My first visit to Maui, God’s Hour, the ʻOkina, Lahaina
Hey guys,
Aloha guys, I should say!
Writing from Kihei, a mellow beach town on the west coast of Maui.
Before throwing ourselves into work intensity this summer, we wanted a last getaway, and flight prices from the US west coast often surprise nicely (and with special thanks to Carolin for taking the lead…)
Hawaii is all its cracked up to be, in the tropical beauty of rain forests and warm waters with coastal corals to explore, and in Hawaii’s famous relaxed vibe.
‘Aloha’ is not just a greeting, used in the way that we would say ‘hello’, but it’s a philosophy of love, compassion and affection, of peace and of mercy.
And you feel that in the air here, while too you see the hard edges of US commercialism, with malls and real estate developments encasing the coastline and too many folks whose bodies show their love of getting carried away with US portion sizes…sigh!
In a week on Maui, highlights have been, especially…
“Turtle Town” Kayaking Tour by Maui Kayaks
ask for guide Andres, a fun Columbian who was an exceptional host.
we did the Makena Turtle Town Eco Adventure. Turtle Town is an area of reef with a dense population of Hawaiian green turtles
..and we loved snorkeling also at Keawakapu Beach and Black Rock
The famed Mama’s Fish House
Wow! Set in a beautiful bay, Mama’s is one of those restaurant institutions where you feel the attention to everything from the moment you arrive. Even better was chatting to our server more and more about behind the scenes, and learning that revenues increased alongside reducing the number of table covers in the restaurant (and keeping it that way) during the pandemic. The experience was simply much better for customers and staff too, and the rest takes care of itself in a business…And it was my first Bali Hai cocktail…
The setting for a sunset cocktail at the world’s longest named bar and restaurant
The Humuhumunukunukuapua’a at the Grand Wailea Hotel
The Waikulu Distillery, that we stumbled on when chatting to the owner at the new wonderful coffee shop in Pai’a Cafe Mambo, who couldn’t help telling us about her Uncle Paul Turner, who invented Rock Shox Mountain Bike suspension, before noticing how well agave grew on the land he committed to a mountain bike track…
The Garden of Eden Arboretum and Botanical Garden not far into the drive along the famed Road to Hana, from Paia. A few miles of trails, 700 species of plants and fruit trees and one hell of a pair of peacocks…!
‘God’s Hour’
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the early hours.
The space, the silence, the possibility that comes with the light of a new day gently creeping up the wall.
Weirdly, when setting an alarm the night before, I get this tinge of excitement as I spool the minutes dial earlier, to create a little more of the enjoyment of the early hours. The reflective space that I one day named ‘God’s Hour’ for how it so often feels like the juiciest hour for the soul.
In the balmy night warmth of Hawaii, and in this week when we hit our longest day of the year in the Summer Solstice, God’s Hour is particularly perfect
The warmth as you pull off a sheet and pull on some board shorts, the chaotic chorus lines of tropical birds gently then aggressively chirping, the stillness on the road outside allowing you to hear the lapping of tiny summer swell lines running up the beach.
Years ago, a friend boasted that her personal best in the famous “from bed to work” metric was just thirty-four minutes. And that included a short bus ride…
Part of me wanted to join in her particular game, competitively, to shave minutes off her boast. With no make-up, my quicker hair fixing etc., surely this was doable if I had my bag ready the night before.
But the truth that came out of me, after a pause, was ‘you know, I think I’ll be the two hour guy’.
And that very day, I inaugurated the glorious habit of generally taking at least two hours of space before opening up my work inbox. Exercise, getting something organized, writing. And within that two hours (or so), I ring-fence an hour and a half before turning on my phone, that weapon of mass distraction!
The space of the early morning and God’s Hour is an apt time to savour just how lucky we are to get another day of human experience. Because some unlucky people are not going to wake up today. And some will wake up today for the last time. And, we never know when our waking up will be our last time…
Oh god, that was dark…but you know what I mean!
And valuably so, just as the Stoic Philosophers recognized with their practise of Memento Mori, – regularly remembering that “one day you will die” – and so savouring today all the more for it.
More positively, God’s Hour is about that feeling of quiet clarity to assert what we want for another day.
And even better, no matter what happened yesterday, God’s Hour is the chance to “begin again”.
In A Word – The Hawaiian Inverted Comma
ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is the native name of the Hawaiian language, a polynesian dialect of the Austronesian language family.
Hawaiian was the primary language spoken by the indigenous people of Hawaii before Western contact started with the arrival of James Cook in 1778, and then with the arrival of streams of missionaries from the 1820s.
But what’s that inverted comma that we see in Hawaiian and other polynesian languages?
It’s called an ʻokina, and has its roots in the American missionary Hiram Bingham who first worked with the natives to create a written form of the language (I learnt from Wikipedia, and getting into a conversation with ChatGPT).
The inverted comma in Hawaiian words was to represent the glottal stop in the sounds of the Hawaiian natives’ language (a consonant sound created with the audible release of air).
Of course there was an underlying mission here, in Bingham’s project, the translating religious texts and teaching reading and writing to native Hawaiians…my sources indicated…
Trade Winds
Part of the tempo of the day in Maui, and other Hawaiian islands, is the late morning feeling of the wind arriving with gusto! At first occasional gusts, and then you feel increasingly steady streams of wind flowing, the trees starting to bend and the ocean chopping up…
Trade winds in Hawaii are predominantly easterly winds, blowing from the northeast to the southwest, having got their name from the sailing era of the world across the the 15th to 19th centuries, when the consistent and predictable nature of the these winds made them extremely valuable for oceanic navigation.
Lahaina
August 8th 2023 was a tragedy that will not be forgotten for Maui. And you can still feel the remembrance every where you turn on the Island.
The most quaint of the beach towns on the west coast, called Lahaina, had whole sections burn to the ground killing 100 people – most of whom were caught on one street – and destroying over 1500 homes. The source was believed to be a downed power line. The fire had seemed contained around lunch time but that proved a false hope when the afternoon trade winds, all the stronger for being part of a hurricane system, amped right up.
As we drove past, we could see whole segments of the town fenced off with the burnt skeletons of buildings remaining. Whole other residential areas were saved, or spared by the whims of wind. And the entrance back onto the highway had become a shrine to the lives lost that day, with posters of each of the dead and the Hawaiian flower strings called the leis.
It’s an obviousness of life that we can’t remind ourselves of enough…whether nature, accident, a freak health issue stepping in…we just don’t know what the rest of a day may hold.
Savour the beauty of God’s Hour, just in case it’s our last!
With Aloha from Maui…
Kevin
