Oh Lahaina! Part 1

In August of 2023, most of the town of Lahaina, on Maui was burned to the ground in a tragic fire that ripped through at a fierce speed destroying most of the old wooden, historic buildings, homes, neighborhoods and businesses.  Lahaina is a Hawaiian town that Emmy loves, for as a 22 year old she lived there for 9 months and it holds her memories. This story of loss is a tribute to a town rich with history, and  it's a story of a place that taught Emmy to know her True Self, her Wise Self. 

Special thanks to Greg Starbird on guitar
Lahaina Song: written by Emmy and Gaby
Music by:
Zapsplat.com
Pixabay: Sergei Paukin, Julius H, Oleksii Kaplunskyi, Olexy, Rovador
Kevin MacLeod, Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC
Seaven Tears, Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC
Tim Taj, Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC-ND
Crowander, Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC
Tojamura, Free Music Archive, CC BY_NC

www.sacred-truths.com

Transcript

Oh Lahaina!
This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham
Lahaina Song

At one time in my life, I walked the streets of Lahaina, Hawaii, a small, seaport town on west Maui, hot, hungry, penniless, homeless, and full of hope. I waited out the pangs of hunger among its parks, sought shelter from the relentless sun under the shade of the Banyan Tree,  endured sunburn and blistered feet, knew the location of all the public restrooms, viewed the most spectacular sunsets from King Kamehameha park, and at night, crept to a spot tucked away on the beach that I hoped would be safe, and slept to the soothing sounds of the gentle ocean waves. 

 This Lahaina no longer exists. In August of 2023, most of the town was burned to the ground in a tragic fire that ripped through at a fierce speed destroying most of the old wooden, historic buildings, homes, neighborhoods and businesses. I can no longer call the place where I spent 9 months as a young woman my Lahaina, for I haven’t lived there in almost 40 years. And yet, it will always be ‘My Lahaina’ for it holds my memories, it formed me, and like any town, it is a living being, made up of the buildings, the landscape, and the community of people who inhabit it, and that I grew to love. 

 I sometimes study a picture of myself that was taken at age 22, when I was newly arrived in Lahaina, that had been captured by a professional photographer and published in a photo book called “Maui on My Mind.” In the photo I am walking north down Front street, carrying my belongings: a duffle bag, a handbag and my guitar, wearing a brown dress and flip flops. My fresh, youthful face stares back at the camera, with a slight uncertainty in my eyes.  My face in the photo reveals the maze of uncertainty that was my future, with no sound course of direction. The town of Lahaina, that was once home to Hawaiian Royalty and had lured whalers and missionaries, had in fact lured me. In looking back, I now know that it was no accident I had landed somewhat arbitrarily in Lahaina.  It’s almost as if the town had been waiting for me

I came to Maui in 1985, 2 weeks after graduating from college, and arrived in Lahaina with barely a day’s worth of wages to my name. During the time I spent there, the island, the land itself, wrapped me in love, compassion, affection and mercy.  I felt it in the soft warm breeze that held and nurtured, the abundant fragrance of flowers that caressed, the rainbow colors of the West Maui mountains that soothed, the shimmers of blue and turquoise in its gentle warm oceans that whispered ‘home’. “Another shitty day in paradise,” the Lahaina locals sometimes said – meaning – it doesn’t matter how difficult life is, it is too beautiful here to feel depressed.  The land was the embodiment of aloha.

Aloha – more than just a greeting of welcome or good-bye, Native Hawaiians know it to be a complex word, with no real equivalent in English.  The best English translation of the Hawaiian word aloha is love, compassion, peace, affection and mercy.  The complexity of Aloha encompasses care and respect for all people and the land. The spirit of aloha is in giving and receiving positive energy which ripples out into the world and is multiplied. It is heart and mind in unity cultivating connectivity and peace. 

