Move up, move on

Come Thursday, November 1st, the farmily that has become our surrogate family and home, will start to break off. Claire and I fly for the Big Island, Everett goes back to Salt Lake City and shortly after that, one by one, the farmily is moving on or moving home. For a lot of people it was nearly time, and some drama with our boss and then our movements inspired/reminded everyone else that they needed to get going. Alicia has someone waiting for her in Denver, with the promise of a little apartment and a lot of love to share. Drew and Chris have been on the farm for a long time and it's beginning to feel like too long. Whitney is racing against the clock like us, and therefore has a lot to see in a short amount of time, and not all of it can be found on the farm. Chancee needs a job, and most of the jobs are not in Haiku.

I have no idea if I will ever see the farmily again. And usually staying in touch/falling out of touch stresses me out, but not this time. The farmily exists solely by chance. A bunch of young misfits thrown together on one farm in one little town on one little island. In any other circumstance, we probably wouldn't have been friends. But we are now. And if we ever see each other again, it'll just be by chance. So I'm not worried about it. We all have somewhere to go and when we do, we'll just say "I'll see you when I see you". Because that's how we met, and that's how we'll leave. And it'll be just fine.

Before we all get back to real life, we're making the most of farm life. We took the pick up truck, layers, water, and cameras and headed up to Haleakala for sunset. This is the crater, the highest point on the island, and by far the coldest. Alicia drove up as the rest of us froze in the back of the truck and swore we had never been colder ever in the history of ever. And then we reached the peak and stumbled out of the truck.

Being there was really understanding that the earth is round. It was being reminded that you are small and that space is big. It was being grateful. It was like breathing light. It was like this:

Hana

Zombies

Yesterday the power went out. The farm has a cable TV, almost everyone has a laptop or something similar, and suddenly all those things were useless. Sunday afternoon is a very mellow time on the farm, we were all tired from Hana and were watching movies, sending emails, in youtube black holes or napping. For a while, we thought it was just a short one, out in the country it happens every now and then. But after a good hour and a half, it was obvious this was a big one. Slowly but surely, we all ended up around the kitchen table. Claire and I were writing letters, Alicia was drawing, the boys debating over something. Though we all live together, it’s hard to catch the farmily in one place for more than a minute. We like our rooms and our space and our electronics, but when the power goes out in the country, it’s pitch black. And that tends to bring people together.

            We sat around the kitchen table and went back to basics. We wrote letters instead of emails and facebook, drew pictures instead of looking them up online, talked to each other, instead of into our phones. We made weird concoctions of cold food, because we have an electric stove, microwave and toaster.  The only generator was plugged into the lettuce fridge; protect the business before anything else! But Drew refused to compromise his bagel quality, and so carried the toaster outside to plug it into the generator. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

            When the sun was completely gone, we lit the only two candles we had, ate trail mix and Alicia got out her guitar. She plays for us every now and then, and it always makes my day. She has a beautiful and usual voice that can be soft and also haunting. She played through our requests, we let her sing beautifully and we sang badly together. She made up songs on the spot about different farmily members and about zombie apocalypses. The farmily is really into zombies because we’ve started watching The Walking Dead together, so anytime the power goes out, there’s a storm or we hear noises in the jungle, we all get talking about how and what we would do if the zombie apocalypse hit. The current plan is to fight our way to Lahaina and then hijack a cruise ship and use that as our fortress till the whole thing blows over. There are some flaws, like getting rid of the zombies on the ship, getting supplies and the possibility of zombie sharks, but we’re working on it.

            Chris said it best: “We should kill the power every night”. We sat together for hours, singing and laughing and eating cold food. It’s funny how simple and still complicated it is to bring people together. We live together, but to actually be together, we needed to be afraid of the dark. Try killing the power in your house for a night; when the lights are off it makes it easier to see the light that comes from the people around you. 

Take Shelter!

