It's Aloha, Bitch: An Epic Half-Month on Kaua'i
You know, I have this feeling I won’t meet anybody.
Erika and Zane looked at me over their beers. It was mid-January. Frost crusted the rooftops in Ashland, Oregon, and snow lay deep on the mountains. I was about to go to Kaua’i by myself on a mission that was part investigation, part vacation.
I’m gonna get some thinking done and just, you know, be alone, I said.
Later they told me they’d had a big laugh about this behind my back.
As if you could go anywhere and not make friends, Zane said.
But for a minute, the prediction seemed true. I arrived alone. Walking off the plane, the air was warm and thick. I waited a sweaty hour for the bus alone, talked the driver into allowing my giant backpack, watched the folding and unfolding green landscape through the windows alone, and arrived at the hostel, one of two in the town of Kapa’a (the only two, incidentally, on the whole island) alone.
It was midafternoon. In the front yard, hammocks twisted between palm trees. A white cat slept on a lawn chair. The book exchange shelf supported several Sue Graftons, a slim volume of Hawaiian poetry, and a German edition of Murakami’s A Wild Sheep’s Chase.
Aloha! I’m Benji, said a staffer with blonde dreadlocks.
Uh, loha, I said uncertainly. Kelly.
Welcome!
Thanks! I’m excited to be here, I lied.
I was excited to be on Kauai, I thought, but here?
Two bros with muscle tees and a GoPro were headed to the beach in a shiny Jeep. Young women slouched against the kitchen counters in bikinis and cut-offs, all of them vine-thin, blonde, skin like the bark of a Japanese maple. Otherwise, there were a couple of retirees eating a rotisserie chicken from Safeway.
Alright, I thought. Friendless in Hawaii it is!
Travel is so vulnerable. That’s one of its great beauties: in being vulnerable, we open ourselves to wonder. But the first day of every trip I take alone, I have a meltdown. It’s always the same meltdown, no matter the location. It goes:
Why did I come here? This was a stupid plan. I don’t fit in and I’m going to have an awful time. Why spend all this money for a bad time? This was a terrible idea.
In such crises, luckily, I take comfort in the fact that this has happened on trips to Peru, Guatemala, and even Zion National Park, in the U.S—all trips where I ultimately had the time of my life. So I knew what to tell myself. I said, You always feel this way, and it never lasts. Give yourself 24 hours.
Okay, I thought. You’ve got a deal.
Exchanging ripped jeans and boots for shorts and sandals, I went out for a walk. I bought some fruit from a roadside cart, wriggled my toes in the yellow sand of Kapa’a’s public beach, where the homeless lay under palm trees on impossibly soft grass, and got a cheeseburger from Bubba’s. And fries. And, let’s be honest, a chocolate shake.
By now it was dark. The air was velvet-thick with humidity. A breeze moved my hair. A child was feeding a stray cat a french fry. I sat at the counter overlooking the main street feeling radiant with loneliness.
Scouring the guidebook, which I’d wholly ignored until I was on the plane, I took a few steps toward a plan, like booking primitive sites for a backpacking trip into Waimea Canyon.
Only after leaving Bubba’s was I struck by the irony of the name.
My uncle, Bubba, lived and died on Kauai in 1987. Our family never totally understood what happened—why he was there, what he was doing there, or how he came to die. Well, we knew physically how: a car accident. His friend Corinne was driving (drunk). They missed a curve, hit a stone wall. Neither was wearing a seat belt. Corinne went into a coma but recovered. My uncle was killed instantly.
There were some weird things about the accident and its aftermath. The police, for example, did a blood alcohol test on my uncle but not on his friend. That “friend,” Corinne, was going under an alias at the time. She was wanted on charges related to a similar accident in Texas, in which she had lived but her passenger was killed.
Another woman, Leonie Dabancourt, exchanged several letters back and forth with my grandfather after Bubba died. She said that Bugis, as he called himself then, had been camping out at Kalalau Valley. He was paranoid about his stuff being stolen. After the accident, Leonie and Corinne hiked out and recovered his tent and sleeping bag, which were “all messed up” from weather or vandals. They said he’d buried his backpack, but they didn’t know where. They never found it. All that was on his person when he died was his passport.
He buried his backpack? I said on a call to my mom before leaving.
Yeah, my mom said. Isn’t that weird?
Too much about it was weird. But one promising lead rose to the surface, in our Google sleuthing: Leonie still lived on the island.
Maybe I could talk to her. I had a phone number and a possible address and a lump in my throat about calling a stranger and saying I think you knew my dead uncle..?
Yeah, I could do that tomorrow.
Back at the hostel, the lights were on in the cinderblock-walled two-bunk bedroom. A German girl who’d gone to college in San Diego, hence a Bavarian-meets-valley-girl persona (pedicure, Calvin Klein sexy sweats), was on the top bunk across from mine. An Indian guy was on the bottom one. Indian, as it turned out, but raised in Dubai, now resident of Portugal. He was about my height, handsome and trim, with a warm sudden smile, crisp clothes, and an Apple watch.
I’m Snider, he said.
Oh, I said, surprised by his name. I’m Kelly.
What are you up to tomorrow? He asked, pointing at my guidebook.
I think I’m gonna hike this little mountain thing, Sleeping Giant?
Oh I did zat one, Camilla said. It vas pretty cool.
She managed to say that something was cool without seeming the least bit impressed.
It’s really too bad the Kalalau Trail is closed, Snider said. I was quite excited for that hike. Oh well. I guess I will be doing another waterfall instead.
