HACKTREKS TRAVEL PAGES

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Benjamin Ward in Hawaii

Kauai: The Home of the Arahat "You caught this infection because you needed to be healed."

I don’t know how it happened. I went to the island for a week, sunshine, tan, cocktails, maybe even a girl. One week. I stayed for four months and it seems I got pulled into all this stuff. Otherworldly stuff. I’m a logical guy, but my logic will always be coupled with experiences from the otherside of logic.
It’s not a long trail, they say, well, that’s ok, I mean, I may need the exercise. Not that I was unfit or anything, I had used to play sports at school and all, but the last few years had not been about that. In fact, if anything, the last few years I’d been considering the effort I put into playing so many sports in the playground, and been using that as a justifiable excuse to not worry about being unfit. But the short reality was different.

But it’s not a long trail.
Besides all this, I mean, its not like I was one of those nature junkies, I’d watched the discovery channel a couple of times, but it didn’t do it for me. The reason I was interested in this promised land was because I heard a guy saying he loved the place for one reason and one reason only; back there you don’t exchange money, it’s all about trading, you trade what you got. He said he’d been back there two weeks and not touched money in all that time. And this guy couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone a day without using dollars in some way. This interested me a lot more than his other observations; the fact that people supposedly ran around naked there, marijuana grows unchecked in abundance. And oh, he also spoke of some kind of mad waterfall where you can, you know, get it. It’s an eleven-mile hike in there, but after seven, you can drink the water, no leptospirosis. The path takes you over sliding mud falls staring straight into the Pacific Ocean, viewed from one hundred metres up, hey, you could die dude.

But it’s not a long trail.
I asked a girl at the hostel what I should take with me. She told me she was taking a sleeping bag, tarpaulin (grade three American standard if poss.), stove, food for two weeks (even if going for one), torch, strong shoes, raincoat and matches. I asked her if she’d mind me accompanying her. But see the thing was, she’d had just the worst year possible. Her grandmother had died and she’d hooked up with this total loser guy (a musician from Pasadena) who didn’t understand her basic needs (plus he was on the old juice). So really, she wanted some time to herself, and she’d heard she could re-discover her own identity there, so yes, she did mind.
In the end I found a dreadlocked Romanian who walked barefoot and told me all I really needed was coffee, rum, pot and M&Ms.

It’s not a long trail and it’s all about trading.
Going in is always different to going out, you know that song lyric, "You can always go back but you can’t go back all the way"? That definitely applied here.

I worked as a dishwasher, in a little beachside joint. I also did some construction. It was while building an outside shower for a local couple that I met the Romanian, though this was just the arrival of chance. It was in the restaurant that I met most people, and so heard all the tales of this wondrous trail. In the beginning, I merely put on feigned interest in such a place. My stay was only to be a short one and I could not be thinking about such things. I would smile abstractedly as the waitresses would tell me of their exploits back there, explaining that if I ever got the chance I should go. Even my employers, a mild mannered babyboom couple would let their eyes glaze over in a teasing, almost mystical way whenever the 'valley' was spoken of. I would hear none of this talk until I myself caught the 'blessing of the island'. In short, staff infection, a form of leprosy that is transmitted into open cuts from freshwater. It eats your flesh away, slowly, painfully. I remind you Hawai’i is in the western world, a million miles from the leper colonies of Asia, but it is real and it is there. A price to pay for paradise, for there are no big cats, no reptiles (excluding sea turtles), not even any snakes. All these are substituted for a minutely sized parasite that attacks wilfully, and indiscriminately.

I had received this blessing in my foot. There is no pain right away, the symptoms come upon you like flu, tiredness and muscle ache. But slowly, there is a little less of you every day, visibly the skin on your affected area dissolves. Then comes the burning sensation. This would be worse for me at work. I would wear sandals in the kitchen, a small, cramped tropical hovel. With my exposed skin on show, I would be showered with boiling water and steaming fat, all of which angered the parasites even more. As for cures, there were several. You could simply blast it with antibiotics, the other options were all natural. I would clean the wound with alcohol, swabs and an unused toothbrush, then drink water with a little citrus seed extract in it. This was a slow process, and it was around this time that the Romanian was going back into the jungle.
"You caught this infection because you needed to be healed." He said to me upon the completion of the outside shower.

And he told me about the mysterious Noni fruit, which was in plentiful supply in the valley. He told me that rubbing a small amount of the pulp into my wound would have a dramatic effect on my healing. I learnt from my employer that the fruit was renown for its healing tendencies, (some doctors on the mainland were testing its benefits versus cancer) so I agreed to walk into the jungle in search of the elusive fruit and be physically healed. I believe that as my defences were already down, a part of me subscribed to the need to be healed mentally also. I decided; the island had worn me down and now I would go in search of its secrets.