After collectively concluded that getting drunk and hanging out in the farm house again for the weekend sounded boring, the farmily decided to pack up and try and camp out for a night in Hana. Hana is only 38 miles from our front door, but the highway to get there is so twisted, steep and narrow, that the journey generally takes about two and half hours. And naturally it would take us around four hours because we’d be hitchhiking with multiple rides. So after work, I packed a flannel, clean knickers, a can of soup, a head lamp, and stuffed my sleeping bag into a pillow case. Claire and I were meant to be the second to last team to leave for hitchhiking, but lucky for us, Chancee (who was in the last team) had a friend with a old volo who was headed to Hana anyway. So Claire, Chancee, Everett and I and our minimal gear piled into Chase’s car (our new friend). The Volo, our salvation from hitchhiking, did not look like it would make it to Hana. I chose not to worry about it. Five minutes into our journey, Chase hit the brakes hard, and instead of screeching to a stop, the car slowed, squeaked and then finally stopped.  Chase was way to juiced when he said “That’s all the brakes we got guys!”. Forget sharks, spiders and drowning, my death in Hawaii is guaranteed to be vehicle related.

            Our journey was nauseating and terrifying, partly due to the road and our lack of functional vehicle, and partly due the fact that Chancee is less than my favorite person and makes it a point to aggressively flirt and coerce every “new friend” she makes on the island (they are always male…). The sun was setting just as we were getting near to Hana. At this point, Chase needed to make a stop. We had to drive deep into the jungle, off road, to visit a hippie commune of sorts. Chase’s brother used to live there, but recently got the shit beat out of him by his ‘brothers’, fled the commune, and Chase was there to sniff out the situation and collect the remainder of his brother’s personal items. It was really beautiful, deep in the jungle with a path that led to cliffs with a view of the whole ocean and the jagged coast line. The jungle was cleared only for the make shift kitchen and outhouse, and then through the trees we could see tents and strange little shrines and clearings. Chase went about his business, talking to people and collecting things, and the residents of the jungle habitat left us alone for the most part. We walked around their land and looked at the view, dodged the many chickens, cats and dogs that ran wild and observed from the distance the massive bamboo structures that had been erected around the clearing and the shines that were dotted between the trees. Chase had warned us to ask the ingredients of anything anyone offered us to smoke, drink or eat while we were there, because most of it was laced with ‘special stuff’. One girl informed us that they did yoga three times a day and that there was an on site yoga instructor, masseuse, and therapist who led their ‘morning ritual’. Claire and I decided that we were intrigued by their way of life, but that we would refrain from joining for the time being.

            By the time we found the rest of the farmily on the beach, the sun was down, the mosquitoes out, and the booze flowing. Camping, drinking and everything else we were doing was illegal on the beach, but luckily enough, the farmily had met a native named Hoku Loa, who worked for the resort that managed the beach. He decided to be our friend, gave us permission to sleep there, contributed to the festivities and even made us a bonfire. Now, at this part of the story, any reader who is older, parental, protective, a future employer, or particularly judgmental needs to take a deep breath. I don’t want to censor this blog because when I look back I want to remember Hawaii for how it actually happened. So, there may or may not have been people under 21 drinking. I may or may not have been one of them. It may or may not have been the first time…or the last time. Whatever makes you feel better.

            Meeting Hoku Loa was really interesting because of the relationship between many of the natives and white people, or haoles. A risk we were taking by attempting to camp out on the beach in Hana was that we could get beat up and mugged by natives. All over the island there are spots that are unspoken native territory. If you go to certain beaches after sundown, you can almost guarantee getting in some real trouble. Hoku Loa explained to us that he was raised to hate white people, because of what they had done to the Island and to the Hawaiian people. But he had decided on his own that he could not hate our generation, because it wasn’t us who came and killed and conquered. It was our ancestors. But he was the minority with that view. Had some other natives found us on the beach, we might have been in for a bad one. But they didn’t. Hoku did. He drank with us, made us a fire, and told us how his name meant red star, and mapped the constellations for us and pointed out his star. He told us Hawaiian ghost stories as well as history lessons, and as the evening progressed, we sat in the sand around the fire as he sang to us. He sang us a song that got him through his worst days, when the love of his life left him and then aborted his baby boy. In the end, we were all singing.

