Hawaiian Tid-Bits.....

Just a bunch of things that are popping in and out of my mind since we got back from Hawaii...... and if I don't type them down here, I know I'll be forgetting them, and I don't want that to happen.

The contrast between the blue-blue water and the charcoal-colored sand on the "black sand beach" was too amazing for words. I don't even know how to describe it..... the ocean was as blue as sapphire, the breaking waves were whipped-cream white, and the sand was the darkest black you can imagine........ when you looked at those three contrasting colors all together, watching the whipped-cream waves crashing at the end of the sapphire-blue water, and the splashing of those waves against that ebony-colored sand, it was all you could do not to just plain cry at the beauty of it all.

The lava fields....... we drove through them, stopping along the way to look at immense craters that were marked with the month and the year of the lava flow in that area, and we were speechless. The next day, when we visited a museum in Hilo, and watched a video of the volcano eruption in the late 1980s and 1990s, we realized that the "lava fields" that we had driven through were once thriving, happy little communities... filled with residents who had literally built their sweet little houses with their own hands. We watched that video and saw those people sitting on the side of the lava flow, watching as the hot lava slowly consumed their property and set their homes on fire... and they sat and watched. How do you fight hot lava? You don't........ you just watch it as it takes whatever is in its path. We were again speechless, at both the magic and the destruction of this thing we call "nature."

While we were walking across a lava field towards a volcano that is still pouring hot lava into the ocean, I picked up two small lava rocks. I was going to bring them home, to add to my growing collection of small rocks and shells that I keep in a glass bowl..... little remembrances of places that we've been. The lava rocks were truly beautiful--- that black-black with splashes of the bluest blue sprinkled into the ebony. My husband was not happy with my intention of taking the lava rocks back with me. He reminded me of what we had read in the Hawaiian guides.... the Hawaiian people believe that their god Pele controls the volcano and "owns" everything that flows from it and everything the lava flows onto. Which means that the lava, whether it's hot and flowing, or cold and hardened, belongs to Pele. Hawaiian tradition is that the lava stays where it lays...... in Hawaii. Taking lava rocks out of Hawaii means that Pele will be displeased, and it isn't a smart thing to displease the gods. Tourists have taken lava rocks out of Hawaii before, and have also, upon returning to their home states, sent the lava rocks back to Hawaii. This has been recorded on Internet sites by the tourists who wanted to bring the rocks home. My husband told me I could do as I wanted to, but he also told me that I would be "responsible" for those rocks. I saw the serious look in his eyes, and I put the lava rocks back in the lava fields. I'm glad I did........ it was the Hawaiian thing to do.

The birds....... as we were eating breakfast one day, we were feeding crumbs to the birds, and they were taking the crumbs right out of our hands. Tiny sparrows, doves, and jays, sitting right next to us and they weren't afraid to take the crumbs from our fingers. Mostly every place on the Island has open windows..... birds fly in and out at will, along with the tropical breezes. We had no problems with mosquitos or other bugs, and I saw no wasps and very few bees. Lots of birds, though, and they all made themselves quite at home in some of the restaurants. People who live there know enough to cover their plates with their napkins when they leave the table. Tourists who left their tables with uncovered plates quickly had the tiny birds sitting on the table picking through the leftover bits of food. Now some people might think that's just terrible hygiene, but while we were there, I thought it was just a charming, although somewhat quirky, custom. And besides, I feed the birds all the time, so sharing a table with them didn't really bother me all that much.

There's a town on The Big Island that was started in the 1960s-- by hippies. They went to Hawaii because the land was cheap, the beaches were beautiful, living was easy, and they could get out of society's mainstream. I forget now what the name of that town was, but the hippies are still there...... all much older, of course, but they still look like hippies. The beards on the men are all gray now, and so are the long braids on the women, but the dress-code is pure 1960s hippie. By the way-- a person who moves from the mainland to any of the Hawaiian islands is called a "Ha'wi."

The banyan trees..... so huge, so dense, so protective of everything that's under it. We were amazed at the size of them, most with many trunks all growing tall together, wrapped with flowering vines so the umbrella-like trees are accessorized by hundreds of beautiful blooms. There are cave-like enclosures under the biggest of the banyan trees, and I would guess that it would be a safe, dry place in a heavy rainstorm. In the front yard of one of the homes we drove by, there was a banyan tree so huge that the homeowners had built a tree house around the base of the tree, then built stairs going up to the second level of the tree house. It was so amazing that my husband stopped the car to take a photo of it. The whole structure looked like something you would see in Disney's FrontierLand.