Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson

Author:Lucinda Fleeson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2009-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Walk on Mahaulepu — Deconstructing Extinction

WHENEVER IN NEED of a restoration of the spirit, I drove to Mahaulepu, the stretch of deserted white sand I deemed the best beach on earth. My purpose was often simply to be on the beach, to see it, feel the warmth of the sand or let the infinity of the waves wash over me while I made my amateur naturalist’s observations.

As sundown approached, I lurched from side to side along the rutted road trying to miss the deepest potholes. More than once I’d gotten stuck in a big mud hole. But willing young locals who’d been diving for tako — octopus — came along and cheerfully pushed me out. On either side of the dirt track, tall silver tassels of sour grass, Digitaria insularis, rippled elegantly in the breeze across gentle hills. Both it and a shorter, more purple finger grass, Chloris radiata, are native to the Pacific tropics, which means they are growing, more or less, in a place close to their origin.

That couldn’t be said of most of what I saw. As I neared the beach, light blue and violet morning glory blooms gaily lined the roadside. It’s become a pest plant. A ring-neck pheasant burst into the air with a soft thudding. Before such introductions were tightly controlled, modern hunters imported pheasants and other game birds to the islands. At the end of an even more deeply rutted, muddy road lay a small cove, gloriously empty at the end of the day.

Walking along the shoreline, I stopped at a small tidal pool to watch tiny fish zip away from my intruder’s eyes. The endless stretch of turquoise Pacific, the meeting ground of sand and surf and the glow of the sun, put me in a state of serene coexistence with the island elements. The sea reminded me of its infinite power to break mountains into grains of sand, to wash away entire islands, to rise and fall in waves for vast, endless eons. I saw our human world as subject to its rhythms and pace, as it undulates and roars without acknowledgment of our presence.

After every big storm I searched for the petroglyphs, although I never expected to find them. Even Nelson Abreu, the Grove Farm security guard who locks and unlocks the Mahaulepu gate in mornings and evenings, had never seen them. One lucky morning after a storm, a sandstone ledge at water’s edge had surfaced, revealing the carved outline of a turtle about the size of my hand. Nearby, a primitive one-armed man with a spear was scratched in the soft stone. Later that day I rushed back with my friend Fran to share the sighting. By then the tide had started to surge in, settling sand over the rock ledge, and we could not find the carvings.

At the end of the beach, the brown muddy water of Waiopili Stream empties into the ocean. I bent aside dusty milo trees to head upstream, then veered toward a sheer limestone bluff.

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