I know, I’m bummed too, I said. I’ve wanted to do Kalalau for years.
The trail to the valley where my uncle had lived, Kalalau, followed the steep cliffs of the Na Pali coast on the island’s North Shore. It was legendary among backpackers, and competition for permits was steep. But the previous year’s hurricane had closed the trail indefinitely.
Are you a big hiker?
Huge, I said, laughing. I mean yeah, I love it. What about you?
Snider was, as it turned out, more my speed. He’d done the W Trek in Torres del Paine, one of my dream routes in Patagonia. Soon we were happily comparing notes on past hikes, dream trips, and gear choices.
Day one, friend one.
The next day, I went on a solo mission to hike a mountain—and to navigate Kauai without a rental car (which I now know I wouldn’t recommend). Here’s how it went: I tried hitchhiking! Here’s how else it went: I got blisters!
I walked to the town’s Neighborhood Center for beach camping permits from the county ($3 a night! amazing!). There I eavesdropped on a senior citizens’ ukelele lesson - and scored an invite to come the next week.
I might, I said. Thanks so much!
Then I walked to the trailhead, a cool three miles...except that the highway had no shoulder. Walking close to the road’s edge, I was slapped by bushes, scratched by tree limbs and almost sideswiped by traffic.
You need a ride? a woman in her 60’s called through the window of a beat-up SUV.
Adjudging her “probs not a serial killer,” I hopped in. She was a cool old hippie from Germany who said she visited the island in the 70’s and never left.
You’ve come to the right place, she said. Kaua’i is the best island.
Throughout my trip, I’d find that everyone on Kaua’i says this, native Hawaiians and ex-pats alike. Do people on Oahu and Maui float the same boast, or is this a Kaua’i-specific brag? Kaua’i does seem to have a special mystique as most senior of the main Hawaiian islands, over 5 million years old. The islands were among the last places to be discovered and occupied by human beings on the planet, and it makes sense—the nearest continent is 2,400 miles away. Kaua’i is rumored to be, and feels, like the least touristy, the greenest, the most bucolic and peaceful and secretly mysterious island.
Thank you! I called, hopping out and hanging a right on a suburban road.
Another mile through a residential neighborhood, and I found the trailhead where all the rentals cars (dang them) were parked. A red mud trail climbed up through the jungle.
Sleeping Giant, a little isthmus of rock in the sky that from below could be interpreted as the silhouette of a giant at rest, offered a magnificent view of the valley below. It was a clear, sunny day, and Kauai was a mantle of green, lush farms rolling out to the lip of the blue Pacific. Mountain ranges cradled the valley on all sides: the Anahola range to the north, the Makalena range to the west, and a low-slung crater I couldn’t really see between me and the town of Lihue to the south.
Lihue, where my uncle had died.
The view from Sleeping Giant, or Nounou Mountain. Wailua (town) at left, Wailua River at center, and looking down the coast toward Lihue at right.
I arrived at the summit to find a few others, including a local guy who pulled out a drone.
Do you have iPhones? He asked us.
Uh, weird question. But yeah, we answered.
Cool! I’m gonna take a video, and I can air drop it to you guys.
Amazing!
Okay, so I’m not a drone fan; they disturb wildlife’s biorhythms, not to mention the human experience of wilderness, dependent upon untrammeled solitude. In general, I believe drones should be outlawed from wild spaces and public lands.
But I’ve gotta admit, this was rad as hell. The guy flew the drone in a wide loop above us. He brought it in close, then slowly backed away. We waved and flashed the shaka sign.
Then, boom: our new pal Dominic air dropped the video, and after just a few hours on Kauai, I had what looked like a professional promo clip for the island: me and some stranger-friends perched on a sliver of rock above land and sea, the bird’s eye circling, taking in every furry green mountain.
Okay, sure. Pretty epic.
I hiked down, noticing a fatal flaw in my not-so-plan: I’d brought only Chacos on the trip, imagining island hiking would be “light” and wet. I was correct only about the latter. My feet were shredded with three miles left to go. This would never do.
So I sat on the grass in front of a church and waited for a bus, and when the bus delivered me near the hostel, I went and bought a pair of hiking boots on sale. Then I downloaded the Turo app and reserved a rental car (ahem, truck) for a week starting the next day.
The next morning I sat at a coffee shop called Java Kai across from Snider. We were hatching a plan to meet up for some hiking in a few days.
Oh, Snider said as we sat studying our maps. I think my friend Paul is going to join us for coffee, is that ok?
Sure! Of course.
Paul came in. Tall, blondeish, J Crew catalogue smile, he wore running shoes and a Yellowstone ballcap. Your basic preppy bro, I thought. He was friendly, but polite to the point of reticence, so I wasn’t surprised to learn he was from New England. He and Snider had met through a ride sharing board at the other hostel.
After Java Kai, the three of us drove to Kayak Kauai to see about rental gear for Snider. We had lunch at Paco’s Tacos, where the sun poured through the open slatted windows. Paul said he was supposed to fly home that Monday.
You should really come with us instead, Snider suggested.
You really should, I said.
For some reason, Paul’s reserve made me want to convince him to, for example, jump off a waterfall or leap onto the caboose of a moving train. I sensed that there was some other, wilder person in there whom he wouldn’t yet let us see.
I wish I could, Paul said.
I mean, you could.
Yeah, just change your ticket!
I could change my ticket, it’s true. But I should really get home and figure out work.