            In effort to pack light (no one picks up hitchhikers with big bags), none of us had really brought anything. I was wearing a swimsuit and shorts and shirt, and hadn’t really brought much else. Unfortunately, that also meant no one had really brought any food. We cracked open some cans of cold lentil soup and shared power bars. The soup improved when we through it in the fire for a bit. In between songs, stories and soup, I took walks down the beach, with my feet in the water. In Hawaii, you can see the whole milky way stretching across the sky. There is something about the ocean at night, when the dark sky and water seem to meet seamlessly, that makes you feel like everything that will ever exist in right in front of you. And humor me, it’s not just because I may or may not have been under the influence.

            When the fire had died down and the booze was just about gone, Hoku showed us where to lay out our sleeping bags and one by one, we flopped down into the sand and went to sleep. I was having a dream that Romney was spitting in my face when I woke up and realized it was raining. Not raining, pouring. Someone in our crew yells “take shelteeeeer", we’re dramatic like that. Our stuff was everywhere, we were everywhere, and in a wet, sandy frenzy, a line of sleepy people grabbed their sleeping bags and stumbled under the wooden picnic pavilion. We made a few trips out to get our packs and towels and other junk, and Chancee had refused to be woken up and so slept in the rain for a bit before I finally went out and got her to move. The situation could have been miserable, but for some reason it just felt so awesome. One by one, the farmily set out their wet sleeping bags on the concrete floor, on the picnic tables, and Claire and I decided the tiled bar top would be a good sleeping place. Worst idea ever. Tile is not good for sleeping on. Drenched, slightly drunk still, and ever so sandy, we all went to sleep in what was to be described as “the most uncomfortable thing ever”. Oh well.

            I woke up at 6:40, and an accurate way to describe my condition is thus: I felt like I had been hit by a truck full of ceramic tiles and bottles of tequila. It was terrible/awesome. But all of that was irrelevant because the sun was rising over the ocean and I pulled off my clothes and went swimming in the most beautiful sunrise of my life.

            We had one can of soup left which we ate cold while laughing about the adventures of the night before. After the ladies hitched into town for food, we spent the day on the beach. Hoku was back at nine for beach maintenance and such and was still our friend when sober.

            We started our hitch back early because we knew it would be long and hot and tiring. Claire and I made pretty good time, and when we were waiting for rides, I danced on the side of the road. Ask her to see the video; I’m like a Broadway star.

            All in all, our Hana trip is one of those things that you tell your parents about, and if they’re as cool as my parents, they’ll just say “hey, while you’re young right?”

The full set is on facebook...sneak preview yo

 Jaws was breaking!

 Twin falls

Pick me up, before you go go goooo

The farm, for all it’s secluded beauty, country ambiance and community feel, has no mode of transportation available for the WWOOFers to use. No cars, busses, vans, bikes, mopeds, horses, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, mules, donkeys, oxen or even unicorns! If you have a destination in mind, you’d also better be equipped with some awesome looking thumbs. The only way to get anywhere is to walk across the fields, hop the barrier, walk down the road, pass the junction and then stand on the appropriate side of Hana Highway with your thumb out, trying to look as friendly, clean and nonthreatening as possible.

            Sometimes when it’s hot and only tourists are passing by, in cars much too clean and expensive to pick up dirty WWOOFers, I do really wish we had a vehicle. And sometimes after a day of work and then hours spent at the beach or in town, the walk back up the hill and through the fields feels like the longest walk of my life. But, complaining aside, I frickin love hitchhiking. The first couple times I did it, I got this amazing thrill from breaking all the rules my parents ever taught me as a child. Don’t stand near a busy highway, check. Don’t talk to strangers, check. Don’t get in a stranger’s car, check. Don’t tell strangers where you live, check. Don’t ever ride without a seat belt, check. Don’t ride in trunks and the backs of trucks, check. Don’t take anything a stranger offers you, check. Don’t ever get in a vehicle where the driver may be under the influence, so much check.

