Dinner plate sized yellow Hula Girl hibiscus

White hibiscus

Plumeria (aka frangipani), whose spicy fragrance makes it popular for leis.

A bromeliad in full bloom.

Bouganvillea

Datura, or angel trumpet

Lobster claw heliconia

Parakeet heliconia

Waterlily and lilypads

Red anthurium

Pale pink anthurium

Blue ginger

Chenille plant

Impatiens, practically a weed in the rainforest areas of Hawaii

Psitticorum, a smaller member of the heliconia family. This red and orange variety is often referred to as “parrot,” while the pale yellow and deep pink variety is called “peaches and cream.”

Purple tulip anthuriums, with their eliptical shape instead of a heart shape, stand next to a mysterious spiraling plant. I’d never seen one before I took this picture at Donna Keefer’s house in Pahoa.

Fragrant white ginger blooms beside the roadways of windward Hawaii in the summer, dazzling all with its bewitching frangrance.

Three flowering tropical trees: monkeypod, African tulip, and golden shower.

Beside a kukui tree, and young jacaranda tree with one burst of periwinkle flowers.

The silvery leaves and oil-rich nuts of the kukui tree. An indigenous tree, the kukui was considered sacred to the woodland and healing god Lono. The outline of the leaves resembles that of the head of a pig, one of Lono’s totem animals. Ancient Hawaiians used the nuts to make torches, and ground them as a sparingly used condiment (which, consumed in larger quantities, rapidly evacuates the bowels). Contemporary Hawaiians use them to make kukui nut oil soaps and massage oils.

A variety of imported palms at the gate to a private home. Many palm and cycad collectors live in Hawaii. Alas, when nurseries began importing palms from Puerto Rico, they inadvertently imported the tiny, loud-voiced coqui frog along with the palms, and, having no predators in Hawaii, the coqui is proliferating in the windward parts of the islands. The state and county officials have been so slow in responding to this particular infestation of alien species that it is now beyond control.

A rare Australian palm whose fruit is so poisonous that getting the juice on your skin can land you in the hospital for a week. Donna Keefer, who grew this hardy specimen, speculates that the tree must fight other organisms to survive in its native harsh climate, and it is over-armored for Hawaii.

A papaya tree loaded with fruit. Hawaii once exported Solo (yellow fleshed) and Strawberry (pink fleshed) papayas, but, because the ringspot virus was decimating much of the crop, chemical giant Monsanto and the University of Hawaii collaborated on creating two genetically modified strains, Rainbow and Sunrise. Today virtually all of the papayas in Hawaii have been contaminated with the GMO papaya pollen, since the field testing of these strains is open to the wind. This burdens organic farmers, since the standards to which they must conform exclude GMO species, and, worse, it emboldens Monsanto to sue those whose fields are thus contaminated for copyright infringement, since they consider the two GMO strains their intellectual property. Permaculture teachers say that ringspot virus wouldn’t proliferate in diversified agricultre; indeed most “pests” are the direct result of monoculture farming.

The meadow below David and Wendy’s house site, with old Hawaiian rock walls and ti plants. On a clear day you can see the ocean, too.

“I’ve long held a vision of creating a place where people could come and learn where they are, about the ‘aina, about Hawaii,” Wendy Vance told me, regarding the off-the-grid homestead she and husband David Vance have been creating over the past six years in the remote and magical wilds of the Ka’u District, near the southernmost point of Hawaii Island.

Wendy’s deep into the ‘aina, both as an environmental activist from ‘way back, and as a practitioner of Hawaiian traditional culture, including chanting, drumming and dance, which she studied for many years with a respected Hawaiian kumu hula (teacher of dance).

Ohia trees surrounded by other Hawaiian native plants, including ti, mamaki, and fern.

When they bought the seven acres across the highway from the rented home where they lived outside Waiohinu, it was covered in Christmasberry bramble. Anyone else would have hired a bulldozer. Over a period of years, David painstakingly cleared the Christmasberry by hand, and underneath it, discovered the rock walls and house foundations of a Hawaiian village. As they cleared the land, Wendy and David planted Hawaiian native plants that had once been replaced by more aggressive alien species. In some areas, once they cleared the Christmasberry, the native plants simply reappeared and flourished.

The ruins of an ancient wall beside a wood pile and a very old tree.

As they continued to uncover and preserve the ancient village, to their astonished delight, the land adjacent on the ocean side of the land was cleared of Christmasberry for a twenty year cattle operation, and miraculously, the bulldozer driver left standing all of the native ohia trees on it. It was as if the peaceful force of their creativity and respect for Hawaii had rolled out beyond the boundaries of their land.

Near the Blums’ house is a nearly 45 degree angle half mile road up to the Kona coffee capital of Holualoa. I walked it daily during my weeklong visit; a butt-restructuring walk, with bone-building and aerobic benefits galore. As I walked back down the hill, I feasted my eyes on huge views of the ocean and Kailua-Kona town in the distance, and the tropical plants growing abundantly along the road.

On my last walk for this sojourn, I brought along my camera, so you could see them, too.

Up the hill. Panting, but not stopping. Dense clouds but no rain.

Kona coffee plantations along the way.

Coffee cherries ripening on the trees.

Almost to the top of the hill.

Coming down again. The horizon is blurred from vog, Hawaii island’s own natural smog, from the world’s most active volcano, Kilauea.

Looking down from the mountain. The white spot on the ocean is a huge cruise ship near Kailua-Kona’s harbor. Some of the town is visible, too. The dark spot is a small plane.

Alicia photographs the jungle. Photo by Linda Kane.

Linda Kane and Mary Goodrich are professional fine art photographers and both have moved within the last two years to the windward side of Hawaii island from northern California. They’ve been promising each other for quite a while that they would go out together shooting pictures, and today is the day. Mary’s husband Ken Goodrich, an audio-visual tech for large corporate functions, and I, Linda’s houseguest for the week, and friend for over twenty years, are invited along. Linda, who lives on the Hamakua coast, guides us to her favorite bridges, beach and jungle places, including two old cemeteries.

Our first inspirational environment is the old Honomu cemetery. I discover an unusal stone Buddha in the tall grass.

Ken and Mary Goodrich and Linda Kane take photos on the black sand beach at the mouth of the Hakalau River.

Side road off the Mamalahoa Highway. The cathedral heights of the trees, the sweet fragrances of the roadside ginger blossoms and ripening guava and passionfruit, the warm moist air, the sounds of rushing rivers and calling birds fill me with gratitude for life itself.

I am fascinated by the calligraphy carved into Japanese headstones, and the weather’s effect on it.

Mary Goodrich documents a monument at Honohina Cemetery in Ninole. Check out her beautiful website! Photo by Linda Kane.

Two streams join into one river above the wooden bridge at Waikaumalo Park in Ninole.

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.