 I didn’t know it then, but I came to Maui to know my True Self – to find wisdom - not the kind of wisdom I could learn from a book, for I’d had enough of that, but a different kind of wisdom: My Wisdom, which ran surprisingly deep and lived within me. The wisdom that was a part of me, that, at age 22, I needed to meet or get to know better. I needed to create a relationship, a friendship with my inner wisdom and learn to trust it. Maui showed me how. 

 The last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili’uokalani, who in 1893 faced US Marines, was placed under a two-year house arrest, and was eventually forced to abdicate the throne and live her final days as a private citizen until her death in 1917, has said, “Aloha is to learn what is not said, to see what cannot be seen and to know the unknowable.”

 It was on Maui that I began my journey of discovering a deeper, mystical part of myself: for it was on Maui that I learned to hear what was not said, to see the unseeable and to know the unknowable. 

 After graduating from college, I had one goal: to get to Japan.  I did not want any more schooling, I did not want to start a career, but I did want to travel, and for reasons I didn’t understand, Japan called me.  I knew very little about Japan, had no plans or money for how I would get to Japan or what I would do once I was in Japan, I just knew that I needed to get there. Gaby, a friend of mine from New York who had recently moved to Maui, suggested I come to Maui to live while I figured it all out. First off it was beautiful, and as she pointed out, I could work and save money and by being in Hawaii, I was already halfway towards my goal of getting to Japan. She had no place of her own to live, she explained, so we had to get creative in our living arrangements. It sounded good to me and I put all of my savings into a one-way ticket to Maui, landing at Kahului airport on June 1st.  

 My first night on Maui was spent in Paia, a town in north Maui, where we slept at a friend’s house.  Paia, known then as a small hippie town of a few thousand people, was not a tourist attraction. There was not much to do: a few surf shops, art shops, a gas station, and Charley’s Restaurant, a gathering spot for locals. Tourists sometimes trickled in for food or gas before heading off to other island destinations. When I think of Paia, I remember it most for its amazing Baldwin beach – a beautiful white sand public beach with palm trees and the gorgeous aqua blue sea.  It is also known for Hookipa bay – a dangerous rocky beach where professional surfers surfed. Looking down at Hookipa bay from the road above, I watched professional surfers from around the world do stunts and fetes that were incredible to me. It was mesmerizing and terrifying!

 Sitting in Charley’s restaurant over coffee the following morning, we discussed our possible options. If we want to get jobs, Gaby said, we have to go to Lahaina. Lahaina was a popular seaport town in West Maui with restaurants and shops and plenty of tourists.  We were both broke, so after a night of sleeping on Baldwin Beach, we hitchhiked to Lahaina the next morning.  Hitch hiking was illegal in Hawaii, but I learned that a lot of people did it. The trick was to just stand on the side of the road – no thumb out – and eventually, somebody was likely to pull over and give you a ride. We hitchhiked around the island quite regularly as our mode of transportation.  A friend had a PO Box in Paia and there were about 10 of us who used it, so one of us or both of us ended up hitchhiking out to Paia regularly to pick up our mail. 

 By midafternoon, we were dropped off at the main road that led to Lahaina.  With our bags slung over our shoulders, and me clutching my guitar as well, we made our way down Front Street, the main thoroughfare into the heart of town. A town of roughly 10,000 people, it was much bigger than Paia. With the ocean on our left, we walked past the Lahaina Shores Hotel, an elementary school named for a King who unified the islands, and heading towards the Marina, we passed the Banyan Tree, the Pioneer Inn, the Baldwin missionary house (built in 1832, the oldest house in Lahaina)  – all the places that would soon be very familiar to me. Front Street had been declared a National Historic District in 1962, and many of the buildings were two-story wooden structures that had been constructed in the late 19th century when the whaling industry was still booming, or early 1900s. They were old, but quaint and with fresh paint were quite charming. Many of the buildings’ second floors had open porches with views of the ocean. I felt excited walking through Lahaina with its many shops and restaurants, this small, quaint, seaport town that was full of tourists and jobs and money and hope.

