The far side of Paradise

There is only one paved road that leads to Maui’s east end. From the airport in Kahului, the H¯ana Highway runs for 52 miles of one-lane bridges, waterfalls, and dark bamboo forests, winding around the finger outcroppings of Haleakal¯a like a twisted telephone cord.

My first trip to H¯ana was in the 1980s, before the road had been repaved. It took three hours and several “I think I’m going to be carsick” stops before we reached the series of falls and pools of ‘Ohe‘o Gulch, marketed at the time as the “Seven Sacred Pools”—though the only thing sacred was the revenue they brought to town. We gasped at their beauty, clicked pictures, then rushed to get back on the torturous road before sunset.

The second time I went to H¯ana, I met up with friends who lived on Maui’s north shore. We rode out on mountain bikes, stopped at all the falls, and hiked into the riot of wild ginger, ferns, and flowers. We camped by the edge of the sea for a week, burning the soles of our feet on the black-sand beaches, free-diving for our dinner, and picking wild mango, guava, avocado, mountain apple, and pa-paya. I complained one evening that we had no lemon for the lobsters we’d pulled from the ocean an hour earlier. “Citrus tree at three o’clock,” replied Mark, the surfboard shaper. Minutes later, tangy juice was streaming across the delicate white meat.

The third time I went to H¯ana, I saw Jesus.

I drove out this time, and as I swerved around a blind curve (one of more than 600, it is estimated) on the one-lane road, I came up fast on a man walking. I veered and screeched the brakes. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the cliffs plummeting down to breaking surf and briefly wondered if the car would float. It came to a stop. The man, a Hawaiian in his 20s wearing a backpack and running shoes, seemed unperturbed. “Can you give me a ride?” he asked.

We talked for the next few miles. He told me how he walks to Kahului once every week (and around the entire island sometimes), and he told me about Eddie Pu. As the young man got out in front of the house where his father raises fighting cocks, I asked his name. “Jesus,” he said.

It had been ten years since i camped in H¯ana, and after dropping off Jesus, I stopped at my favorite haunts—the legendary cave at Wai‘a¯napanapa State Park, the small but impeccable H¯ana Cultural Center, and then the akule hale, an open-sided, thatched meeting house for fishermen that overlooks the bay. A sign was posted there: “All outsiders (non-residents), hunter, fisher, picker, gatherer, and real estate people, as of now all resources taken from the H¯ana district shall be regulated by the eastside hui. All your resources are being exploited and eradicated.”

I felt a pang of guilt for trespassing ten years earlier. And I had the sudden panicky feeling that H¯ana had changed.

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