I'm at the tail end of my week in Hawaii. First trip anywhere this far West OR South, so a pretty big deal. Tropical Island vacations have never called to me the way they have my husband. The ocean is lovely, but I never pine for it. Swimming, I can take or leave. Hot, sticky air mostly disagrees with me. It's the oddness of leaving so much of my normative world behind that is the seduction here, to be honest. The suspension of disbelief, really. For instance, down the island apiece is the old sacred ground known as Place of Refuge, where for centuries citizens would brave shark-infested waters for possible redemption from the kapu they committed that would otherwise sentence them to death.
And.
Pele, the passionate and capricious Goddess of Fire, shaped the island with her bouts of jealousy by spewing molten lava from Kilauea when betrayed.
More.
King Kamehaha upended the Naha Rock in Hilo (all 7,000 pounds of it)to prove he was worthy Hawaii's greatest king.
But nothing compares to the stories that live in nature here on this amazing young island, and never in my life have I been closer to the natural world than these past six days. Snorkeling with a pod of dolphins, swimming alongside a sea turtle, watching the slow, steady heartbeat of a resting monk seal, following a couple of Moorish Idols as they wave their sickle crest extensions in the surf and kiss the spongey tunicates off the reef rock--this is the raw material for weaving stories.
I hope I can remember that when I'm back on the mainland.
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