The weather has been typical of the summer season this year, with blowing mist at Puu Kapu and bright clear days over Lalamilo and the sunny stretches of pasture beyond. It is quite an experience to travel up from the greening, leeward slopes into the rich emerald pastures above the village under a deep, blue sky. From a distance we see puffy white clouds struggling to top the Kohala sea cliffs and know that we’d better hurry before the forest fills with white mist.
Since Waimea lies in the saddle lands between the ancient Kohala Mountains and the awesome slopes of Mauna Kea, we get the most amazing weather extremes within a very short distance … it seems as though you can drive from the misty moors of Scotland to the sun-baked mesa lands of New Mexico in ten minutes or less! That has blessed us with a very mixed up reputation. Are we rainy and wet or sunny and dry? Of course the answer is “Yes”. Take your pick!
As our old diesel truck crawls slowly up the steep pasture lands above Waimea we enter the lands where Kamehameha sent his elite warriors to train in the stinging kipuupuu mists that strengthened them as they practice their martial arts and perfected their abilities in hand-to-hand combat. How the hills must have echoed then with their bellowing! Now those same hills bellow with the calls of the cattle, and the ancient mud bogs are choked with kikuyu grass where the pasture laps up against the rain forest itself.
Passing through the fence has always been an allegory of sorts for the many passages in our lives, and there is a moment of pause as you leave one lovely experience and move into another. A rain forest gate possesses a huge amount of relevance, standing as it does before a cathedral of soaring trunks with dappled shafts of sunlight pouring through the forest canopy far above. It is truly an entrance to another realm, and the rich, fetid smell of the mud mixes with the tangy perfume of blooming ginger and the fresh scents of wet bark and bright new leaves. We pause. We are inspired and humbled. It is the summer experience in Waimea.
However, it is not the only summer experience for those of us fortunate enough to live in this blessed place. Two thousand feet below us is the ocean wilderness, and the summer bring us deep water visitors! Big gangs of yellow-fin tuna chase huge schools of akuwith twisting clouds of shearwaters swirling above the waves, looking for all the world like swirling smoke against the sky. Lurking in the shadows are the great Pacific Blue Marlin. But, that is a story for next month!