 Except that it wasn’t.  United Airlines, the major airline that flew to Hawaii, was on strike, and consequently, there were very few tourists in Hawaii, and practically no tourists in Lahaina.  The restaurants barely managed to stay open without visitors and no one was hiring. Over the next few days, I visited every single eating establishment in town: sometimes they took my application, sometimes not.  But they all said the same thing: we aren’t hiring; there are no tourists. 

Scholars dispute when the Hawaiian Islands were first settled by the Polynesians, possibly they arrived as far back as 1500 years ago. But they mostly agree that the island’s inhabitants lived in isolation for at least 500 years, until the arrival of the first European, Captain James Cook in 1778.  Hawaii would see rapid change from this point forward, much of it occurring under the reign of the Kamehameha dynasty, and the islands would witness the arrival of whalers and American missionaries, the installation of mostly American run sugar plantations, pineapple farms and the arrival of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino immigrants to work the plantations. At the turn of the century, Hawaii would be overthrown and annexed by the United States, and in 1959 would become the 50th US state. 

 The original name for the town of Lahaina was “Lele” which means ‘cruel or merciless sun’. In 1802, Lahaina became the capitol of the newly United Kingdom of the Hawaiian islands under King Kamehameha I who resided there.  It was then a town of roughly 2,400 people who engaged in fishing, farming and foresting for the China sandal wood trade.  Known for its calm waters and good weather, it was also a prime location for whale migration routes. 

 The island’s Kapu religion, a polytheistic religion of many gods and goddesses, spirits and guardians ended with the death of King Kamehameha I. His death corresponded with the arrival of the first American whaling boat, the Balena, which sailed out of New Bedford, Ma and into Lahaina on October 1, 1819.  As religious law fell, and as more whaling vessels arrived, Lahaina developed a reputation among whaling men as a bawdy town abundant with rum and women. During the peak whaling years, as many as 429 whaling ships were berthed in Lahaina’s harbors, and as many as 1500 sailors went ashore at any time. When I lived in Lahaina, the Carthaginian III, a replica of a 19th C whaling boat, was anchored at the marina in front of the old courthouse. To say it was small is an understatement.  It reminded me of the Mayflower replica that I had seen in Plymouth, Ma as a youth. Gazing at this small vessel that sailed for months circumnavigating Cape Horn to arrive at an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, gave me a nauseated, anxious feeling.

 In 1823, concerned about the effects of the bawdy sailors on her people, Queen Kaahumanu invited the New England missionaries to come to Lahaina in an effort to control the mayhem. The first missionaries from New England arrived in Maui in 1823 and by October of that year, the first Christian church on the island was dedicated.  

The missionaries influenced many aspects of island life: they advised the royal court and, in an effort to control the whalemen, prohibited spitting, the sale of what they referred to as the demon rum and fornication anywhere.  While some sea captains favored the laws others were angry for they argued that the life of a sailor was harsh and these men needed their comforts in port. Riots began to break out.

 The first serious one was in 1825 that threatened the lives of the missionaries and in 1827, an English whaler went so far as to fire cannons into the harbor front.  Queen Keopuoani responded by installing sea-facing cannons in Lahaina. In 1832 on what was to become Wharf and Canal streets, a 20-foot-high fort covering an acre of land was built. It was used as a prison until 1850. 

 The missionaries continued their work and, in 1831 they established the first high school to educate Hawaiian teachers. They also introduced the printing press, new ways of dressing and helped create a written form of the Hawaiian language. 

 Whaling hit its peak in the mid-1800s. It was a multi-million-dollar operation and continued on into the turn of the century. However, when Honolulu became the capital in 1843, and with the influence of the missionaries, Lahaina lost much of the bawdy reputation it once had, but the town continued to thrive serving whalers and visitors. 

 During my time in Lahaina, the town was the occasional stopping grounds for US navy fleets.  180 years after the first whaling ships arrived, large US navy ships sat anchored at sea for a week at a time, while masses of young sailors dressed in white uniforms were brought to shore, seeking it appeared, entertainment, alcohol and women, much like the whaling men of old.   ‘Squids’ they were called by the locals.  Their presence seemed to make the local men uneasy.  I remember one guy I knew, cycling up and down Front street on his bicycle one night, shouting, ‘Squids are coming! Squids are coming!”  much like Paul Revere riding out to Lexington warning the colonists of the British arrival. Surely, this scene was reminiscent of when the old whaling sailors came to shore, and when these modern-day sailors arrived, I stayed away and out from their radar as much as possible.

