Day 1: Wind

The wind is a force that can not be ignored. When it decides to show its might, it will dart through the smallest cracks and creep around the sharpest corners, and it will make its presence felt, no matter where you are.

This is the lesson from our first day in Hawai’i, a day where the strength of the wind was potent, the strength of the sun was perhaps even heavier, and the strength of our joy was intense.

We woke up early, as most people do on the island, spent some time sitting on our balcony, watching the colors of the sky change as the sun rose over the ocean in front of us. We face westward, so instead of watching the sun peek over the horizon, we watched as the sky went from black to purple to pink to blue. The palm trees lining the oceanside rustled and swayed with every gust of morning wind, telling us that the already palpable island heat would be, at least to some extent, tempered by a strong ocean-side breeze.

Our balcony sunrise was mostly spent in silent appreciation of the multi-colored sky and the Kona coffee in our mugs.

We first really noticed the wind over breakfast when, as we sat by the pool eating our eggs and first malasadas of the day, we noticed white towels dancing across the beach, swept up off the cabanas and finding homes pressed against trees nearby. The water — multiple shades of azure glistening in the sunshine — rolled in towards the shore, cresting in frothy white caps a few dozen feet before the beach. I overheard the beach concierge whisper to his colleague: “look at those whitecaps, today’s the kind of day I want to be out there on my board instead of in here.”

I made sure to weigh down our beach towels and protect them from the wind when L jumped into bay and started to snorkel. She saw fish, dozens of varieties in dozens of colors, and swam, sometimes fighting the wind as it pushed the seawater forcefully into the shore. I spent my time reading, thinking, meditating in gratitude, between the occasional chase of a towel or bag when the wind managed to blow it off our beach chairs, despite my attempts to secure everything, tightly.

We saw fish together, too, when we walked through the Waipuhi Fishponds, the sun beating down on our backs, the cool wind providing some respite from the heat as we strolled down small paths and stared at the creatures in the ponds around us.

Over decades, the wind had scattered black lava rock among the white, calcified coral at Holoholokai Beach. The result was a strip of salt-and-pepper oceanside that made for an excellent picnic spot. Feral cats, previously hiding from the sun and enjoying the breeze, emerged from hiding in the shade to stalk our picnic table, looking for scraps. We ate efficiently; there were no leftovers to share.

The trail to the Puako Petroglyphs from Holoholokai is less than a mile long, but feels as though it passes through four distinct worlds. The first is a desolate world of crumbled lava rock, undisturbed by the wind that circles the beds of black rock. The second is a dense forest of gnarly, mangled trees; the sun is shielded by winding, leafless branches that creak and crackle as the wind whips through them. At times, it feels as though we are in a haunted forest, surrounded by unseen ghouls, shrieking and whistling as we walk by.

Just past the forest, we end up on a trail of loose sand, surrounded by short shrubbery; the environment is almost desert-like, with specks of brown and red lava-sand seeping into our shoes and whipping against our shins as the breeze lifts them off the ground.

Less than a mile away, we enter the fourth world, the home of the petroglyphs. The trail opens up into a type of badlands, with intricate and ancient carvings in the rock. The wind stands still as we look at them, wondering what secrets they once told. It picks up again when we double back and head down the trail back to Holoholokai.

We reminisce on those four worlds at dinner, a few hours later, with the sun setting in front of us. Our dinner table is right by the bay, and the sky is afire as the sun dips into the water at the horizon. In the water a few feet away, we see the honu play among the waves caused by the windy surf. At one point, the pages of my menu fly away, carried away by a particularly strong gust coming across the water; the sun has set by then, and we acquiesce to a less-windy table further inland, sheltered from the breeze.

We eat dinner as the sky turns from blue to orange to red to indigo to an intense dark. As we eat, we notice that today, on our first day in Hawai’i, we have already eaten six kinds of fish and three kinds of shellfish. The food has been plentiful, delicious so far. We finish the exquisite meal by eating our third malasada of the day.

The Jeep rattled in the nighttime whirling air as we drove back to the hotel. Above us, the sky is an intensity of black I had never seen before; there are tens of thousands of stars dotting the dark canvas, and the moon glistens as if it were just freshly painted on.

We spent a few minutes staring at the sky in each others’ arms, as the wind whistled a lullaby as it drifted through the trees.