            When we first got to the farm and were instructed on hitch hiking, the only thing we were told to remember was that we lived on East Kuiaha, not West Kuiaha, never West K! When the car pulls over, run up to the passenger window, try not to look too muddy, ask if they are going to East K if you want to go home, or anywhere else if you’re not, and then pile in before they have time to change their mind. It’s worked really well so far, no creepers or misdirection, and we’ve gotten a lot of free rides. I have yet to hitchhike alone, but I think I might do that later today. Gotta start somewhere right?

            The consensus amongst the farmily regarding the ideal ride is, without a doubt, the flat bed pick up truck. This is because riding in the back of pickups is legal in the state of Hawaii, you can bail more easily if something is wrong, and you don’t have to have the awkward encounter of being social with your driver and the rest of their load. I do really like riding in flat beds, the wind whips your hair into a serious mess, the view is beautiful, you don’t have to worry about being wet and/or muddy in their car, and at night you can lean your head back on the side and watch the stars slide by above you. However, contrary to the preferences of the rest of my farmily, I also really like riding in closed four door cars. And it’s not because of the air conditioning or soft seats; it’s because of the people. When someone stops their car and extends their kindness and trust and lets you into their closed space to take you with them, it’s kinda like they are letting you into a moment of their life. Many of the closed cars that stop for us are tourists and a few are residents and natives. But most of them say the same thing: “this is the first time I’ve ever stopped for hitchhikers”. And then sometimes I ask them “why us?” and to that question, there is never an answer. It’s not that we looked cleaner, more desperate, or trustworthy than the other hitchhikers they’ve seen, it’s just that in that moment, they made a split second decision to pull over and hope they didn’t make a serious mistake.

            And for the most part, I’m really glad they did. I’ve met some really cool and seriously weird people, learned a lot about the island, and learned a lot about people and what motivates them to make changes and go places. Below is a brief list of some of the best drivers/the ones I can remember:

-Scraggly man in scraggly car who agreed to take us to Paia because he was on his way to pick up his Thai mail-order bride from work. Also, pulled out an entire pound plus freezer bag of homegrown weed from his glove compartment and said “You ladies don’t mind if I smoke”. It wasn’t a question.

-A woman in a large white SUV, who owned everything Gucci and was on her way to watch her son’s high school football game. We rode with her a while and she asked me about boyfriends, I told her I had dated a sophomore for a long time and she said that her son was a sophomore and that I should probably come watch the game…

-And elderly couple, the wife from Ireland and the husband from Holland, who had been married for 40 years. They said they hadn’t been to Maui in 25 years, and that it had changed a lot, but it was ok, because they hadn’t.

-A young couple from Texas who were on vacation, and the wife was Thai and had only lived in the States for 6 years. We had a whole conversation in Thai and shared how we both missed Thailand and how she attended the same Uni that my cousin currently attends.

-A straight thuggin OG in a seriously pimped out car with a sub woofer in the back and us WWOOFers in the front! We went the whole ride without him saying a word. He just stared out through his sunglasses and sucked air through his grill.

-A large man named Sundance with his son Treespirit, who was the largest 11 year old I have seen in my life with arguably the most impressive wavy, waist length hair I’ve ever seen in my life. We picked up Treespirit’s friend Elijah (I know, I wanted his name to be Moonshadow too) and as this skinny blonde kid got in the back with Claire and I, Sundance boomed “I picked you up some girlfriends for the ride!” and then laughed like an earthquake. I think Elijah was about to cry, we were two girlfriends too many.

-A young woman driving something that was probably used as a kidnapping van by its last owners. She had lived in Seattle for many years, had a career and a house and a family, but was so depressed by the rain that she dropped everything and just moved to Maui. She didn’t know anyone on the island, bought an old van, rented a room and learned to love her new life.