Gaby had a knack for finding people who connected us to work or places to stay and soon after our arrival in Lahaina, the owner of Lelani’s, a small, women’s clothing boutique on Front Street, offered us a part-time job ironing the new clothes that came in for the shop. It was just an hour or two of work every day and we were paid $5 an hour.  We were ecstatic.  On a typical day we woke at dawn, having slept on the beach near the Lahaina Shores Hotel, and quickly rolled up our sleeping bags lest we be discovered by a law enforcement officer. Getting into our swimsuits, we stashed our things in a bush and jogged on the beach.  It was part of my routine to run and swim daily and I wasn’t going to let homelessness and joblessness stop me.  Usually not a soul was up at this time, while we ran barefoot for a few miles on the beautiful hard sand,– back and forth on the long beach in front of the hotel, before jumping into the calm warm water to swim a mile. This routine took about an hour. After which we used the outdoor hotel shower – the one for guests to shower off sand and salt before coming to the pool. Here we washed our hair and our bodies well before any hotel guests appeared.  In this way, we stayed clean – clean for ourselves, clean for our jobs or our job searching.  Every morning at 6am, a handsome, tall Hawaiian man in his mid-twenties, named Kana, who worked at the hotel pool came on duty. Kana cleaned the pool, set up the patio chairs, and cleaned the bathrooms. He noticed us showering each morning, but never said anything. We waited until he unlocked the bathrooms, to change into clean clothes, brush our teeth and comb our hair.  We were quick and respectful, cleaned up after ourselves, and left quietly and promptly before any guests or hotel supervisor appeared. After a few days of this, Kana switched his routine, unlocking the bathrooms as soon as he arrived, and letting us know when they were available.  Our lives in Lahaina were sprinkled with angels like Kana, people who quietly helped us, to which I am still grateful.

 Off to our ironing job we’d go, where one of us would iron, and the other sat, and we’d talk about our thoughts and ideas and in this way, we’d pass the early morning taking turns with the ironing. We were paid in cash anywhere from 5 to 10 dollars depending on the amount of ironing.  The cash in our pockets gave us a brief surge of power, and often we went around the corner, to a quiet coffee shop on Hotel Street across from the Pioneer Inn to drink hot tea or coffee. Oh, the delight of that hot beverage after a night of sleeping outside, and a good workout. That first sip was heavenly. We read the paper, wrote letters or chatted. Sometimes we went to Longhy’s for our coffee, a fancy restaurant on the other end of town, in an old building with paned glass windows, where we sat at the bar and drank unlimited coffee while reading the paper. So much of my day was spent walking through town, looking for a place to hang out, trying to find privacy, that these moments of civility, sitting at a table with others, was just heavenly. Our afternoons were spent searching for work, but after a while, I had worn out every avenue and it was really just a matter of luck or waiting it out until the United Airlines strike ended.  If there was any money left over from ironing, we bought a bag of corn chips and munched on those throughout the day. We were often very hungry, and when it became unbearable, I took walks in search of stray mangos. Some of the houses on the side streets had mango trees in the front yards.  June was mango season and if a ripe mango fell from the tree into the street, it was public domain.  After collecting a small pile of mangos, we’d eat them under a tree at King Kamehameha park also called Sunset Park, adjacent to the Pioneer Inn, laughing, so happy to have something to eat, the juice from the mangos running down our chins. 

The Pioneer Inn was built near the harbor in 1901 to accommodate Lahaina’s visitors after Hawaii had become an established US Territory. A two-story wooden structure, the Pioneer Inn is well-known by its green and white exterior and its wrap around porch circumscribing the rooms on the second floor. The first floor housed the lobby with a bar and restaurant and many shops. It was the only hotel in west Maui until the 1950s.  