To say something of the nature of Hawai’i it is perhaps best to expound the story of Captain Cook. Cook arrived in Hawai’i in 1779, onboard the Resolution. Up to ten thousand natives ran to the water to greet him. For three weeks Chief Kalaniopuu and his priests, while also replenishing his supplies, entertained him. The departure of the Resolution, amid declarations of friendship, might have been the end of things, had it not been forced to return just a week later, following a storm that left the ship in tatters. But this time the islanders were not so hospitable, far from keen to part with further scarce resources. In an undignified scuffle, surrounded by thousands of hostile warriors including the future Kamehameha the Great, Cook was stabbed, and died at the water’s edge, being a non-swimmer, he was unable to reach safety.

Oh and some also say he dismantled a temple at Napoopoo for firewood and kidnapped their chief. For me I took this to mean the Hawaiians were a friendly people. And that they were fucking hard too.
Hawai’i is often portrayed as a paradise. And it is, of sorts. But with everything it depends on what a person requires from such a place. It depends on what the tourist is prepared to live without for just a taste of it, and Hawai’i is very much American. It is it’s pacific lookout and its playground, the honeymoon capital. Once upon a time it used to be Niagara Falls that assumed that mantle, but romance, as with the rest of the world, is warming up.

You are never far from western homesteads. You may well take in the honeymoon suite; light airy rooms with coral toilet basins, a balcony that looks straight out onto traditional luau’s being performed below in the sunset. The melting Pacific Ocean a glorious backdrop. Ticki torches illuminating the locals exercising their free will to cash in on the holiday bonanza. If you ever want to know the look of complete disgust simply regard a Hawaiian watching some sunburnt couple from Sacramento attempting the hula. You may well stride six or seven feet to your very own private beach, but I guarantee you this; at some point during your two-week stay, you will walk across Kuhio Highway to grab a quarter-pounder with fries. You will hire the Ford Mustang (convertible), grab the complimentary hotel map and set sail for the approved delights of the island. But the coin that Captain Cook tossed in the air centuries ago has, of course, two sides to it.

As well as being America’s first foothold to the east, a useful trading point, it is also its last bastion of the west. You run the road in the United States, starting from the towering skylines of the eastern seaboard, through the inexpressive industrial towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio, either rising north toward the Midwest, or dipping down into the south. Through deserts and plains, nondescript towns of nothing other than bowling alleys and shopping malls, until you reach the west coast, the democratic California, the deciduous forests of Oregon, or the border state of Washington. You are led to believe there is nowhere else to go.

At the beginning of the 20th century, vagabonds and outlaws fled south over the dangerous trails to the Rio Grande, then deep into Mexico. At the beginning of the 21st century (largely due to unrestricted air-travel from the mainland since the annexation in 1959) Hawai’i has become the Mexico for a new generation of outlaws. I mean outlaws in the broadest possible sense, in the sense that they are seeking to escape something, not necessarily jail, or extradition, but a way of life.
Therefore it stands to reason you will always find the same matter that congregates at the end of every road. Surely not every fugitive is what you might think a fugitive is. Some people don’t want to be found that’s all. Hide and seek for the young at heart.

And the island of Kauai is as far as you can go. It simply laughs at everything conventional. It has a circumference of around eighty miles, connected by road. From the air this road would have made a complete circle if it were not for the matter of the rugged Na Pali coastline, fifteen miles of sheer green imbedded cliffs. The wettest point on earth.

The coastline was the bane of all developers, hotel chains and tourist industries. Many times these cliffs had refused them as they tried to complete their tarmac perimeter. The elements remained untouched. It would laugh at construction workers and I thought I could hear it laughing at me. In 1992 hurricane Iniki put paid to any last dreams they had of completing the island and it was left alone. If you wanted to get from Hanalei to Poipu, a geographical distance of twenty miles, you would have to drive around the entire island to get there. Or you could walk in.

Enter my Romanian friend, who would qualify for all three `outlaw` traits. Errol, the Robin Hood of the south pacific was a drifter, a lawbreaker and an illegal alien. But he knew the way into the valley, either by kayak or on foot, he knew the landscape, and upon arrival, he assured me he knew the hierarchy in place back there.
In the beginning I would worry for him (and for us). He had no shoes on,
"The foot is the soul of the body," he would say.
I would warn him of the only real predators on the island, the centipedes that came in either cornflower blue or Arizona sunset red, the blue being more deadly. And the fact that the most probable attack would come upon the bare naked flesh of his foot. He would laugh at me,
"If I were to be bitten, it would be a blessing of the island."
"Like staff infection?" I would ask.
"Like staff infection." He would reply.
We had no real protection from the elements,
"It is God’s wish that we travel light."
On our first night on the trail, feral cats stole virtually all our fresh choice food while we slept the sleep of marijuana cigarettes.
"Are you blind? Do you not see the plentiful fruit hanging from the trees?"
"I see them, do we eat the goats too?"
"Only for sacrifice." He would say, as his lungs would take in large gulps of ocean air. "Only for sacrifice."
Had it not been for his unusually mild demeanour I would have worried more. But his relaxed utterances had a calming effect on me, and due to the fact I was eight thousand miles from home, I placed my blind trust in him. It wasn’t hard to do.