What are you gonna remember for the rest of your life? I said. Flying home and doing work, or taking this epic backpacking trip with us on Kaua’i?
Paul laughed. That’s the kind of thing my best friend always says.
He took until Sunday to make up his mind. He was in, of course; he would come to the canyon. How could he not?
Then we were three. So long, “I think I’m just gonna be alone.”
We need a name for this crew, I messaged Snider.
I’ve got it, he wrote. East West Euro!
(Because together we represented the East Coast, the West Coast, and Europe…)
That’s a terrible name, I said.
But of course, like all terrible names for which no substitute is offered, it stuck.
*
I had a few days on my own before our hiking adventure. From Lihue, where I picked up a 2007 Honda Ridgeline pickup from a guy from the Czech Republic wearing peace sign board shorts, I put in a call to Leonie Dabancourt.
No answer. I left a halting message: I think you knew my uncle…
She called me back a few minutes later. I pulled over.
Your uncle, she said with a heavy French accent. Boogis? I do not remembair this person. I don’t zink I know him.
Oh, I said. Well, I’m pretty sure you did. I have copies of letters you sent my grandfather.
Me? Lettairs? I don’t remember writing any lettairs. I am not much a lettair writer. But zen again, understand, I am 88 years old. There is a lot I don’t remembair!
I don’t know. This Leonie was camped out at Kalalau. Could that be you?
Oh zat was definitely me. Always I was camping at Kalalau. But I love ze trail as much as ze valley. I hike in, I camp, I hike out. Always going back and forth, back and forth.
My uncle was living there, or that’s what I heard. People lived out there?
Oh yes. Back zen, all dese hippies were leeving at Kalalau. Now it’s illegal, understand, and maybe zen too. But everyone was outlaws. Me too, I was an outlaw!
I laughed. Leonie Dabancourt was amazing.
But I’m so sorry, Kahlee. I do not remember your uncle. I just do not remembair at all.
My heart sank. It’s okay, I said. It was a long shot.
But I tell you what I will do. Zere are some people I can sink of who might remember him. I don’t know if I have ze numbair…Yes, there is one guy, he was like ze mayor of Kalalau, he know everybody. Ron. I don’t know he last name. I call somebody else who maybe will know.
Thank you so much, Leonie.
Well, maybe I will find nuzzing, who knows. But I will try zis.
I thanked her again and got back on the road. The thirst for mystery quickened, I drove to the police station in Lihue and tried to request the accident report. Dead end: only next of kin could access those files. I sent the information and fax number to my mom.
Try this if you want, I said. I don’t know if the accident report will have more than Opa’s notes, but it’s worth a shot. Oh and I talked to Leonie!!
After reporting the conversation to my mom, I drove to the north shore, camped at a beach called Anini with a reef break that made for a peaceful lapping shoreline, and befriended Sarah, a woman from Indiana who was also camping alone. The next day we went to the farmer’s market in Hanalei, drank fresh coconuts through a straw, and tackled a hike called Okolehao that offered a panoramic view of the bay and had us scrambling up steep ridglines, climbing hand over hand on ropes.
Epic, we said. Super epic!
Mountains west of Hanalei, from the Okolehao Trail, one of my favorite hikes on Kaua’i.
Bidding Sarah farewell, I drove back to Kapa’a to pick up “my boys.” We meandered across the island collecting supplies and gas, taking our sweet-ass time, and only drove up the winding road into Waimea Canyon as late afternoon sun fell over the golden fields.
Whoops. By the time we parked and stood at the trailhead, it was 5:30 pm, almost dusk. We stood at the edge of a canyon lit yellow-gold by a fast-fading sun.
This should be fun, I said. Everyone got a headlamp?
Oh shit, Paul said. I don’t.
I knew I brought an extra for a reason, I said, handing him my old one.
Thanks so much.
Kelly, Snider said. Your pack is ridiculous.
I know, I groaned. I had heard about break-ins at this trailhead, so I’d packed in every single thing I brought to Kauai. Once you’ve been burned by a mid-camping robbery, as i was on the Rogue River last year, you tend to be paranoid.
How much do you think it weighs?
60 pounds at least.
Jesus.
Oh well.
We got someone to take our picture at the trailhead. The before shot, Snider said. Because we’ll be disgusting when we come back out.
And, fresh-faced and cleanish, we started off.
At the Kukui Trailhead, Waimea Canyon. Kukui is a tree with white, oily nuts the ancient Hawaiians used to make candles—hence the word “kukui” has come to signify light, hope, and renewal.
Now here’s the weird thing. Most of Kaua’i is green, like really super near-neon green. The most common adjective describing the place in guidebooks and blogs is “lush,” and it’s apt. One of the rainiest spots on earth is Wai’ale’ale’, the crater of the volcano that formed the island. But the whole island receives ample rain, especially in winter. It’s criss-crossed by streams and pummeled by waterfalls. Ferns, fruits, and flowers grow like wildfire. It’s a wet, tropical paradise.
But Waimea Canyon? Unaccountably, it looks like the Grand Canyon. It is dry. It resembles nothing so much as the American Southwest. Its red earth is dusty and barren. Layers of rock, terraces of orange and white stone and prickly brush, descend to a river canyon hemmed by cliffs where goats scramble into hiding. You could’ve shown me a picture of Waimea and a picture of the Grand Canyon side by side and I couldn’t have told the difference.
Surprised that this place existed on Kaua’i, we descended.