 Our sleeping arrangements were sporadic and differed from night to night, but thanks to a young man named Dan who we met at the park one day, Gaby and I had the opportunity to stay at the historic Pioneer Inn for a few nights. We found Dan to be very kind and respectful, and as we chatted and he learned of our lifestyle, he told us he was a guest at the Inn and he offered us the use of the second double bed in his room for he didn’t need it. We liked him, we trusted him and while we didn’t want to intrude on his privacy, he insisted we would be welcome. So, at the end of the day, we climbed the stairs up to the second floor wrap around porch to his room which overlooked the ocean.  This was the original part of the hotel which was built at the turn of the century. The other additions were added later, making it a C-shaped structure. A posting of the list of house rules from 1901 said women were not allowed in the room and guests were not allowed to give their bed to a friend, and delightedly, we were violating both.  One night, we sat on the balcony and sang songs with Dan while he played his guitar.  Ah, sleeping in a bed, and using a private bathroom!  It was a luxury.  The room was simple and clean with wooden floors and all the original turn of the century woodwork. At dawn, we quietly crept out so as not to intrude on his space. 

 Hawaii was so colorful, we often felt compelled, as many other women did, to pick a flower for our hair each morning: hibiscus, plumeria, whatever we found.  It was a beautiful tradition that made us feel special, and pretty and feminine. After a few short weeks, I was self-conscious of the dark east coast clothes I wore.  Most of the locals wore bright colors and I felt very out of sorts in my dark navies. The island was alive with color. Swimming out in the ocean in front of the Lahaina Shores Hotel, I sometimes gazed back at the land and took in the magnificent West Maui mountains. They were alive with texture, and rainbow colors which always took my breath away. The mountains were majestic, colorful, and bold.  They were comforting to behold. I knew they had seen centuries of human activity on these shores, they had seen many people come and go, they had even witnessed humans firing cannons at each other.  Their message to me was they had been here a long time and would continue to be there for a long time. Emmy, they said, you too are majestic and powerful. Find this within yourself and anchor in it. The aqua blue water I swam in was warm, clear and inviting, with soft, clean white sand below.  The message from the calm water in the Lahaina shorefront was different from that of the mountains. It lovingly beckoned me, gently held me, lightly and laughingly played with me. It delighted in me, nurtured and soothed.  It told me I was deserving of such things. Yes, the island spoke to me all the time. The beauty of the island was constant and it affected every sense of my being. Rainbows were a daily sight, the sweet fragrance of flowers came through on the gentle breeze, and each night the sunset never failed to be a unique combination of reds, oranges, yellows, purples – an absolute spectacle that I watched with awe every evening, usually sitting with a handful of tourists and random pot dealers at Sunset Park. There was no dusk in Lahaina; as soon as the sun set, it simply became dark. 

And just like that, Gaby got a part time job at a juice bar. It was located on Front Street in a very small outdoor shopping plaza near the beautiful Wo Hing Chinese Social Hall that was built by Chinese immigrants in 1913. Was our luck turning? We continued the ironing job and she worked a few afternoons or evenings a week. It wasn’t much money but it gave us a little extra for food and laundry. The manager of the juice bar allowed us to store our bags of clothes and my guitar in his office, allowing us to come and go as needed.  Through her job, Gaby started to meet more locals and one of them was a young man named Lee, about 23 years old from Montana. Lee was a carpenter who had a job building a house on Front street, about a mile down the road.  The owner of the house allowed him to set up a tent so he could live on the property while the house was being built, but forbade him from letting anyone else sleep there. Gaby told Lee we had no place to live and Lee offered to share his tent with us with the caveat that we leave at dawn well before his boss came, as he did not want to be caught violating his agreement. Each night around 9pm, after Gaby closed down the juice bar, we walked to Lee’s tent where all three of us squeezed in to sleep.  We were very disciplined about getting up and out of there by 5am where we walked to the public restroom, and then all the way down to the Lahaina Shores hotel where we did our run and our swim and our shower. I liked walking down quiet and empty Front street in the early morning.  The morning sun left a golden glow on the buildings. It was early enough that it wasn’t yet terribly hot and some of the store proprietors were often out hosing off the sidewalk in front of their businesses. Eventually, I got to know a lot of these local business owners and workers.  We were a small town, but that group that worked downtown was a smaller, tighter group. I also knew many of the local pot dealers who catered mostly to tourists, riding their bikes around town or out to Ka’anapali, the resort hotel area about 5 miles north of Lahaina. Most of the dealers were homeless too, and after a while, everyone who slept outside knew of each other.  We were the new girls in town, and these guys took note of us. Many people I knew had unusual sleeping and living arrangements, like Lee and his tent.  