He gave me his spiritual business card and convinced me that George W Bush was a reptilian shapeshifter.

He would show me sights, deep into the jungle away from the beaten trail, waterfalls that you could hear miles before you came upon them. I saw his own private tarot and marijuana garden and bluffs that sat thousands of feet above the ocean, where we would sit for hours in joyous meditation.
I won’t mention in too much detail the things that Errol told me about the valley while on the trail. He told me of the white men out there that fell into two categories, those wanting to be found by something, and those wanting to hide from something. He told me of the brown men who hunted goats and boars usually, but sometimes they would hunt the white men too. I winced as he told me about the girls in there who are so strung into their hippyness that they would refuse to treat their leprosy, preferring instead to wait for mother nature to work her cure. Their skin would flake from their faces and bodies but they would continue to stare at you, leaving you unable to distinguish reality from a bad acid trip. I romanticised slightly when he told me of moonbows. But more than my ears picked up when he mentioned the five Canadian nurses who had kayaked in last month and had promptly removed all their clothes. To the best of Errol’s knowledge, they were all still there.
I cannot recall too much of the logistics in place in the valley. I remember arriving and lying on the beach for hours, staring into the high surf. I bathed in the natural waterfall. I met wondrous people and I met simple people. I found the fantastic Noni fruit and watched with awe as my scars faded away over the days. I remember Matthias, the tall Swede, who one day kayaked in with a number of treats, including a fast decreasing gallon tub of ice cream, which we mixed with our rum. I remember that on one of our many exploratory walks to the back of the jungle we came upon a naked man, sitting under a mango tree. He gave me his spiritual business card and convinced me that George W Bush was a reptilian shapeshifter. I seem to remember crying my eyes out when I met the Mayor of the Valley, when he and Errol both cradled my head and insisted I had been blessed. The trail took us two days of arduous walking, and I stayed there for two months. I helped people plant gardens, I cooked tarot flavoured pizzas. I would walk for hours, sometimes days without seeing a soul. I never met the Canadian nurses. Someone had built a library right at the back of the jungle, full of all kinds of books. I would read volumes of Kipling, Stevenson and Kerouac while resting under guava trees, before returning to the beach to watch the sun decline over in the distant left.

The only thing that kept life real for me was the constant buzzing of helicopters. They would start early every morning. They were the joke of the valley. Everybody knew its cargo; overweight middle class Americans staring down at us taking snapshots, believing they were close with nature. They were only supposed to fly so low, I think it was five hundred feet though this was regularly breached. I recall having visions of the cockpit, the balding chief executive in his Hawaiian shirt pulling out a fat wallet with grubby hands and flashing it under the nose of the pilot.

I sound resentful of these intrusions, and I was. I sometimes wished for bazookas to be the next evolutionary step of the valley. But these helicopters kept me tied to the world; they reminded me there was something to remember. There was something else to worry about. Every time I heard one of these low flying insects they would instil in me thoughts of the outside world. I would remember dreams I had, things I wanted to achieve, and they would drive me on. I could feel myself getting stronger. I would watch the last tourists of the day fly out of view from my lookout hill. Then I would stare into the deep blue Pacific Ocean and feel the newly found clarity I had. Finally, I knew what I was supposed to do; the island was saying goodbye to me.

I left without telling anyone; it seemed the right thing to do. My steps started off slow, unsure as to the path without my guide, but by noon I was running up and down the many bluffs and valleys. I would meet other people on their way in and would hold them in conversation, sometimes joining them in a smoke of their pipe. I sang Bob Dylan songs at the top of my voice while racing around unknown corners. I sat and stared at the ocean from such vantage points as to encourage conversations with God, and at the end of the day, just before nightfall I stumbled out onto the trail starting point, exhausted yet charged.

I managed to hitch a ride with a newly wed couple. I longed to tell them of my recent experiences. I wanted to tell everybody they should go to where I had just left, but futility rang loud in my head.
I couldn’t sleep that night, my mind continued to race along the trail, through creepers and red dirt. I felt like I was running over the world, never stopping. Smiling and still singing Bob Dylan songs. I saw myself writing book after book. I went to India and helped orphans with leprosy overcome their illness. I sailed to Malaysia and built huts for the locals. I became a New Zealand sheepherder.
In the morning I hitched to the island’s only airport.

© Benjamin Ward 2003
Creative Writing Student at Leeds University
email:benjamin_whitehead.yahoo.com

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