The trail was steep as shit. The trail design was poor (no surprise), and after a few switchbacks, it barreled downhill at a painfully steep grade. It hurt. I was carrying far too much weight—and so was Paul, who’d made a game-time decision to buy a box of wine at Walmart.
Chillable Red, he’d said, showing us the label. We’ve gotta bring it, right?
We’ve got to! I had laughed, liking him more by the hour.
He’d taken the bladder of wine out of the box and packed it in the bottom of his bag. Now I suspected he might be regretting the extra five liters of weight.
My legs are so shot they’re literally shaking, I said. It’s like I’m doing a bench press with every step.
Mine too, Paul said. I’m trying not to think about it.
By the time we got close to the bottom, it was dark. We pushed through a tunnel of tall weeds by headlamp.
I think I hear the river!
Thank god.
The silhouette of a vault toilet, then a shelter, emerged from the darkness.
We made it!
We dropped our stuff and set up camp on a nice flat pad just a stone’s throw from the river. It was hard to tell whether the base of the canyon was pretty or not. It was completely dark.
Okay, let’s get some water and tab it so it can purify overnight, I said.
The rivers on Kaua’i are contaminated with a bacteria called Leptospirosis (sounds terrifying, right? It is), so they recommend you do more than a mechanical filtration. My Steripen had died, so we were down to chlorination tablets and boiling our water.
I’ll get it, Paul said, grabbing a few Nalgenes and heading down to the river.
After getting our water and making a quick dinner, we made an attempt at drinking some of the wine (and barely made a dent), and the guys sat on boulders mid-river fiddling with their giant cameras while I stared at the stars. It was a narrow channel of sky between the cliffs, but the stars were cold and bright.
Paul was an adventure photographer for a living, and Snider was an avid hobbyist, so there were many times on the trip when they’d be messing with the camera settings for what felt like hours. Try setting the ISO to…
I rolled my eyes—until I saw the pictures. Then I was grateful.
They tucked into their two-man tent, I climbed into mine.
Goodnight y’all.
Sleep well! Boa noite!
And, as one does after a long steep hike, we fell into the deep careless sleep of children.
A rainstorm briefly thrashed the canyon in the early hours, but the next morning dawned clear and fresh. The island’s ever-present roosters crowed in the distance. We decided to leave camp where it was, in a site called Wiliwili, and hike with daypacks upstream to the end of the canyon, to a place called Lonomea, where there was rumored to be a waterfall and swimming hole.
I read about this hike on All Trails, Snider said. People say wery bad things about it.
Like what?
It’s super overgrown, with many thorns. Look, these people gave it one star!
Some people just don’t like being outside, Paul said.
Yeah, some people are wussy, I said. I wanna see the waterfall. It’s worth a try, right?
Yeah! Gotta think positive, Paul said.
Well, no amount of positive thinking could have made that hike a cakewalk. The internet reviewers hadn’t lied, though what they called thorns were in fact burrs: for over two hours we hiked through car-wash brush that was chock-full of burrs, sharp little burrs that clung to our clothes and rolled themselves up in our socks and worked their way into our waistbands, stabbing our underbellies. Burrs snagged our hair, tore our t-shirts. Within half a mile of the start of burrmaggedon, we were all zipped into rain gear to protect ourselves.
It was hot out. And there wasn’t much shade. Sweat built up inside my rain shell and crawled down my spine.
Yeah, not the funnest hike. But every so often, when we took a break, Paul would unzip the pouch of his windbreaker and hand us a few peanut M&M’s, and Snider broke out the sour gummy bears. The canyon views were breathtaking, sheer cliffs clawing a steel blue sky. And at the end, there was not one but two waterfalls, with a calm pool between them and flat rocks for sunning ourselves.
Worth it! I said. Definitely more than one star.
I don’t know, Snider said.
Snider’s romantic interest had broken things off by phone two days earlier, so the glass was understandably not at its fullest. Nevertheless I caught him taking photos of the lagoon with what seemed like pleasure.
Paul climbed to the opposite side of the upper falls and sat with his legs in the water. I stripped down to shorts and a sports bra and waded in. I floated on my back, starfish-style, in the icy green water. Perfect.
After a few minutes, chilled, I splashed out and lay on the rocks to sun dry. We all spent, by unanimous unspoken consent, a good half hour without talking. A breeze rippled through the canyon. Sunlight poured over the cliffs.
We had to hike back through brushmaggedon, but this time we knew it was coming, so it went faster. In the sections of trail that weren’t brushy, there were plenty of small limbs down, so I taught the guys some rudimentary trail work skills. Soon all three of us were throwing branches and kicking rocks to the downhill side of the trail. I grinned, proud of our little crew.
Back at camp, we filtered water and started cooking.
So guys, Paul said. I refuse to hike this wine back out of this canyon tomorrow. We have a job to do.
I laughed. Dude, that’s a big job.
The bladder of Chillable Red was still mostly full—the equivalent of four bottles of wine.
We’d better get to work then, Paul said, grinning.
We inhaled our camp meals, Mountain House and ramen and some Snickers I’d brought. As the sun was going down we tried, unsuccessfully, to start a fire.
You know who probably knows how to start a fire, Snider said. Is that guy Aaron.
We’d passed a group of students from Messiah College on the trail; now they were camped just uphill. Aaron was one of the student leaders for this, the pinnacle project of a class called “Wilderness Encounter.” Compact, muscular, capable, he looked like an Eagle Scout.