 I had to adapt to the surfing culture, for it was pretty much everywhere and as a native New Yorker, this was new to me.  It was a common site to see surfboards strapped to the top of cars.  When the surf was up, many people dropped everything and ran toward the waves, boards under their arms.  Lahaina didn’t have the big waves like the other parts of the island, so most serious surfers hung out elsewhere.  However, it was not unusual to see surfers heading to the water at the first signs of dawn, often running past us with their boards in the semi darkness when we were sitting up in our sleeping bags, wiping the sleep from our eyes.  

 It wasn’t long before we met Steve Omar, a world renown surfer and a well-known Lahaina local. Steve had been a surfing legend in the 1960s and 70s.  He had travelled the world, won all kinds of competitions, had accomplished daring fetes, starred in surfing movies, wrote and directed a few more. When I met him, he was about 40 and he had a shop in Lahaina and gave surfing and windsurfing lessons on the calm shores of Lahaina near the marina. One evening he and I sat at a table at the juice bar courtyard while Gaby worked and Steve told me stories of his surfing adventures from around the world, how he traveled with very little money.  A lean, tall man with a narrow face, his skin was tan and weathered from the wind and sun.  His sun-bleached blond hair was parted at the side and came to his chin, which he patted and pushed back every so often. He was soft-spoken, and gentle mannered and had a distinct southern California inflection in his voice.  He’d been living on Maui for almost 20 years by then and lived simply. He was not loud or showy and I never would have guessed he was a surfing legend. He told me about hurricanes he’d surfed, how fun they were because the waves were enormous.  And he told me how he had windsurfed from island to island –navigating to all the Hawaiian islands on surfboard. 

 He invited us to come by to his surf shop sometime and try our hand at wind surfing as his guests.  On Gaby’s next day off we arrived at his shop at 9am. I had never surfed in my life.  The waves in Lahaina were small so it was great for beginners but I soon discovered that wind surfing was hard!  First, I had to learn how to balance on the board. Then I had to figure out how to haul a heavy sail out of the water and hold it upright and then determine how to hold it in such a way that the wind propelled it.  Steve was a patient and encouraging teacher and after a while left us to it while he tended to other students or people wanting to rent boards. I fell off the board countless times but was determined to get it.  Gaby and I were in the water for 8 hours that day. By the end of the day, we were getting the hang of it, and we each managed to sail up and down the shore line, back and forth a few hundred yards.  I knew I’d never be a surfer.  It was fun, and it took enormous physical strength, but it wasn’t for me.  Still, my heart was full and indebted to Steve for gifting us this experience. However, at the end of the day, I had the worst sunburn of my life.  This was before sunscreen; we didn’t even think about such precautions. It took me three days until I was even able to sleep, the burns on my back were so terribly painful.

