Walking Stories
By Cynthia Oi, Star-Bulletin
Tony and Lauren Johasson, above, enjoy a quiet moment
alone under a tree with a swing in Kaaawa.
Life’s vulnerability,
nature’s grace unfoldKamehameha Highway leads a
By Cynthia Oi
walker to find tragedy and delight
Star-Bulletin
Day 5, Kahaluu to Kaaawa, 9.2 miles
A wing was the only part of the bird that wasn't smashed into the ground. It fluttered in a gust of wind, mimicking flight, although the bird's days as a creature of the skies had ended.
Stepping around it placed me on the part of the road that belongs to vehicles, a move that almost ended my days as a creature of the land.
When you're walking, you're keenly aware of being vulnerable to nature and to other humans. Nature may be more forgiving.
Along Kamehameha Highway from Kahaluu to Kaaawa, seven birds and two toads died, victims of the automobile. A mongoose may also be dead, and I may have caused his death.
Near Waikane, a rustling in the brush next to the road stopped me. The mongoose, coat gilded by the weak rays of the sun, materialized through the tall grass on the shoulder of the road.
Seeing me, it paused, then flashed across the road into the path of a teal-green car. It leapt and twisted onto a mound of dirt on the other side, seeming stunned. It was still for a moment, then, left hind leg dragging, it disappeared behind the trees.
The thought that as humans we are part of nature was not comforting. Humans give nature a hard time.
Earlier in the day, the powerful winds that have punched through Oahu in the past week brought more debris to the shoreline near Waiahole. Knee deep and four feet wide, plastic, glass, pieces of wood, nets and unrecognizable debris bobbed with the tide.
Nick Houtman, a five-year Waiahole resident, says he clears away the broken glass at the beach near his house up the coast, but at this site can only pick the stuff he can recycle. He takes anything that catches his eye and turns them into decorative items.
His pickings -- old tabis, glass floaters, plastic net spacers, bottles, driftwood, rocks -- jam his home. Houtman, who worked at several jobs with the city, appears almost unfazed by the junked beach, likely immune to the litter because he sees it almost every day.
By Cynthia Oi, Star-Bulletin
Nick Houtman's Waiahole home, includes
a mannequin -- which he found on a beach --
resting on a lounge, and his dog at his feet.
Past the old sugar mill near Kualoa, cars are bumper to bumper as road crews clear away sand and coral flung onto the road by waves. Boulders, concrete and spills of asphalt buttress the two-lane blacktop in a futile battle with the ocean.At Kaaawa, a sudden rainstorm wets everything down, the big drops denting the sand before waves erase the impressions.
A flatbed truck, hauling one backhoe and towing another, splashes muddy water from a puddle over a bridge railing, near a couple sheltered under a tree.
After a minute or two, the rain stops, and Lauren and Tony Johasson leave the tree to walk along the beach hand in hand.
With the grace of nature, a wave foams up over their feet and legs, and they giggle with delight.