Sure enough, Aaron was delighted to come down and teach us how to start a fire—i.e., to handily whip one up himself despite the dampness of the wood. He was great at it. And yes, he was an Eagle Scout. Soon a fire was roaring in our stone pit. It was fully dark now, and the sparks rose into the black forest.
We invited all the kids from the group to come join us by the fire. Soon there were 10 or 15 people sitting around on logs talking in lively tones about the canyon’s marvels.
Too bad we can’t share the wine with these kids to get rid of it, Paul whispered.
Yeah, I whispered. I think they’re underage. And also super religious?
For sure.
The kids were describing how they’d all taken a “solo” that week, splitting off and spending a night totally alone in the wilderness, ideally while fasting. They were supposed to come closer to themselves—and/or to God. It sounded like they had.
They were awesome kids, bright and energetic and in love with the outdoors.
Man, Paul said. I’m so jealous. I wish I’d been into this stuff when I was in college.
Me too, I said. It changed my life.
After a while the kids, who had a long hike the next morning, thanked us (we had foisted off pounds of excess snack food on them) and went back to their camp.
We passed a thermos back and forth, filling and refilling it from the bladder of wine.
Okay, I’ve had enough, Snider said, waving the thermos away.
You and me, Kelly, Paul said.
It’s chill, I said. We’ve got this.
“It’s chill,” Paul repeated, laughing.
Watching the fire, we talked about travel, Carl Sagan, how Snider was feeling about his breakup, and what it was like to live where we each lived.
I’m going to bed, guys, Snider said.
Don’t forget your jam-jams, I said.
Snider had brought a pair of heavy plaid flannel pajama bottoms; it struck me as the most hilarious clothing item to bring backpacking—but also very cute.
Never leave home without them, he said, and zipped into the boys’ tent.
Paul and I kept watching the fire and passing the wine back and forth. We talked about his family and growing up youngest of five children, son of a pastor, about my childhood in Kentucky, about our dreams and travels, about past relationships and music and being sometimes too independent for our own good.
We came *this* close to finishing the wine, a feat for which we paid dearly the next day.
The next morning we hiked out of the canyon—a tough, brutally steep climb we stupidly did at midday—and got lunch in the town of Waimea, where Paul did some work. Then we drove back up the long winding road, spent a night in a basic but lovely campground, and did another backpacking jaunt (just one night) south from the ridge overlooking the Na Pali coast.
I split off from the boys that day and met Sarah to hike a loop out on the ridgeline trails near Koke’e State Park. We hiked out a trail called Nu’alolo and followed a knife’s edge ridge past the trail’s official end. There, the jagged green peaks of Na Pali were visible to the north, deep blue surf raging into coves between the cliffs. (Super epic, we said).
From there, and again from a point on the Pihea Trail overlooking the Kalalau Valley where I stood in late afternoon marveling at the valley’s terraces and mists, I swore I could feel my uncle’s presence.
Somewhere on this island, my grandfather had scattered his son’s ashes.
To lose a child so suddenly, and when you hadn’t known for months where he was—I couldn’t imagine what my Opa had felt. I knew only that he took meticulous notes on the details of the accident, the names of places he’d never seen written carefully in his shaky hand. Somewhere in that obsessive catalogue of the minutest pieces of information— “backpack buried at Kalalau??”—somewhere in what he considered helpful data, he had lodged his grief like a burr in tender flesh.
A loss like that haunts a family. Something is forever unfinished.
Are you here? I thought, looking down at the valley.
I couldn’t stay long. I had my pack loaded up and needed to hike almost four miles down to camp to meet the guys before dark.
The valley lay quiet and empty below me in the golden dusk. I thought of my uncle living there in a community of people who, like him, rejected traditional work, regular homes, and conventional lifestyles. My uncle, always seeking out the nude beach. My uncle who once chained himself to a harvester to prevent the logging of an old growth forest, who once camped out in a tree to save its life.
Then, and especially later, reading his letters, I could see my uncle in me. Lovers of the forest. Travelers. Black sheep, in our conservative East Coast family. Roamers, wild ones, always walking the knife’s edge between transcendence and oblivion.
I feel you, I thought. I didn’t know you, but I think I know who you were.
Anyone who loves Kalalau, Leonie Dabancourt had said. Iz a friend to me.
I blew a kiss into the valley and got hiking.
Kalalau Valley from Pihea Trailhead (Pu’u O Kila Lookout)
By the time I found the boys at our site near the creek at dusk, my mileage for the day was fourteen.
I’m so glad to see you guys! I gasped, throwing down my pack.
We’ve got a fire going, Paul said.
Aaron taught you well.
We had our fire, cooked our food, watched the stars, and got into our tents pretty fast—it was cold down there, and the poor guys had the worst flimsiest sleeping bags from the rental place. I could hear them tossing and turning, then snoring, their clogged breaths rising in staggered tandem. It felt good, knowing they were so close.
We hiked out the next morning, the backpacking phase of the week coming to an end. We drove to Kapa’a, did laundry, regrouped, and drove west again. The three of us had an easy, fun dynamic; there’d been no question of us continuing to travel together. Instead the question was: what are we doing next?
But we sure weren’t great at timing arrivals.
We got to Polihale, the farthest beach on the west side of the island, after dark. A long gravel road led out to the state park. It was partly graded, part rutted, part sand. We bumped and shook along it for what seemed like half an hour, then struggled to find a good spot to pitch our tents in the dark and the wind. We couldn’t even see the water, though we heard the surf pounding the beach beyond the dunes.
