Hawk blessing

The last few hours of roof painting are blessed by ʻIo - the Hawaiian hawk (Buteo solitarius).

A pair fly in and perch in the dead Albezia tree overlooking the house. One eventually flies away but one stays for a long time.

A hawk blessing on the job. What a gift!

I donʻt often see raptors here. In fact this is such an exciting and rare experience the neighbourhood children insist these hawks are owls. Repeatedly. They really want their pappa to come out and look.

 

Housepainting: the roof edition

The weather really doesnʻt play nice with us. Neighbour Joey and I scan the sky every day and make a decision as to whether it is going to rain for the next 6 - 8 hours or not. Most times we are wrong.

Eventually Joey gets impatient and goes up on the roof with paint bucket and harness while I am away. It does rain a bit on his work, but not too much washes off. Joey really is motivated to finish the job, get paid and move on.

So motivated, in fact, is Joey that he uses the trim paint on the roof, only telling me afterwards. That forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission, is something Joey seems to know intuitively.

The trim paint and roof paint are different chemical structures, even though the colour is apparently the same. I can see the difference when I stand back and look at the finished job.

I realise that, in the end, I did not get a particularly good paint job done on the house. There is a lot of finishing I am going to be doing myself. There is a lot of paint in places I didnʻt want it: on the plants, on the lava rock around the garden, on the driveway and on some glass which is going to be really challenging to clean.

What I did do, however,  was make an investment in the health of my community. I gave a neighbour a means to earn some money. I contributed to the local economy.  That is a greater value. Yes, in the classic turn of phrase: thereʻs room for improvement in the quality of Joeyʻs work, but only by having opportunity to practice is it possible for him to improve.

Now for that picket fence out front - the task I saved for myself. Scanning the sky again for a window of rainless hours. In a rainforest region.

Ahalanui State park

Not far from the little Moonflower house is a small shoreline state park with coconut palms, grassy lawns, picnic shelters and a geothermally heated pool.

I have always known there were salt water hotsprings in the region. Why it took me so long to actually explore I donʻt know.

I intend to become a frequent visitor at Ahalanui State Park.

Imagine this in my backyard: a combination natural, manmade pool big enough to swim laps in, with a sandy, rocky bottom, an outlet to the ocean which flushes it continually, yet protected from the crashing surf by a natural rock wall,  and permanently heated to lukewarm bathwater temperature - around 90 degrees they say.

There are convenient steps down into the pool, lovely walls for leaving clothing or sitting upon and enough curves and niches in the pool for contemplative time away from the lap swimmers and lovers and excited children. There are, however, no change rooms. Arrive in your swimming clothing. There are portapotties for those needs but they are not really comfortable for changing clothing purposes

Black crabs scuttle on the rocks, and signs warn against feeding the local aquatic life lest they get aggressive. Donʻt want an angry eel on your hands. A beautifully maintained park containing a geological treasure.

Feral mama

One morning last week my yoga session is interrupted by a caterwauling under the window.

I go out to investigate to find that one of the feral cats stashing a kitten in my banana grove. She sits herself down neatly staring at me expectantly. Her eyes are beseeching, huge and golden.

I do not do pets no matter how fluffy and appealing the kitten. On the other hand I do appreciate the presence of ratters in my neighbourhood. Kitten is having none of this human presence stuff and disappears into the heart of the banana grove.

Hmmm. What to do? The kitten burrows deep. I go on with my day. Pondering.

I have not seen the kitten again, though Feral Mama still crosses my yard to forage in the neighbour property, where I suspect she has found a source of free food in dog dishes.

Moonrise with night rainbows: ancestral voices

That big Puna moon tried to hide in the foliage but I was onto her.

And then came the night rainbows. A good night to go deep sea fishing. According to the ancestors.

Caldecott dress

After my Sunday morning cosmic turtle blessing paddle, I pull one of my old homemade brown shweshwe dresses on over the salty, sandy swimsuit to stop in *that* designer coffeeshop for wifi.

Gentleman at the kupuna table: "That dress is very attractive. You look like a Caldecott illustration". 

Ha! So many ripples of significance here. Heritage will out on so many levels.

