Into the Jungle

Exploring my new neighborhood in Hawaii's forests

Deep, dense, and almost eerily quiet, the road to Kapa'au winds and dip, making it impossible to see beyond a few hundred yards. Surrounded on either side by tapestries of heavy green, the forest walls seem to close in further and further as I venture away from my home. The wind that is so pervasive everywhere else in North Kohala is choked in the vines and leaves of the rainforest; the air is unusually still. When I inhale I smell earth. Dampened soil, decaying leaves, and wafts of tropical flowers that I can't quite identify envelop me and wrap me in the cloak of the jungle.

This area is steeped in the kind of living, breathing ambience that thrills a writer -- everywhere you look there is something that piques my imagination, something quiet and provocative on which entire chapters could be written, waiting unassumingly to be explored. Forest glens with carpets of emerald velvet and arbored ceilings draped with vines, hidden streams running off the dormant volcano and down to the sea, protected by trees and out of sight from prying eyes. A house tucked into the tiny valley well below the road and insulated by plants with leaves bigger than my outstretched arms. Flowers of vibrant colors, seemingly cut off from everything but the forest around it, a cemetery whose quiet, lush surroundings make it seem like the most apt place on earth for one to find eternal peace. An abandoned chapel near the end of the road, framed by gentle mosses and soft foliage, a house left empty long ago with a sloping unkempt yard and a view of the massive valley of Pololu, rolling hills of farmland so green that the color is indescribable. Mossy stone steps leading nowhere but up into dense rainforest of trees and vines, suggesting an entrance to something beautiful but long ago forgotten.

Descending from the mountains the rolling green seems never-ending, rolling down and down toward the deep cerulean ocean below. The wind runs and dances through the grass like a frolicking spirit, visible in the patterns it creates across the fields. The entire expanse seems to be moving like waves on the sea, and like the sea it seems that one could float across it, being rocked by the wind as you would by the tides. The grass is dusted with tiny yellow blossoms giving the illusion that the gentle hills, spread out like a sheet settling to the ground after being shaken, are sun-kissed even when clouds hang on the mountain tops, refusing to disperse. These plains, these moors, are both lush and desolate, aching for long walks, picnics, and intimate moments. Rounding a bend in the road, the clouds come pouring over the top of the mountain and spill down its side like a waterfall. The wind moves them so quickly that it feels like you must be watching in time-lapse -- the scale is too grand to believe that it is in real time. A black horse stands majestically on a rocky outcropping overlooking the valley and vast land below. His mane is whipped in the wind as he surveys this land that can only be his -- pure, raw power emanating from his presence.

Near Waimea, the countryside opens up into expansive fields and stands of tall trees, curiously growing in perfect rows. The landscape is drier but still vibrant and full of life. There are cows and horses and long grass and it feels familiar, like some long lost memory from my childhood is trying to resurface.

These landscapes speak to me. The long grass calls for me to walk through it with my arms outstretched, feeling the blades brush past my fingertips. The rolling green moors on top of the mountains beg me to pack a picnic in a wicker basket, put on a white linen dress and frolic like the wind when it dances through their midst. The silent, hidden forest glens saturated with thick emerald mosses urge me to explore their depths -- to find what it is that gives them their mystery. Something in these places reawakens my imagination in ways that I haven't felt since I was a little girl. They bring up memories long since forgotten and urges lost in the importance of adulthood, a sensuous desire to soak up every smell and color and feeling they hold. There are never enough words, never a deep enough breath to take it all in.

With my imagination awakened, I can never be sated.