I might not set up my tent, guys, I said. I can lay out my bag and sleep right in the bed of this truck.
Oh, that would be amazing with the stars, Snider said.
For truly, the stars at Polihale were something else. I can only compare the darkness of the sky to Big Bend, in West Texas, which claims to be one of the darkest spots in the lower 48. But this wasn’t the lower 48; this was the farthest point west on the westernmost island in a chain of islands thousands of miles from anything else. The sky was blackest black. I could see every star in the Pleiades.
We might even see the Milky Way tonight! Snider said.
Snider wanted to sleep in the truck’s back seat, so Paul and I lay our sleeping pads and bags in the bed. Then Paul took some lights he had for photo work and strung them up along the back of the cab. It looked like Christmas.
Oh my god, I said. You’re so sweet! Paul. This is magical.
I’m gonna go take some photos on the beach for a minute, Snider said.
We lay back and stared up at the stars. There was a little breeze coming up from the beach, but the sides of the truck bed blocked it, so it felt like we were in our own private world, warm and safe with a front-row view of the universe. More stars appeared by the second, pinpricks in the fathomless black sky.
The next morning was sunny and clear. By daylight, Polihale was incredible, a wide white-sand beach with fluffy dunes, a backdrop of scrubby green peaks and, at the far end, the beginning of the cliffs of Na Pali.
It was a perfect beach morning, but I had a phone interview for a Park Ranger job in Alaska and Snider had a couple work things to do (he runs his own civil construction business), so we squandered a few hours driving to a place with reception.
By the time we bumped along the gravel back to Polihale, the weather had turned. It was raining hard, with driving wind kicking up stinging drafts of sand. The tent I’d set up to reserve our spot had flipped over, filled with rain, and caught in a thorn bush.
Our beach day, Snider said drily.
The guys helped me take down my tent, and we all got back in the truck.
Now what?
Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Paul said. I downloaded it back in town.
Heck to the yeah, I said.
Absolutely, said Snider.
So we sat in the Ridgeline drinking beers, eating Maui Onion potato chips, and watching the best movie ever set in Hawaii. There we were in paradise, day-drinking in a car. Oh well. That was fun, too.
Guys! I said. Do you see that?
We paused the movie and jumped out of the truck.
I need my camera! Snider cried.
At the end of the beach where the cliffs began, the ones they said were a jumping-off place for Hawaiian spirits to enter the afterlife, a rainbow had appeared.
Make that a double rainbow.
It was still raining, but lightly. The sun just grazed the mountains. We threw on our jackets and raced through the dunes to the beach where we stood, beers in hand, gazing in awe at the rainbow. Snider and Paul had a sprinting race down the beach. I stood in the shallows letting the warm waves lap my legs and the rain soak my hair. It felt like magic, like grace.
Rainbow near the cliffs of Polihale, said to be a jumping-off place for Hawaiian spirits. At 17 miles, Polihale is the longest beach in Hawai’i. Photo: @snyder9
We spent three nights at Polihale. It was by turns idyllic, rainy, and windy as hell. When it was windy, the breeze drove the sand against our legs, stinging our calves red.
One day, I noticed several missed calls from a Lihue telephone number. I called back.
I have been calling you, Leonie Dabancourt said indignantly. I find somezing!
I’m so sorry, I said. I’ve been camping without much service. What is it?
Ron, she said. His name is Saya. S-A-Y-A. Ron Saya. I don’t know if you will find anything about him, but he make the bamboo flutes. He was in Kalalau for years and years, he know everybody zere. If anybody would know Boogis, your uncle, it is Ron.
Okay, I said. Thank you! That’s amazing. I’ll get online and see what I can find out.
He will not be easy to find. Ron doesn’t live in a house, he never has. Always he is camping. A few years ago he get a girl pregnant. She was maybe thirty. He was sixty-five. They have a baby. Then he is raising this little child. Him! Sixty-five, raising a baby. Imagine! But I think he is gone, I think he moves to the big island or Maui. Maybe Maui.
Well, maybe I can find him online.
I doubt it. Oh, but I know one guy, dees one other friend who maybe knows where Ron is. Because Ron borrowed some money from him. Of course he never pay it back.
Of course, I said, as if I knew Ron Saya and his unreliable ways.
Anyway, let me zee what I can do. Where are you camping?
We’re at Polihale.
Oh! Polihale. Beautiful. So weendy though.
So windy! I said. We spent a whole day sitting in the car.
Everywhere it is windy zis week. We had fifty mile per hour winds here, in Kapa’a!
That’s crazy.
I still do not remembair your uncle, she said. I feel so bad. I wish I remembair more.
It’s okay, I said. It’s just mysterious. My grandfather’s notes say “camping at Kalalau with Leonie,” like my uncle was camping out there with you.
No. This I know ees not true. I never camp with a man.
Okay.
Always I was camping at Kalalau alone, or with a woman. I am gay, you see.
Oh, I said. Right. That’s cool.
I am gay, so I have no interest in men. I don’t trust zem! She laughed.
Just kidding, men are okay, but never never was I camping with a man. So this is not true. This didn’t happen.
I laughed. Okay! I believe you. Well maybe the note just meant you were both camping at Kalalau in the same time period. Not together, but there at the same time.
That is possible. I love Kalalau so much, I camp there thousands of times. Sometimes I get an urge to go camping there and it’s already night time, so I hike out ze trail in darkness. This is dangerous, they don’t recommend. But if you know the trail, is fine. It was beautiful. You are a hiker then?
