Ode to the Saint of Adventure

Living in Territorial Hawai'i

Ode to the Saint of Adventure

By the time I was nine, I had flown with my dad to four neighbor islands in the Territory of Hawai’i. This was prior to Hawai’i becoming a state in 1959. I was born into a thrill-seeking adventurer’s dream life, and happy to accompany him on any adventure, especially when it involved flying.

On this occasion, dad has flown his co-pilot wife and two daughters to Maui, specifically to view the sunrise at Mt. Haleakala. In the fifties, it was all country; ranch land, horse farms, and green that undulated along the slopes of Haleakala. The pastoral pleasures were unlike any other to me, to be completely surrounded in green, when my entire life was made up of blue sea and blue sky and sand colors in between. The air even smelled green, fresh with the then constant moisture, before meadows went dry. I remember the scent of vetiver in patches of pili grass, and the way the horses loved to stand in that patch, under the tree.

We are staying with our family friends on the upper slopes of Kula, a cool enfoldment of tall grasses, interrupted with narrow snaking roads. The Harnishvegers were from Philadelphia, she a Mennonite, and he an inventor and industrialist who built much of the machinery used to develop the islands after WWII. When they first arrived on Maui, they found an old ranch house and after fixing it up decided they never wanted to leave Maui.

“It’s a paradise fit for those who find God in the flowers.” Mr. H would say. They had a long driveway lined with Jacaranda trees, and to drive under the canopy in spring with purple petals falling over our car and across our path probably set my nature as a pagan, or at least a life-time nature worshiper.

We prepared for our ascent to the top of the old volcano in the middle of the night by going to bed early. It felt like the night before Christmas, so full of expectation and already as cold as a snowman.

It takes forever to inch straight up the mountain. There are no road lights to guide my dad, it is pitch black beyond the station wagon’s lights. As with his flying, he carefully negotiates his course, and we creep up the very narrow two-lane gravel road. If we crashed it would be into a mountain face or over a cliff on the other. At the mountain top, there is no sound but the wind. I braced myself against the coldest I had ever been, pulling all my layers closer around my chest.

“You look like an astronaut about to walk on the moon,” my dad jokes about my multilayers of jackets and pants.

I am quick to respond, “I’m walking like an astronaut because I’m wearing sixteen jackets because it’s freezing.”

Even the orange juice I drank on the drive up here is freezing! Once we turn off our flashlights, the stars are our only source of light. We are standing on the crusty rim at the top of an immense series of volcanoes. The still night sky pulls us along, our feet crunching over loose lava rock, echoing in the absolute stillness.

Mt. Haleakala is a vast crater, able to erupt again, and in all its volcanic blackness and savage beauty, dad finds a spot to sit. He has been combing the rough lava rock with his booted foot. I follow him closely, touching the sharp lava rocks with my mittened hands. Though covered in wool layers, I am still shivering.

It is just before sunrise with the sky still host to a universe of stars when my cold gives way to wonder. Like magic, colors began to emerge from blackness. When the sun rises over the volcanic rim, a shimmer of light catches fire. A new day is born in scarlet reds and magentas, and beams of tangerine tinged in gold. To see the sun rise over the clouds, spilling its magic over the horizon is surely a DNA changing experience.

“You will never forget this sunrise, I assure you,” dad promises, with his strong Bostonian conviction.

Our dad, the Saint of Adventure, the founder of fun. We believe him because we believe everything about him. He sparks our adventurous spirit with our family adventures and with stories of his past adventures and discoveries.