            That’s all I can remember for now, but Maui is big on hitchhiking and I’m big on people. So hopefully that means I’ll have a lot more drivers to remember, for the bizarre and inspiring stories they can tell me at any point in the five minutes to two hours we spend together. I wonder whom I’ll meet today. 

Around the farm

 View from the porch

 WWOOFing feet. Never get clean.

 Our house!

 This is Tyra, she always gets into the cat food

 Whitney packing lettuce

 Dirty D!

Ze Romp

             A few days ago Drew asked Claire and I if we were ready to romp. I was confused because during my high school career “romping” was when there was no house to party at, but the booze and friends were present and so a gang of hooligans would wander around Albany (making stops at various elementary schools and parks) and get smashed together. But this kind of romping is different. This is Maui romping and holy schmoly is it the best thing ever.

            It goes like this. We put on swimsuits and running shoes. Shorts and shirts were optional. And an up to date tetanus vaccination is highly recommended. Everything else had to be left behind, which is real challenge someone like me who suffers from ‘being unprepared anxiety’, but the back pack had to be left behind. The romp exists and continues only through tradition; you go romping and then some day share that experience with a new WWOOFer, there are no maps, instructions or pamphlets on romping. Drew was the only one in our team of seven who had been before and that automatically made him our fearless leader. The first timers were as follows: Pia, Claire, Whitney, Chancee, Lee, and Nick (former WWOOFer in for a visit). After we suited up and drank the last water we would get for four hours, we headed out the road in groups to hitch hike out to mile marker 7, the starting point of the highly anticipated romp. Claire, Lee and I weren’t getting picked up, so we shed the shirts and used bikini power to score enough rides to get us all the way there. The rest of the team was sitting on the side of the road and when we hopped off the romp was officially in play.

            An interesting thing is that no one who has done it will tell you exactly what you’re doing. They just say be ready to run, to swim, to climb, to trespass and that it will be awesome. No end goal or reward promised. Going in with blind faith. Drew took the lead, we crossed the road and I barely had time to blink before I was following him as he vaulted across and fence decorated with “NO TRESPASSING” into a pasture. The minute he hit the ground he broke into a dead sprint. No instructions, no time for questions, I made a made dash behind him. We weaved and ran across someone’s property until we got to a barbed wire fence. Drew walked up and down it for a second, putting a foot on the wire here and there, look for a spot loose enough to pull it apart. Found one, pulled the wires apart, and we each embraced a yoga pose to fit through.  The land was stunning, it was high up on the cliffs a few miles from the sea, with knee high grasses, guavas, wild flowers and large pines. We walked silently for a while, keeping pace with Drew. As we rounded a bend into a large grove of old growth forest, Drew suddenly took off running. Up ahead I could see a rusty farm shack, some pens and corals and some tools. Drew was sprinting along the fence line, staying in the shadows. As I ran behind him he said “Don’t let the farmer see you. Last time he had a shot gun”.  I ran a little faster. We get to place where the wire in between the wooden posts is bent, make like a pretzel and slide through. At this point I’m sweating and regretting all the days I told myself I was too tired to work out after work. But then I look up. We’ve come out of the trees onto a sloping hill that’s dotted with guavas. And it looks out on the whole ocean, the coastline, the steep cliffs and white-capped bays that surround that side of the island. At this point we get to stroll, picking strawberry guavas we go and keeping an eye out for cattle, because in Hawaii, those homies will charge you in an instant and run you down.

