FINALLY HOME ON HAWAII

JULY 6, 2009 ON HAWAII

I’ve now finally joined my wife as a resident of the State of Hawaii and the island of Hawaii.  I didn’t quite get everything out of the old residence but hopefully was close enough that my son and friends will finish for me.  So much Stuff I will never have again!

I arrived mid afternoon on the forth of July and was at my first luau by 6:00 pm.  It was a graduation party for the son of one of the people that Myrna works with and the people (about 200) were all very friendly.  The 3 piece string band included an amazing electric ukulele player.   We ate several new things and saw the Hilo fireworks as we left.

Sunday we did a lot of unpacking and I started assembling the bookcases, some for the third time and I hope the last!  At the end of the day I took a short bicycle ride to Wielea and toured the art exhibit and museum that is always open, as in door standing wide open, next to the BUDDHIST BED AND BREAKFAST where I will suggest you stay if you visit when our guest house is already full.  It was nice to see the history of this neighborhood and to feel that here were kindred spirits in the sense of community organizing for good causes.

Monday morning as Myrna headed off to work I went for a hike down the gully below our house.  I’m always on the lookout for wild foods I can try and this morning I was hoping to find some ripe bananas because although we have lots of them on our place and the vacant lot next door, none are ripe just now.  I saw lots of bananas all right, including some red ones that I’d like to try but they weren’t ready either.  I did see 2 or 3 kinds of yam and gathered a couple called air potatoes because they grow above ground.  I’ve read that some of the yam tubers can grow to 20 pounds and more but the air potato kind only gets to a couple pounds.

I went under the highway through a 6’ X 6’ cement waterway that was dry, then around the lava stone culvert beneath the old railway grade that was smaller, darker and unsafe looking.  I saw a large avocado tree with round fruit a long way from ready.  Every where there are lots of invasive weed trees of different sorts changing the ecology of the area.  Here there are African tulip trees, Alexandra Palm and ironwood trees crowding out the old species.

The sound of surf became very loud before I reached the edge of the cliff over looking waves breaking over rocks.  I’d guess the drop to the rocks was 130’ and I was reminded of the many migrant workers who were so over worked in the sugar fields and so underpaid before unionization that they could never get out of debt to the company store so that in despair they walked over the edge.

The bottom of the gulley had lots of taro which is the old reliable standby food from which poi is made.  On our Island it is called Kalo.  I don’t like poi but I’ve heard the root is good fried so I would have brought some back to try except that I did find a ripe clump of bananas as I returned home and that was all I wanted to carry (I didn’t worry about a property owner intending to harvest these because the gully was too rugged for sending workers into and these already had been started by the birds eating them which is why even if they are in your backyard you always pick them a little before they ripen).  It turned out that this clump tastes like Cavendish (the most commonly grown commercial variety) so I’ll still be looking forward to our own which have better flavor.

Not long after I returned from my hike the cable installer arrived so now we have the fastest internet we’ve ever had and you get this story of my day!

We ate the air potatoes in stir fry.  They were good.  I later learned that they are not recommended because they are a bit poisonous unless thoroughly cooked.  Desert was best though, smoothie made from 3 frozen bananas and one mountain apple (looks like apple, tastes like a mild pear and is related to neither) from our own plant/trees and a papaya from the farmers market in Hilo.  Now we’ve had our evening walk and it is time to let the coqui frogs sing us to sleep.