Yes. I love to hike.
Me too. This is the story of my life. Always I was hiking. Of course not now. Okay Kallee, I see what I can do. But let me ask you somezing. What are you hoping to find? What is it you want to know about your uncle?
I don’t know, I said, shocked. It had never occurred to me to ask what, specifically, I was seeking in looking into my uncle’s death.
Maybe, I said. I just wanted to know what his life was like, what he was doing here.
Well, he was camping at Kalalau with ze outlaws.
Yeah, I said. I guess in a way I already know. But if anyone knows more about his state of mind at the time, or where he was planning to go next, it would just be..interesting.
Okay, I see what I can do. I maybe find dees friend who knows Ron Saya. But look him up. Ron Saya, bamboo flutes.
I will. Thank you, Leonie. I really appreciate it.
She said the French equivalent of “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” and hung up.
Did you hear that? I said.
Not all of it, said Paul, who was sitting next to me in the truck in yet another windstorm. But I did hear her say, “I am gay.”
She’s amazing. She told me last week that she grew up in France, was working in the Bay Area, and came to Kauai on vacation. She fell in love with the Kalalau trail, went back to California and got her stuff, and moved here immediately. That was 40 years ago. First she was an “outlaw.” Then she spent years working as a massage therapist at fancy resorts.
This feels like a movie, Snider said from the back seat.
Right? You can’t make up a character like Leonie Dabancourt.
I was left thinking about her question: what are you looking for?
Yeah, seriously. What was I looking for?
The next day, we left Polihale and drove back to the east side of the island, where we splurged to split the cheapest hotel room available, in the Courtyard Marriot near Kapa’a. The shower was divine. Clean and good-smelling for once, we dressed up and got an Uber to a fancy restaurant called, to my amusement, JO2. Whatever that meant.
What do you think of this menu, Paul? Snider had asked, handing him his phone with the website pulled up. They have good wegetarian options.
(Snider sometimes mixed up his v’s and w’s. He said this was a holdover from being raised in English by a mother from India).
As long as it’s not small plates, Paul said. I’ll be happy. I hate small plates.
It’s small plates. That’s exactly what it is. But they look quite good.
By the magic of Snider’s persuasion, we soon sat at the bar at JO2, where Paul and Snider shared a bunch of wegetarian plates (small, but quite good) and I had one plate of Mahi Mahi with risotto. Paul looked with faint envy at my plate. We shared a bottle of Greek wine and learned all about the bartender’s relationship with his much younger girlfriend.
Our time as a trio was winding down. Snider wanted to spend some more time on the north shore, so we went up to Anini Beach, where I pitched my tent and the guys slept in the back of the Honda Pilot SUV we’d picked up when the Ridgeline rental ended.
There were people at Anini I guess you’d call homeless. But there were homeless people everywhere on Kauai. Outside the laundromat where Paul and I had washed our clothes between camping jaunts, a white-haired woman slept in a car held together by duct tape. A man with a thousand-yard stare sat vigil outside the Big Save in Waimea. Dozens of people stayed in the campgrounds semi-permanently, and I’m sure still more squatted in the taro fields and the foothills, the island’s deep green hiding places.
That night we went into Hanalei for dinner. Paul seemed grumpy and distant during the meal. We’d talked about how he wouldn’t ask for alone time until he was past the point of needing it, and the three of us had been together nonstop for days, so I figured he might have reached his breaking point.
After dinner, Snider wanted to try taking some photos from the beach in Hanalei Bay.
I think I might just hang out in the car, Paul said.
Yeah, do that, I said. We’ll be back in a bit.
Snider and I wandered the dark beach. It was spitting rain, and the clouds ruined his chances for a great shot, but we walked down to the pier anyway, where we saw a huge bonfire someone had built on the beach just beyond it.
Walking back barefoot across the sand by headlamp beam, the gentle rain collecting on our jackets, we talked about our tendencies to choose the “wrong” partners, about therapy, about childhood damage and trying to get it all right.
When we got back to the parking lot, a long-haired homeless man stopped us before we reached the car. Paul sat in the driver’s seat looking even grumpier than before.
Is that your friend? said the homeless guy, pointing at Paul’s displeased face.
Paul? I said. Yeah.
He’s a good guy, said the homeless man. Like the nicest guy.
You’re right, I said.
Let’s get out of here, the nicest guy said as we got in the car. This has been super weird.
The police were rolling up as we left.
Driving back to camp, Paul told us the story. The neighbor was yelling at the homeless guy, and the homeless guy was yelling back, while intermittently knocking on Paul’s window and forcing him into conversation. At one point he said to the neighbor,
It’s aloha, bitch!
Snider and I laughed. What?!
I think he meant that the true spirit of aloha was to be welcoming and inclusive, and he didn’t feel this neighbor was being - well, neighborly. But, of course, he had threatened to come back with his posse of teenagers (his exact words, according to Paul: “I have a bunch of 14 and 15 year old friends and we’re going to come back here and attack your house”) and throw a molotov cocktail into the neighbor’s yard.
So not exactly “aloha” coming from him, either. But what did that beachfront property owner know about hunger, about sleeping out in the wind and rain? That extreme wealth disparity and suffering proliferated in this beautiful paradise was a fact not lost on me, and Kauai struck me in this regard as a deeply American place.
