Today my dear artist friend, Stephanie Farago, and I circumnavigated Maui’s Haleakala Volcano, and visited friends who live in remote Kaupo.
We passed through Kanaio, a high elevation desert community overlooking the Alenuihaha Channel and this single cinder cone (that’s “pu’u” in Hawaiian).
We passed the Kaupo Gap, which is the lower reaches of a huge amphitheatre-headed valley that forms the eastern half of Haleakala’s crater. The original caldera of Haleakala has long since eroded away, but the two huge valleys created by wind and rain erosion (the other, on the wet windward side of the island, is called the Ko’olau Gap) were united into a single caldera-like crater by later volcanic eruptions that destroyed the wall between the two valleys, and created a wonderland of magestic cinder cones, lava tubes, caves, and other multi-colored volcanic structures.
We visited friends who have created a sustainable farm, complete with alternative power (solar, wind and hydroelectric), a spring and a well, orchards, gardens, chickens, ducks, a goat, a horse, cats, handbuilt houses of local rock, cement and recycled lumber, a solar oven, a solar dehydrator, and, yes, a computer that connects to the Internet. The chickens are not allowed in the vegetable garden, but they forage for insects in the pineapple patch. But the ducks, who do not harm the vegetables, happily gobble a variety of pests that would otherwise eat the garden greens. The eggs of both are therefore highly fortified with natural protein.
Rarely driving to town for supplies, they grow most of their food and cook everything “from scratch.” They cook on a table-top two-burner propane gas stove, and they bake in the solar oven. They are as healthy as human beings can be in these times, and extremely strong from their daily work maintaining and developing the farm.
Stephanie beside the waterfall pool at Alelele Stream. I went skinnydipping there, and feel like a new woman for it, but I’m not posting photos of that.
Alicia Bay Laurel 