 The road to Hana is curvy and passes over 15 waterfalls. It takes over 2 and a half hours to get there by car from Lahaina.  Hana is a place on the far east side of the island, nestled in a rain forest.  The first time I went to Hana was with Lee, who was meeting up with friends to camp for a few days. Gaby was working the juice bar and encouraged me to go as she had already been.  Lee and I hitched a ride to Makena beach at the end of his workday where we unfurled our sleeping bags on the sand in the dark and clunked out.  Up early the next day, we made it to Hana that afternoon where his Lahaina friends Maria and Don, were already camping at Wai’anapanapa State Park. While Lahaina is the dessert side of the island and hardly ever sees rain, Hana is quite the opposite. Daily rainfall creates a lush tropical rain forest and it was a land of waterfalls. The smells were pungent, the birds abundant. I saw so many firsts on that trip: wild ginger and its gorgeous red flower, papaya trees, guava, and breadfruit. Walking through the rain forest, where the leaves of trees and plants were often dripping with moisture from a previous rainfall, it was dark, moist, cool, and I saw massive leaves belonging to tropical plants that I couldn’t identify. How nice to feel the moisture in the air and on my skin and to have the occasional warm rainfall. Tropical birds with their bright foliage and strange calls were abundant, birds I’d never seen before like the apapane and i’iwi. Fruit was growing wild along the roadside or in the forest and it was easy to pick and eat. An absolute paradise. Having never eaten guava before, I learned that when ripe, the peel can be eaten. Fresh papaya right from the tree was like nothing I had ever experienced. I had no money and so I hadn’t brought any food at all with me on this camping trip. I was glad for the fruit access and for Maria.  She prepared beautiful meals and generously fed me.  I enjoyed my time with her, our talks around the campfire and her incredible hospitality towards me. We were near black sands beach which literally is a beach with black sand, where we swam and walked and frolicked. We swam in caves in that area too, and driving back in Don and Maria’s car, we stopped at seven sacred pools, a series of waterfalls and pools that were astoundingly beautiful and that we swam in and jumped into, fresh wonderful water that pooled and spilled down on its way to the ocean.  Hana became a much-loved destination for me during my time on Maui.  

Lahaina’s heat could be relentless.  For survival purposes, I had to find ways to stay out of the sun.  I often went to the Banyan Tree located in the middle of Banyan Tree Park, which was nestled between Canal and Hotel Street on Front Street and lined with park benches. When this tree was planted in 1873 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first protestant mission in Lahaina, it was 8 feet high. Over a 100 years later, the tree was over 60 feet tall, had 16 trunks, and covered an entire city block; it provided much shade and was home to hundreds of myna birds. 

Said to be the most venerated tree in Asia, a Banyan tree symbolizes the fulfillment of wishes in Hinduism, and enlightenment in Buddhism. Aerial roots descend from its branches, drape toward the ground, take root and thicken. These form new trunks and in this way the tree grows both vertically and horizontally. Because of that amazing and much-loved Banyan Tree in Lahaina, the American Planning Association named Front Street, the boulevard upon which it sits, one of the 10 greatest streets in America.

 It was difficult for me to find a place to practice my guitar –– for when I sat down to play somewhere, in a park or under the Banyan Tree, some guy, it was always a guy, would come over and ask me if he could play it. At first I was kind and handed it over, and waited while he played for a half hour or so.  But I really just wanted to practice.  So then I made them wait, which was difficult as I could sense their impatience with me. Then I simply resorted to saying no, that I wanted to practice and I didn’t have a room of my own in which to do so. One time as I sat under a tree in King Kamehameha park alone with my guitar, one of the local pot dealers came over and sat next to me to chat. He was a nice enough guy and soon another guy saw us and he came over as well.  Before long, like a flock of seagulls spotting a piece of bread, 8 to 10 of the young male pot dealers, that I knew in town, had gathered around me, settling in to chat. Here I was a young woman, pleasing to the eye to them anyway, who was also sleeping on the beach, like them and it felt very unnerving. I needed a room of my own to just be without interruption.  I felt safe enough with each of them individually, but there were so many, and since I didn’t know them that well, I thought it best to get away. So feigning an appointment in town, I gathered my belongings and walked away with no place to go.  It seemed the men never left me alone.  There were catcalls and stares, guys coming over to talk to me, pretty much every day, sometimes every hour of every day. I just wanted to sit alone in the park and practice my guitar.  My lack of privacy was getting old and I knew that Gaby and I needed to figure out money and housing.