But it became, naturally, the theme phrase of our last days together. Drive to the south shore for one last sunset? Why not—it’s aloha, bitch. Dinner at the brewery? Aloha, bitch. And after Snider left and Paul and I spent the last day alone together, it was: Get a massage? Stay at the Marriott and sit in the hot tub all afternoon? Aloha. Bitch.
Snider left the next night. Paul and I dropped him off at the airport, exchanging hugs and promises to meet up in Iceland, in Porto, in French Polynesia. As we drove north, the backseat felt strangely empty. There was a running joke, based on an unfortunate group picture from Polihale, that Snider was our adult adopted Indian child.
Things feel pretty quiet without our son back there, I said.
I know, Paul laughed. It feels super strange.
I miss him.
Well, Paul said. We’ll have to make the best of it.
We did. We “camped” at Anahola Beach, by which I mean folded down the back seats and slept inside the Pilot because it was so windy. The next day we deemed devoted to luxury and rest, so we bummed around, drinking coffees and browsing a bookstore. Then we got a massage and checked into the Marriott, not the Courtyard but the Marriott Resort, where an actual live tropical bird the color of pink spun sugar stood on a faux branch in the garden near the waterfalls and fully-stocked koi pond.
This is insane, I said. It’s so fancy.
Look, Paul had said. I was going to spring for a nice room for the last night of my trip anyway, so this one’s on me.
Kind Paul, whose name means humility.
We took full advantage of the Marriott experience. Long showers, then a good hour in the hot tub, where we made friends from Massachusetts and Pittsburgh, couples doing the resort thing. After two weeks in a tent, it was bizarre, but dang did the hot water feel good.
As we sat there, a sudden storm came, drenching the clothes we’d left on a lounge chair by the pool. We ran back up to the room shivering in wet suits and soaked clothes, then showered again for dinner.
We had red wine and Italian food, that typical Hawaiian fare. The place reminded me of Disney or Vegas, this re-creation of a Tuscan villa within a faux world. But the food was good and our waitress, with her white quartz hippie earrings, was cool, and the music was nostalgic.
An Andrea Boccelli song, “Con Te Partiro,” played while Paul was in the bathroom. That song has always gotten me, and of course it’s about endings and partings. I sat thousand-yard-staring-it over the beach and the cove and the dark ocean beyond. Time to say goodbye.
We woke early so I could catch my flight.
On the way to the airport, I asked Paul to slow down. The place was within a quarter mile of the hotel. We’d driven past it more than half a dozen times: a big curve on Rice Street, just past the intersection with Mokoi Street, where the steel railing gives way to a low stone wall. Where it happened: where my uncle died.
I’d driven by half a dozen times without doing anything. This time, as Paul slowed, I leaned across him and took a picture. As I did so I realized that all this time, the whole trip, I’d been clenching myself against a fear that I too would die in Kaua’i.
It was superstitious and nonsensical. Totally ridiculous. Yet for some reason, because I was about the age Bubba was when it happened, I had been terrified that some arch-villain taker of traveler’s souls would come down to seize me out of this life—a life that felt too unfinished and unfigured-out to end. A life I was, despite my questions and fears, enjoying far too much to let go.
Now, with a blurry photo of the wall in hand, I knew I wouldn’t die here. And I knew what I’d been asking. What is the shape of a life? And if it ends suddenly and seemingly without reason, what does it all mean?
I looked at Paul out of the corner of my eye as he drove, his blonde mussed hair and sleepy face. I remembered the day before, when we stopped at a music store and he sat down and played the piano (he was just low-key, on the side, amazing at piano and had a YouTube channel where he taught lessons). I remembered how his hands had moved effortlessly over the keys. Not your basic bro after all, I thought.
He dropped me at the curb and we said we’d like to travel together again, if things lined up. More than that, we couldn’t promise. We hugged and kissed goodbye. I felt…
I felt nothing, even waving to Paul one last time as the car pulled away. I felt nothing walking through the airport or waiting by the gate. I felt nothing until I sat down in the window seat and the plane lifted off the ground, pulling me away from the island. I watched it recede, so green, so mysterious, so beautiful. Then I felt everything.
Well. Crying on a plane again, what was new. There should be some sort of CSI show (Oh my god, Crying Scene Investigation? No?) in which they traced my tear-tracks on planes around the world in order to follow my meandering route through this life.
Anyway, I wept, but not really from grief. I wept with gratitude, that in a handful of days I had found such friendship. The trip had been a huge, an overwhelming joy. I hadn’t been alone, and that was the best part.
“We are all one question,” Mary Ruefle wrote. “And the answer seems to be love—a connection between things.”
That a French woman who’d known my uncle for a passing minute would try to help me solve a mystery? This was love. That my grandfather would meticulously catalogue the whereabouts and belongings of his lost son, then spread the ashes over an island as mysterious to him as Ancient Rome? Love. How people write letters to each other. How people use ride-share boards. My mom back east googling “Ron Saya bamboo flute” for me and finding another lead. How Paul and Snider and I lay giggling hysterically under the stars after Snider said, “Jesus, there’s a cockroach in this tent!” How Paul started the fires and refilled the water. How I loaned him my socks. This was, there was no other word for it, love.
I could not presume to answer my own questions about the shape and meaning of a life. But Kauai seemed to suggest that life’s key was cut by love—our love for adventures, for landscapes, and most of all for people, magical people with their surprising stories and sudden kindnesses. People, who made the mountains worth remembering.
I had gone to Kauai, and I had loved. It was more than enough. Grabbing my backpack, stained now with red dirt, I walked off the plane into the rest of my life.
