Free mulch, pay in sweat and effort

A little while ago my friendly neighbours at the Hapuʻu fern nursery down the road told me about a source of free mulch from the county. They also told me that one absolutely needed a tarp.

Being the librarian that I am, I researched the State law. It is probably this clause which had me shopping for a tarpaulin and bungees for the truck:

No vehicle shall be driven or moved on any highway with any load if the load is not entirely covered by a cargo net, tarpaulin, canopy, or other material designed to cover the load to prevent the load from escaping from the vehicle, where the load consists partially or entirely of loose paper, loose rubbish, plastics, empty cartons, dirt, sand or gravel. - See more here

With school on break I finally got everything lined up: the truck empty of kayak, the tarpaulin, the bungees for securing, and a day dedicated to the task. With only a vague idea of where I was going, I found my way to the county solid waste disposal facility where I discovered another of those impressive set-ups with recycling, redemption and disposal taking place in such a well run, beautifully laid out space.

I found my way through all the activity to where I thought I could see big machines doing stuff with huge piles of organic waste. A helpful county employee in a pickup truck noticed me dithering, did a u-turn, came back to tell me exactly what I needed to do in the most delightfully teasing Hawaiian male way.

Incidentally, in this new life, I find that I am often the beneficiary of the Hawaiian way of reaching out and assisting. To kokua, in Hawaiian, is to volunteer, to help. Working together, helping others, assisting and acting as community are true Hawaiian ways. I experience and appreciate them daily. Thereʻs a lot more to the living experience of the  aloha spirit than the conventional translation of "love" or "hello" or "goodbye"

With this pickup truck driving employeeʻs kokua, (for which I am SO grateful) I am armed with instructions on how to go about going through the weigh station to get a ticket, then going to the green waste site, handing in my ticket, lining up to get loaded, then returning to the weighscale. Even though the mulch is free, I am thinking they probably keep records of how much they give away. Necessary for reporting purposes.

I follow all these steps up to the first go through of the weigh-station where I am told there is no green waste today, only wood chips. Hmmm.

I retreat to the Surf Break Cafe in downtown Hilo to ponder the matter while I avail myself of their free wifi, a coffee and a Green Goddess bagel - which is some form of variation on a freshly baked bagel loaded with luscious raw salad greens. When the cafe closes in the middle of the afternoon, it comes to me that I could use wood chips for mulching as well.

So I go back through the cycle. I discover that it is a very interesting experience to have a huge front end loader empty its scoop over what suddenly has become a very tiny truck. Splinters, wood chips and dust flies everywhere. The truck settles comfortably on its substantial springs. I am really glad I brought the truck across the water with me. I am really glad I found this little truck on the side of the road on the rez in the first place, those seven years ago.

My next challenge is securing the tarpaulin to prevent my newly acquired load from escaping. Anyone who knows me knows I am not very good at ties that bind. I never have been very succesful  binding anything down at all. Nor at being tied down. I do my best, tucking in excess and patting down wherever I can.

That I will be driving the 12 miles or so back to Hale Mahina in rush hour Friday afternoon pau hana (finish work) traffic, is to my advantage, I think. It will keep speeds down to below 45 mph and around about 25 mph for a big stretch of the highway. There is also mercifully no significant wind to wreck havoc with the tenuous tarp. Of course being in rush hour traffic is also a disadvantage should anything try escaping. But I take my chances with that.

I get home prickly and hot but with the load intact.

It takes far longer to unload, one shovel scoop at a time. I am at it until after dark. Mosquitoes have a fiesta.

It takes me another afternoon to distribute these chips around my pregnant banana trees, and  the moonflower alongside.

A few days later I return for another load. This time rain pours down through the whole process. There is a less than friendly Wednesday lady in the weighstation booth who does not get up from her chair, but informs me in a very surly fashion that I am going to have to get out of my vehicle and come up to the window. Her Friday male colleague had passed my ticket to me through the window. I am glad this isnʻt my first time around. The glare Wednesday lady gives me might just have made me feel real real bad if I didnʻt know how it works. Someone has forgotten their true Hawaiian ways.

The loading area is a huge muddy lake. I am glad for the truckʻs raised wheelbase and the good (snow) gripping tyres. I notice that there is a self loading and an assisted loading area. I guess if you have a little car, or a small garden,  you could just get buckets full of the free mulch. It is much easier for me to have the load dumped in a single scoop on the back of the truck.

This time around the mulch is like horse poop falling all over us. It has the same consistency, is steaming hot, and smells like wine. Yum! I can hear the plants partying already and I havenʻt even covered the load yet.

The fermentation smell and the heat reminds me of the silage we made on the farm as winter feed for the cows, horses and wild animals. Silage was the prime reason my father planted acres and acres of mielies (corn) every year. Just as the cobs were forming the entire plants were cut down, brought to the machine staged at the silos at the back of the cow shed. This machine chopped the mielies into tiny pieces which were then spat at high speed into silos where the silage matured through the cold months. Fresh silage was good to play in - I guess a little like my version of a beach. I burrowed in it, made hollows and landscapes, houses and furniture. I experimented with eating it - because the animals seemed to enjoy it so much - the best part was the pithy sections of cob, sweet and sour at the same time. Just like cowʻs breath on a frosty winter morning.

The horse poop load proves more challenging to cover. I have some uneasy moments on the return journey with the billowing tarpaulin blocking my rear view visibility rather disconcertingly.

