Above The Clouds

                                     6/15/11   ABOVE THE CLOUDS

           

           

Last week I did some hiking at the 4,000-4,400 foot level of Mauna Kea, the long dormant volcano that we live at the base of.  Below the dirt road that girths the mountain lie mostly forest of Koa, Ohia, and other tropical hardwoods that are invaded by numerous, sometimes very invasive, introduced plants.  A lot of the below the road area is National Forest where the pigs, sheep, and donkeys have been removed and fenced out so the native trees can begin to re-grow.  Inside the fenced areas you can see many Koa seedlings; whereas, outside the fence, only ancient falling apart trees remain as the grazers love the young trees.   Above the road the trees grow more sparsely and more of the volcanic cinders are bare.

My companion and guide for this trip, Bob (pictured below at the Douglas monument), is a 76 year old neighbor, who was a state forest ranger/enforcement officer for many years when much of the now national forest used to be state forest.  He was able to identify many of the plants and trees, including sandalwood which nearly went extinct due to logging for export to the Orient.  I always wondered what sandalwood would smell like and I found a piece of dead wood that Bob passed to me had the aroma of spicy pine.  He also told me interesting things about a plant I already could identify, the Banana Poka. 

            Banana Poka, Passiflora mollissima, is an invasive introduction from South America that bears edible, when ripe, fruit but has larger seeds and a smaller amount of juice than the common passion fruit.  The bright yellow ripe fruits are the shape of a banana and quite eye catching hanging singly, apparently from trees that are known to NOT produce fruit.  The long vines may be sparsely leaved in low light forest till they find their way to the sun, and then they may cover the tree host till they break it or starve it of light.  But they do have beautiful pink flowers that are 4-5” across with a 4” trumpet to a round nectar reservoir.  I saw a honey creeper feeding on one of the flowers across a gulley from us.  When I looked at a flower in my hand I could not imagine how their bill could reach the nectar.  In fact there was no nectar in the one I dissected.  Bob picked five flowers and showed me that four out of the five had a small hole punched in the base of the nectar reservoir, and that is how the honey creeper feeds on them.  In fact, Bob went on to explain that the threatened native birds tended to become less numerous in areas where this invasive was brought under control, so there was less effort to control it in these upper altitudes.  Control may be impossible anyway as the pigs love to feed on the fallen ripe fruits and most of the seeds pass through them spreading them everywhere the pigs roam.  Inside the pig fenced areas the seeds are still spread by fruit eating birds.  The books describe Banana Poka vines as reaching to 60 feet but Bob and I believe that we saw some to nearly 100 feet.

We parked the car several times for short hikes.  Bob’s main focus was on the plum thickets that he remembered and in fact I believe now that is why he chose this day to ask me to drive him up there – the introduced plums were just beginning their season and he was determined to bring back a cooler full. The picture above shows plums below banana poka.  In fact, according to Bob, the plums should have been mostly ripe but even here in Hawaii seasons vary from year to year and this one is late especially at this elevation.  In fact there has been fresh snow fall atop MaunaKea each month this year lasting from a few days to a few hours.  Our first winter here our mountain had had only 4 days of snow all winter.

Our last stop was at Doctors Pit, named for David Douglas, the Scottish botanist who stopped here in 1833-4 on his way back to England from Northwest America and for whom the Douglas Fir (really a genus all its own) is named.  We parked the car and followed a weed wacked trail down the hill into a forest surrounded flat spot next to a vegetation covered pit crater.  Here there is a monument to David Douglas who died near this spot, in the pit trampled by a bull.  The story is that he was exploring with a local bull hunter as guide, when he fell into a pit that was used to catch wild cattle.  When help arrived to recover the body it was in pieces.  The bull hunter was suspected as less money was found with the body than Douglas was known to be carrying.   And, of course, there is another large plum thicket there.  I also picked and mostly ate out of hand a native kind of salmon berry that was bore fruit over 2” in diameter that is good eating from dark red to purple if you can tolerate a bitter aftertaste.  In the fenced forest 200 yards below is one of the several Sugi Pine groves from Japan that were planted for timber about 80 years ago.  Right next to the monument is a small grove of Douglas fir.  I doubt any logging will resume in this national forest unless the political climate changes drastically.  The road in is so long and bumpy that I had to drive 6-10 mph for an hour after leaving the paved summit road.