Cosmic turtle blessing

On Sunday morning I spent a few hours paddling in a magnificently moody, sultry silver early morning communion dawn. Mauna Kea was briefly pink tinged, presiding always over the bay.

A little tropical storm blew through, but the world still cracked wide, leaking gold while the flowers were ever busy with their prayer messaging business.

A honu bumps me from below, destabilizing Waʻa Kea in an eerie way.

At first I thought I must have hit a submerged rock. I am usually quite vigilant as the rocks in Reeds Bay can be pretty scratchy on the underside of a plastic kayak. Then the bumps kinda shivered and moved beneath me in a very unrocklike way.

Then a flipper slaps the side and I am face to face with a grandmother honu, all spikey jawed and all.

Cosmic Turtles! Reptiles Alive! These raspy gasping turtles have swallowed me up, spat me out the other side of the membrane where magic happens.

The canoes are on the water. Paddle to Quinault 2013. The salt water talks story. My paddles are restless and honu concur.

Brother sun, sister moon

The almost full moon reigns serene in a sunset sky. As above, so below.

At home

Trying to hang onto some balance while the housepainting and all is happening.

I sew. The polka dot Bollywood Wedding dress is transformed into a very wearable swishy skirt. Two old much travelled tops are remade into a single dress. I start cutting out dresses for the marketplace.

The moon swells and the garden blooms and blooms and blooms.

I continue my voyages of discovery and delight in the garden.

I continue to be bugged by mosquitoes and burned by fire ants. Nothing thatʻs real is ever for free. If it doesnʻt come naturally, leave it....

Adventures in public transit options

I need to fetch my Moonlight Escape from the Port of Hilo where, thanks to friends, it has followed me by way of barge, over the sea to paradise.

I had heard about the local public transport, the Hele-On bus and knew about a park and ride a couple of miles from my house.

So I set out at dawn for my first attempt at exploring the public transport options in remote rural eastern Hawaii. What I discover is that catching a bus is not an exact science.

I had been told to be early and prepare to wait as the busses did not always run on scheduled time.

I had also been told that the bus stops where people are waiting. Yes. Um....no signs? no bus shelters?

I take my truck to the Park and Ride, thinking that would be good place for a neophyte to start. A bus MUST stop at a Park and Ride, right?

I wait in the nice bus shelter. I admire the sunrise and the plantings. And the bus drives right past me.

Hmmm. Seems it is easier to catch a kwelakwela in South Africa or an Indian Government bus.

I go back home, make some tea and wait until the transit authority has opened shop for the day, then phone. "How does one catch a bus in Puna District?"

 "Oh you must flag the bus" says the nice transit authority worker, "otherwise he doesnʻt know you want him to stop" after I tell her I know the schedule, downloaded it from online, but the bus just drove right by me.

Well how obvious. Just sitting in the only bus shelter for miles around does not predict that you want to catch a bus.

So I walk to the end of the road, stand around in a scuffed piece of wilderness on the on the side of the road until a bus comes hurtling at me. I do jumping jacks like crazy, risking life and limb, regardless of the fact that my last will and testament is not even up to date yet.  Then I see that my intended ride has "Out of service" written in the destination. My jumping jacks wilt.

The bus stops anyway. The driver has just forgotten to change his sign.

I notice that he is a little whimsical. We stop in the middle of a turning lane for one old codger who is the wrong side of an intersection where we really cannot, and do not, pull off the road. Said old codger proceeds to sleep on the bus in contravention of big signs listing this as a forbidden activity on the bus. We drive past another couple who are waiting in front of a fire hydrant.

"Canʻt stop here" says the bus driver, gesturing at them with both hands off the wheel.

I get off at a shopping plaza where I can change busses for a town bus which has a route in the direction of Port of Hilo, but decide to walk the couple of miles to the port. The walk takes me past the Seaview Hotel on Banyan Drive - the first hotel I ever stayed in on Big Island. I stop to cool my feet in the lagoon there, having picked up a mango in the street. Have to love a place where food falls off the trees in front of one.

Really I have aced the public transit system. Nothing to it. Once one knows.