It also proves much heavier to unload and currently sit steaming away at the back of the house. The truck needed a good hosing down after that experience and still has a bit of a spilled wine smell to it.

Am I still having fun in Paradise? Yes. But it is definitely not a free lunch kind of situation. Free organic biomass is a treasure indeed, especially when one is food farming on lava rock. I donʻt mind the sweat and effort involved.

Niuhi: nourishing taboo

And then this morning, my local radio programme adds this to the discussion:

Hawaiian word of the day: niuhi
Man-eating shark, Carcharodon carcharias; any Hawaiian shark longer than 3.5 m is probably a niuhi. Catching niuhi was the game of chiefs; it was a dangerous sport and special techniques were used. Its flesh was taboo to women.

Not that I was thinking of eating shark. I prefer stubby little local bananas.  

The banana grove is pregnant with promise of at least three bunches come next spring while those little Hawaiian hot peppers are slowly swelling to maturity.

Thousand petalled lotus

While I was in a liminal state, pondering the meaning of my encounter with Mano, the shark ancestral spirit, I found myself in downtown Hilo.

There is an interesting building, with an even more interesting garden in front of it wherein one can find lemon grass, sweet potatoes, pineapples and papayas, amongst other things. This building draws me like a magnet: in my imagination I see it in a magical realist novel from oh maybe a Latin American writer, even as I am always inspired by the beauty of this food garden in an urban downtown setting.

Then I turned around: a pool filled with lotus blooms in every possible colour.

Speaking of ancestors

Another day, another lizard.

Paddles with sharks

I was nudged by a shark on my sunrise paddle out of Puako a couple of weeks ago.

Luckily I wasnʻt dangling my feet over the side as I sometimes do when I want to slow down and watch the clouds go by. 

It happened just like in the comic strips. I was about 2 miles out from shore, alone, as usual, and heading north in slightly choppy seas, on a flooding tide,  to Hale o Kapuni, the submerged heiau (temple) which contains a shark shrine.

A triangle fin, black tipped with white below,  surfaced on the ocean side of me, from the north. This triangle made a bit of turbulence in the water, drawing my attention, then headed straight for me until it bumped the kayak up front towards the prow turning me through 180 degrees, to point back towards the shore and Puako small boat harbour. 

When the fin first appeared, I lifted my paddle to chest height and froze. I didnʻt even reach for my camera. I guess I was breathing. 

After bumping me, the shark swam in a full circle around the kayak as if making sure that I had got the message. I reached for my mantra, mentally, and settled into submission. The shark did that splashy thing again,  and glided off: a huge dark form in the clear water.

I headed back into shore, breathing long, slow and deep, just like I am trained to do in yoga. Obedience is sometimes all that is asked of us. I will paddle to Hale O Kapuni another day. I do love this wild piece of Kohala coastline, but am respectful of the local spirits, especially manō, the shark who makes this particular reef sacred.

I shared this sharky experience with my fav ancient Hawaiian whose response was that this was no ordinary shark, but Manō, an aumakua (ancestral spirit) with a message for me. Well actually his response was more detailed and complex, but that is the gist of it.

I spent about 24 hours after this feeling very spacy, disconnected from the material world, thinskinned and vulnerable. Until government shenanigans woke me and I drowned in the abject stupidity that is politics today.

There is a story about an old Puako couple who had a shark friend. Because that side of the island is dry, the taro didnʻt always grow so well leaving the old couple quite often without food. Their shark friend, however, ensured that they never went hungry: it would tip over boats which were  carrying food, then hide the cargo in caves. The shark would show the old couple where to find the hidden food and this is how they survived and flourished on this deserty stretch of coastline.

For seven years now, the major element on my ancestor shrine has been the Hale O Kupuni shark shrine hoʻokupa (offering) image.

The gratuituous sunrise shot

A little while back, I went for a sunrise swim at the geothermally heated warmpond, only to find the gate locked.

Some tourist had gone swimming there after cutting their leg. Next they ended up in hospital with a staph infection. The county closed Ahalanui park for a week while they had the water tested. Of course the tests came back clear. 

I did get to witness sunrise from a little further down the Red Road at another of my favourite salt water pools. The water at this pool is not geothermally heated, but it often does a good job as a reflection pond. On this day it gave me pause to admire the sunrise sky drama.

Playing the hand thatʻs dealt

Turns out that kuleana* rights trump Federal government shutdown (as they should)

In spite of the government shutdown which has, amongst other things, closed all National parks, the people on the ground let us into the Volcanoes National Park. In spite of having our education permit rescinded by those at dizzy heights on the flagpole, at the entrance we were granted free access. By foot.

One small, rain drenched but very sincere, group of Hawaiian charter school students, with hoʻokupa, a gift for Pele, walked to the Pā Hula. All tongues were amazingly stilled by awe. True that: this is often an unruly group on outings but on this day they were worthy of the kuleana which granted them access: a right and a responsibility.

A day of miracles and wonders. The park, without tourists, was a blessed place, indeed. Resonant with ringing silence, birds and rain, mist swirling. Full of presence.

Imi na ʻauao

You gotta play the hand thatʻs dealt you/ thatʻs what the old man always said....

*While the word kuleana mean roughly something within the range of "right/responsibility/duty" Kuleana rights are a complex set of laws, dating from the 1850s, which allow native Hawaiians access to traditional lands for cultural and spiritual purposes. There is a bit more here. These rights are not always respected in the contemporary turmoil of USA occupation of these sovereign islands.