On the way back we were reminded of the difficulties of managing land in patchwork ownership.  For over a hundred years cattle have ranged the whole mountain, and in the effort to save native flora, increasing areas have been fenced to exclude the cattle, sheep and pigs.  Since the late 1940’s much of it has been put under federal management, and now, Bob thinks, there should not be any range animals.  Yet on the way in we saw manure on the road and one dead cow.  Heading out in late afternoon we saw lots of cattle, three sheep and a couple pigs.  We also saw turkeys, quail, ring necked pheasants and grouse (the biggest I’ve ever seen) which were all introduced and managed as game birds.  In addition we spotted three pairs of Nepalese Kalij pheasants that we also have a family of in the lowland forest behind our house and I’ve rarely seen at Volcanoes National Park.

Those huge grouse mentioned above live in a treeless area dominated by gorse, which is a thorny shrub imported from Scotland, to serve as fence hedge rows, but like so many plants they became an invasive nightmare that now covers thousands of acres.  A kind of tent caterpillar that eats the leaves and a weevil that eats the seed heads are being used as biological controls, and in one area it appears they have mechanically cut and windrowed the gorse between planted rows of koa trees.  Bob says there used to be lots of frogs (another introduced invasive) in some of the reservoirs in this area but we heard none and some of the reservoirs are dry.  On the way back down the mountain it started raining and has continued raining at least part of everyday since.  This year has been nearly rainfall normal.

Aloha!

   

4/22/11 THE SPICE OF LIFE

If variety is the spice of life I guess we’ve had a well seasoned April and there is still a week to go.  We started the month still in the drought then had 10 days of rain that included one day of 2.4” and another of 6”.  Since then it has been mostly dry again and the garden will need watering tomorrow if we don’t get a shower tonight.  The bananas have loved it and I’ve kept the food drier busy at least half the days.

We’ve improved our tropical sustainability skills this month by starting to harvest our kalo (taro) and learning to steam it instead of boiling it first before making other things so it doesn’t get too slimy.  We still like it best fried but I’ve added about 2 cups steamed grated kalo to each of the last two four-loaf batches of bread.  It makes the bread very smooth and fine textured and everyone liked it.

We also learned to better utilize our coconuts thanks to a friend from the Hakalau Crew giving me his old coconut shredder.  It is a 4” hemisphere shaped tool with burrs and a shield over the top of it that is mounted on ½ hp. motor.  This saves us having to dig the meat out with a knife then cut it up then shred it in a blender.  It is not only quicker but also does a finer job resulting in richer milk or smoother pudding if that is the end product.  I had to rebuild the shield and make a table strong enough to clamp the motor base to.  I also mounted a 1” steel spike to a porch post for husking the coconuts so I guess that I tripled my speed at both jobs and will probably get faster.

We also made three trips this month, one to a new place and two to old favorite snorkeling places.  In Volcanoes National Park the Chain of Craters Road has always been blocked at Mauna Ulu as long as we’ve been here because of dangerous gases.  This month the road was reopened so we decided to go see it quick before it closes again.  The road runs from the summit, at 4,000 feet, along the east rift zone to the Ocean where the road was blocked by several lava flows from ’77-’92.  There were some beautiful views on the way down and it is mind boggling how many million acres of lava have boiled out of the ground but it was hot at the lower elevations and got monotonous by the time we drove back up to the summit in order to return home back down the other side of the rift. 

Some lava pictures are attached. The Photo with the face in the lava is from the Mauna Ulu area and the rest of the lava pictures are from the end of the road.  The nose on the face was placed there by a human I believe.  

The 2 snorkeling trips of the month were to “two step” and the Kapoho tide pools.  For the first we were joined by our visitors Rick and Linda and we made it an around the whole Belt Road in one day starting to the South.  While Rick and Linda toured “the place of refuge” archeological site we snorkeled the adjoining wildlife refuge.  It was not the best of conditions there so soon after the storms because the water was not as clear as usual and the fish were less numerous.  It left us yearning for the always clear water of the Tide Pools.

A few days later we drove to the Tide Pools knowing that a long dead whale had been in and out with the tides and was now on the rocks there somewhere.  As we approached the tide pools I got a whiff of stench but by the time we got to the diving parking we were no longer down wind.  We could see the grey mound of what was left of the whale south of the tide pools but didn’t smell it there at all and we had a good dive including spotting an eel (Magnificent Snake Eel) for the first time in that location.  The parking here is is part of the private development and no facilities are provided probably because the local residents want to avoid having more visitors.  Since this is such a special place and part of it is already a marine preserve, I think it should be purchased by the county 2% Fund (same as the Conservation Futures Fund in Spokane County) but there are already a long list of properties in waiting, though I think most are much less worthy.  In addition, due to the economic crisis payments into the Fund are currently suspended to bolster the general fund and a move is being made to reduce it to 1% in the future.

     Aloha!