            After our leisurely stroll (which Drew claims we should have run as part of romping tradition) the rolling hills and guavas turn into a think, swampy section, with mangroves and monster mud. Our running shoes quickly turn black and each person takes their turn almost going face first into knee-deep mud. It proceeds like this: make it through the mud, hit a grass trail, Drew says he has no idea where we are, we keep walking anyway, get hot and tired, lose hope of actually finding the right spot, turn right and stop short because we’re on the edge of cliff, looking down at the ocean 200 feet below us and ogling at the coast line on either side. But it’s what’s right ahead that makes short of breathe even as I’m panting. There is a crystal clear bay, flanked by our cliff and the other side has a cliff made of volcanic rock that has a huge hole through the middle. You can see the open ocean on the other side and vines grow down from the top as sunlight streams through what is called “The Arch”. We slide down the cliff on our butts, clinging to vegetation here and there and constantly keeping an eye on the edge. We get to a flat part and here we’re told to shed any extra weight. We take off shirts and shorts and drape them over a tree, left only in running shoes and suits. Here the decent is too steep for sliding. We’re still a good 100 feet above the beautiful bay and Drew starts forward towards a thick rope tied to a tree. The WWOOFing legends who originally discovered the romp tied the rope there and we use it to repel down the side of the cliff. There are parts where the trail drops out completely and you just have to let your hands slide down the rope for a terrifying second before your feet touch down again. We go one at a time because the rope twists and your weight would throw the person ahead of you off in a instant. I go second after Drew and I think of nothing but holding on and not looking down. I finally make it down, yell up for the next person and then turn around. In that moment I was pretty sure I would see a triceratops because I had repelled into Jurassic park. The bay opened into a boulder beach, with the smallest rock no smaller than my head. That’s why the water was so clear though, no sand at all. Up the beach is a narrow valley, with our cliff on one side and full jungle and waterfall pouring down the other. Looking across the water, the steep volcanic cliffs lead up to the Arch. I couldn’t blink because I had just repelled down a cliff into a place that was so untouched by the outside world that I didn’t have enough eyes to take it all in.

            Once everyone had made it down the cliff without serious injury, we moved on to first the swimming portion of our day. You can’t get into the water from the boulder beach because the waves come in so strong that you would get sucked under and then your body would be smashed into one of the many multi-ton rocks. So we climbed out on the side of the cliff until we were towards the middle of the bay. At this point you say your prayers and jump into the water. Once  you hit you banana out and then start swimming as hard as you can so the tide doesn’t pull you back and smash you into the rocks. I hit the water and then struggled to swim with the added weight of soggy running shoes. Once we made it to the middle of the water, it became easier. We swam forward towards the cliff face that houses the arch at it’s center. This is where it got really scary. We swam until we were about 10 feet away from the rocks. Drew explained that you have to wait for the waves to go out, then catch the next swell and use the force and added height to get up on the rocks. You can’t pull yourself up with our the wave, but if you can’t get up while the swell is with you, you’ll get pulled off the rocks by the receding tide and then dragged under before it comes up and smashes you against the rocks. Reoccurring theme: don’t get smashed against the rocks. I waited for the swell and then swam like mad, hit the rocks hard and grabbled for hand holds, trying to pull my self up before the wave went out. I had about a three second window, and in that time I got two hands on the rocks, one foot and then wave went out. The undertow wrapped around my heavy foot, and then my waist, I lost one hand and felt myself slipping off. I threw body at the rock and pulled my body out like a walrus. That was nearly-smashed moment number one of the day, there are more. Everyone got up and we started our climb/walk across the front of the base of the cliff. Once round the corner, we could see the open ocean and some amazing blow holes and enormous tide pools. We went for a brief swim in clear one and watched the waves crash over the far end of it. Directly above us on the cliff was the Arch, with sun streaming through it and creating a disc of light on the rocks below. Our brief rest period over, we got out of the human tide pool and climbed the cliff face to the Arch. The whole deal is made of volcanic rock, which is crumbly in some places and very sharp in others. I’m resting my hands all funny as I type because they are still a little cut up from the romp, totally worth it though. After we cut up our hands and I managed to cut my head by bashing on a protruding rock because I was trying to watch my feet and therefore not watching my head, we arrived at the Arch.

            Saying it was a spiritual experience does not even come close to describing how it felt to stand in the center of the Arch. The Maui coastline (cliffs, waterfalls, jungle and all) lies ahead of you, and the open ocean lies behind you, all the while the wind rolls through, threatening to blow out you to sea. It was one of the moments where no one has words, but everyone is suddenly unquestionably grateful. On a silent cue we left the Arch and the sun, and headed back down the cliff and into the shadow. The final frontier of the romp is the cave. And so to the cave we went.

