By Lisa Gosselin

updated 7:00 p.m. ET June 30, 2005

Just before sunrise, off the eastern coast of  Maui, clouds stack up on the horizon and drag their shadows across the glistening Pacific. Waves born four time zones away move in softly and then thunder into the black lava cliffs. Somewhere in Ki¯pahulu, the last settlement before the pavement turns to dirt, a wiry old Hawaiian named Eddie Pu sits meditating in front of his house. An ‘apua-kea lets loose—the name Hawaiians give to the predawn showers—and then moves up the mountainside, cleansing everything in its path. “Eddie, come inside!” Beverly Pu, the daughter of a Wisconsin dairy farmer, calls to her husband. “What do I care,” Pu calls back with a laugh,  “This is Hana.”

The town of H¯ana has two stores, one gas station, and a coffee shop. It has the H¯ana Ranch, with 2,000 head of cattle, and the venerable and lovely Hotel H¯ana-Maui, which reigns discreetly over town like a Queen Mother. There is a historic church, a few small inns and guest houses, a cultural center, and a harbor. But to most people, “H¯ana” refers to the eastern bulge of Maui, starting where the Ke‘anae Peninsula juts out from Haleakal¯a’s lush volcanic slopes and encompassing H¯ana town, Ki¯pahulu (and its famous waterfalls), and the dry ranchlands around Kaup¯o.

H¯ana is as much a state of mind as a place. Though it has been colonized by pot-growing hippies and New Age organic farmers, reclusive rock stars and working artists, it still harbors the old soul of Maui. Polynesians arrived here between a.d. 500 and 800 and discovered that H¯ana was the perfect place to grow taro and other crops. By 1883 there were six sugar plantations, and by 1940, H¯ana had a population of 3,500. When the cane operations shut down, so did the town. As of the 2000 census, 709 people lived in H¯ana, most descendants of Hawaiians and Polynesians.

H¯ana is a place where most of the native Hawaiians still live off the land, and money rarely changes hands between neighbors. Fishermen share their catch. And if you break a bone, run a fever, or are facing irreconcilable differences with your brother or your spouse, you turn to a kahuna la ‘au lapa‘au, or native healer. The phone book lists no therapists, and the nearest hospital is a two-hour drive away.

Eddie Pu may not be a kahuna, but he is a legend in H¯ana. “I am just a simple Hawaiian,” he says, like a refrain, as he talks story one morning at the H¯ana Ranch coffee shop. “I wake each morning before sunrise and meditate to thank the land, to thank my ancestors for what they have given us.”

Eddie pu has the lithe, proportioned body of a man who has always worked with nature. He was hired in 1972 as one of the first park rangers at ‘Ohe‘o Gulch, a series of pools and falls now part of Haleakal¯a National Park. Over the years, he saved many lives, including those of the Saudi ambassador and his wife and son, who were swept out to sea. Pu dove into the waves and rescued them one by one, though he ended up in the hospital for several days. Later, the “simple Hawaiian” was flown to Washington to be thanked in person by President Ford. In the decades Pu stood guard at ‘Ohe‘o Gulch, where flash floods in the mountains catch seaside bathers unawares, no one drowned. Since he retired, seven people have died.

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