tropical rainforest with great Banyan trees and snarling vines everywhere. The Pali tunnel then drops you out on the other side onto the switch-backs that take you down the near-vertical drop to Kailua. I once ran from Honolulu to Kaneole in a bizarre race called the Pali-thon.

I will never forget the majesty of the view from the summit, lungs burning and legs rubbery. That is one way to get there, but it doesn't matter which way you get to tranquility. It is the same exiting the Wilson tunnel on the Like-Like above Kanheohe Bay.

I can't speak to the new H-3 experience, since they opened it after we left the island in 1986. This is the H3 extension punching another section of the Interstate (intra-state?) right through the mountains from the Halawa valley, by the Prison.

They were building it then and ran into ancient Hawaiian artifacts and activists all at the same time. It's impressive, though, looking up at the four lane emerging from giant tunnels. Must have cost the Federal government a pretty penny in jobs and material, since the ostensible purpose for the road was to connect the Marines at Kaneohe Bay with the Navy at Pearl Harbor.

Everything runs slower on the North side of the mountains. The golfers lug coolers with them on the Mid-Pacific Country Club, and the score isn't as important as the quality of life on the course. Looking up, the north face of the Ko'olaus is spectacular.

The soft volcanic rock is eroded in steep knife-edged ridges clad in brilliant green. As the sun declines behind them it produces deep, nearly black, vertical shadows against the green. There is nothing better than having a cabin at Bellows Beach, sitting under a palm tree with a frosty beverage and watching the shadows march across the face of the mountain.

Even more relaxed than the North Shore is the Windward Coast to the north and west. Our Mainland notions of directions didn't make much sense to the Hawaiians. They just noted whether you were headed for the mountain (Mauka) or toward the ocean (Makai). We were determined to go as far from the asphalt of Waikiki as it was possible to go. So we went mauka from Honolulu until we hit H-2 and drove up the big grade toward Wahiawa and the pineapple fields.

H-2 peters out after Miliani Town, just past Wheeler Air Force Base. Wheeler got shot up pretty badly by the Japanese, and in commemoration they have a P-40 Warhawk Fighter out front with a big shark mouth painted on it. They even got a couple of them launched in response to the raids on December 7th, but it was far too little and far too late to make a difference.

Schofield Barracks, home of the Army's 25th Division and literature's "From Here to Eternity" are there, pretty much unchanged. Schofield is the gateway to Wahaiwa and then to the vast Dole pineapple enterprise. My older son was born here, at Wahiawa General, and the memories came rolling in, dense.

We're on the Kamahameha Highway now, a two lane, and we pass the Dole Welcome Center. Once upon a time it was a plain building in the endless sea of red dirt where you could get free samples of pineapple cubs and juice. Now it is a tourist destination all by itself. You can smash a penny into a thin long oblong for fifty cents, buy tee-shirts, or buy an oyster from a tank that just might have a real pearl in it.

Val, our escort officer, had lived up toward Ka'Ena point, past Haleiwa and Mokuleia, and she wanted to show us. We come down the long slope and see that they have eliminated the vast sugarcane fields that ran up from the ocean.

Sugar has gone bust, and the last refinery has closed here, throwing hundreds of Windward coast residents out of their jobs. Sugar built this island and brought it into the United States and now it is gone. They hope to replace the cane with coffee production, but the jobs will never come back.

We pass through Waialua and drive past Val's old residences off Waialua Beach Road, famous for its thirteen speed-bumps. She didn't mind the drive home there from Pearl Harbor, where she worked at the Pacific Fleet Headquarters. She said that the moment she crested the pineapple fields she felt something tangible leave from her heart, and a sort of serenity come over her.

By Washington standards, the commute takes about an hour and is manageable. But on this island, where a car trip of thirty miles is a major expedition, this was a journey home from work that had a spiritual quality.

On our right is the polo field where we used to come on weekends and drink champagne and watch the horses thunder around on the turf next to the beach. Between chukkars we would assist by walking out onto the field and tamping down the large divots the hooves dug up with our feet.

The last time we watched a match a player died. He went down, and his horse rolled over him. I gained an appreciation for the fact that this was both an expensive and unforgiving sport.

Dillingham Field is on the left, right under the mountain. It, too, was a fighter base in the war, but now is home to gliders and para-jump aircraft. And just beyond we find ourselves at the end of the road. Literally. The hard top runs out just at the northeastern tip of the Waianai Mountain range.

There are the remains of a four wheel drive trail that runs around the point, and you can walk part of it if you wish. But the State has closed it and declared it an environmentally sensitive zone. It used to be fun to try with someone else's rental car, and our senior Staffer had done it once on a motorcycle. But once you get around the corner you are on the Waianai Coast, north of Makaha, and the folks there are pretty hard core and have little need for outsiders.

Ka'Ena Point has enormous significance to the Hawaiians. It's what they called a wahi pana, a celebrated and legendary place. Part of the legend is that here the spirits of the dead leap from earth- leina a ka'uhane.

Here also Maui the Fisherman of mythology tried to hook the island of Kauaii and drag it closer to O'ahu.

The wind is brisk as it cuts the end of the Waianai Range. It carries power and some sand when it whips up. And when the wind and the currents cooperate, it produces some of the biggest surf in the world.

Waves so enormous they could have been in The Perfect Storm. And young men race out here to experience it, the power and the might of the Pacific right here in this place. There is something religious about the interaction of a man and a hundred foot wave, something that reveals something about the soul.

The ocean has power beyond imagination, and the man has skill, and audacity, and the certain knowledge that the rocks of Ka'Ena Point are there for him. The Hawaiians were right about the spirituality of this place at the end of the road.

The feeling is in the bones as we gaze back up the Windward Coast and all the way to the North Shore. You could not be further from Waikiki than if you had gone to the moon.