            The cave is a huge, black abyss that is in the middle of the cliff face and stretches around 35 yards wall to wall. Ocean flows into it and the only way in is in the water. We climbed in on the side as far as we could and then took the leap, hitting water running shoes first. We swam into the cave until the water below us was pitch black and the light around us was dim. Here we employed the ‘wait for the wave’ tactic, and used the on coming swell to hoist ourselves onto the rocks without getting smashed. In the dark, with the slippery rocks and the strong current, I waited for my wave, latched onto the cave wall, and then was promptly pulled off again and sucked under. I took a second to figure out which way was up, swam for it, and then found myself being thrust at full speed at the rocks again. Took the opportunity properly this time, and pulled myself up. We climbed up a rock formation on the cave wall, trying to see with our hands when it was too dark to see with our eyes, until we reached a ledge, about 40 feet up from the water. “This is where you jump” said Drew matter-of-factly. So one by one we stepped up to ledge, looked down at the pitch black water and then hurled ourselves off the edge. I may or may not have screamed as I went over…Lee may or may not have made the decision to do it naked and jumped with swim trunks in hand. Once we were all back in the water, we timed our swimming efforts with the tide coming in. It’s pointless to fight the waves coming into the cave, so we rested and were carried deeper when the waves came in, and then swam like mad as they went out so we could make more ground towards daylight than we had lost when being sucked back in. Finally out, we employed wait for the wave, got back up on the cliff side and then started our journey in reverse. I blew a kiss to the Arch as we passed under it, and then took another brief dip in the calm of the human tide pool while listening to the chaos of the open ocean as it battered the rocks, trying to get in. We jumped back into the back, fought the current to get across, waited for the wave to get up on the other side, walked across boulder beach, scaled the cliff using the rope and then once again found ourselves on the top off the cliff, looking out over a view that now had a whole new meaning to us.

            Let me tell you, going down hill is way more fun than going up hill. The trek back was really a test of stamina, there is no trail, you just head up hill and look for telephone poles. We hiked up, sloshing in our wet shoes, sticking to our dry clothes, cut up, exhausted and grateful. Within a matter of minutes, telepathy occurred and we all shared the same thought out loud: water. It had been three hours since our last drink and since then we had been running, mudding, climbing and swallowing large quantities of salt water. We kept walking, fighting the extreme urge to drink from the streams running down the hill and eating strawberry guava to distract us. However, we forgot all about water when a huge black mass charged across the forest in front of us. A full-grown bull was smashing about in the forest and we were in his hood. I picked up a large rock in one hand and a large stick in the other and told myself I was going to shimmy up a tree like a champion if my horned friend decided to charge. After staying still and quiet for a minute, we pressed on. Luckily, the bull had made his first appearance his final one, so I put down my caveman tools. Over fences, saw a wild boar, picked up another rock, dropped it to run for fear of shotguns, through the barbwire fence and then over the gate, and back to the road. Some tourists on the other side were opening a gallon of water, saw us dripping, muddy and ogling, and ended up letting us drink the whole thing. I met some great old people from Ireland hitch hiking home and tried and failed to explain to them what we’d just done and why it was the most frickin rad thing I’ve ever done ever. Think I lost them with ‘frickin super rad Arch!’.

            I wish I had pictures of the romp. But at the same time I’m really glad that I don’t. It almost feels wrong to have written a novella about it because part of what makes the romp so scared is the fact that is goes undocumented. You can’t find it on a map or in a guidebook, and you can’t do it after hearing about it. You need a leader, someone who knows how to do it only because they’ve lived it. And you do it, feel it, see it, and then hopefully one day, you share it. I can tell you what I did, but I can’t even begin to tell you how I felt. So visit Maui, go to Island Paradise farm in Haiku, befriend some WWOOFers, and then hitch hike to mile marker seven and see what happens from there.