8 minute read
FIRST WALKS by J.L. Oakley
FIRST WALKS by J.L. Oakley
Hazy blue sky, treeless hills sleeping like beached tan seals with their eyes closed. The wind tickles the patches of bunch grass at my feet so they tremble just at their seeded heads. There is almost total silence except for the distant sound of farm machinery somewhere deep in the Methow Valley below and a crow calling from far off. I’m here for a nature-writing course in Eastern Washington and I’m working on my assignment, but I am distracted, lost in memory and nature.
A couple walks by on the dusty trail below.
How many times did I do that? One thousand? Ten Thousand? How many times in thirty-one years?
I walked with you first on a trail up in the Ko’olau’s in Hawaii, a jungle tangle on the way to Manoa Falls. It smelled of plumeria and overripe lilikoi, yellow and as smooth as chili peppers. The trail was muddy from its daily wash of rain, catching boot and sandals from a score of others. The caretaker hut as we passed was like a woodcutter’s cabin from a Grimm’s fairy tale. It was made of recycled windows and old floorboards. Honey jars and bean sprouts sat in the window.
I didn’t know you well then, but I learned to love your back as it went ahead, strong and powerful and your shaggy golden hair rebelling from your tour of duty in a deep jungle far away in Vietnam. Your feet were eager on the trail.
This place where I sit is like the mountains and hills behind Kailua-Kona several months ahead where we scrambled through a’a and pahoehoe. The lava rocks cut at our boots and we slipped on the straw brown grasses I cannot name. We found `ohelo berries sacred to the Goddess Pele and learned the local joke of “Oh, Hell,” berries. We stuffed them in our pockets and ate them one by one as we sought out Nene and heiau and the goatherd hut where we spent the night at twenty degrees above zero.
I knew I loved you then. You were golden, my serendipity.
I met you by chance. I was living in Honolulu and going to art school at the University of Hawaii. Just off campus there was a bungalow run by a local woman who rented only to girls. There was a strict policy: No gentleman callers. But you called. A friend of one of the girls in the house introduced you to us by letter, and after much discussion, we decided that you and your friend could stay until you found something suitable to rent. We didn’t dare tell Mrs. Ho.
The day you arrived, you kept calling from the airport, but no one wanted to go pick you up. That was your problem. When I came home from my class, the phone was ringing off the hook.
“Oh, those guys,” someone groaned from the hall.
“I’ll get it.” I picked up the phone.
“Hello, beautiful,” the voice said on the other end.
It was you. Providence was calling. It was as close to love at first sound as you could get. I felt I’d known you all my life.
We rose at dawn for our hike on the Big Island. My roommate drove us down to the Honolulu airport where twenty people hung outside the airport lounge dressed in various degrees of hiker funk and Aloha wear. A chilly morning breeze stirred in the coconut trees silhouetted against a mango pink sky like loopy black swizzle sticks. Nervous about flying, I struck up a conversation with some of our unknown companions.
One of them was Bob, a malihini from Boston who had come out as a sailor during World War II and never left. He was married to a local woman and spoke pidgin as his second language with a Yankee accent. He worked in some sort of industry and he loved to hike. Another one was a young, skinny man with tousled dark hair and a Houston accent that stretched Hawaiian words out in a soft drawl. He had been in the islands only one month. But he was game. By the time we boarded the plane they were making plans with us.
After a lurching ride up into the mountains behind Kona-Kailua, we unloaded inside the gate to a private cattle ranch covered with bleached grass, trees, brush and panini, a type of cactus. The air was chilly and fog loitered in some of the groves and rocks.
Our little foursome stayed together and walking two by two we trudged along with the whole group for a couple of hours. The morning sun beat back the mist exposing a ragged land full of lichen-covered boulders and `ohelo bushes as high as our calves. Far off, white-headed Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea rose against a bright blue sky. Houston and I laughed as Bob told stories of World Two and life in the islands then. You talked about the cool, deep forests of the Pacific Northwest and where you liked to fish.
At one point you went ahead of me with your tee shirt tied around your head and climbed up a hill of grass and rock. Your chest and shoulders were brown and hard. You’re Sinbad, I thought. I love you.
Once we came upon an expansive area where fifty-foot cinder cones dotted our way like black upside down teacups. The land around them rolled and dipped. It was filled with keawe trees and sunken holes where giant lava bubbles burst a long time ago. From deep in one of the holes two Nene flew out. Mated for life, they looked like miniature Canadian geese with their black caps and buff-colored cheeks. They were as rare as blue moons. Their calls echoed in the late morning air as they flew across our path to a spot further away. We stopped to watch them and drank water from a goatskin bag.
Could I be like that? I thought. Could I love forever?
At about four-thirty in the afternoon, when the sun was slanting in the western sky, we stopped at the remains of ancient heiau. All that was left of the temple was its stone platform. Once there had been carved wooden statues, perhaps to the god of war.
Some of the hikers walked around it. Others gathered around a map. The group was breaking up for the night. Bob decided to take us to a goatherd hut he heard about. It was going to get cold at night.
What is it about love and nature? Why, many years hence, when I smell some pungent dirt, see a trembling frond of a fern along a shady hiking path or feel the breeze of wide open sky and hills, why can I so clearly remember this single day in my life and think of you? Is love bound to nature or does nature just frame the setting of love?
Using only the map and some notes about the surrounding area, we found the goatherd hut forty minutes later. Set on a long grassy ridge, it was formed of old boards, a rusty tin roof and stood on stilts at its back. It was locked, but you found a way in through a Chinese puzzle key to the window. There were bunks inside, multi-paned windows at the back and a butane stove.
The hut was narrow, but had all the comforts of home. Bob got the stove going. You fried steaks and potatoes we had carried in plastic bags from Honolulu. When the food was cooked, we sat around the small table at the back and ate. Outside the trees turned black against the twilight sky. The steam on the window began to freeze.
Before we crawled into our sleeping bags, you stepped outside with me. There in the mountains on the Big Island of Hawaii in the South Pacific the night was as cold as a New England winter, the sky black, and its massive field of proud stars unyielding. We moved close together and you warmed me with a kiss. Then holding hands we watched a shooting star cross the sky. I never felt so close to love or nature. It was the first night of our first long hike together.
***
The sun is hot where I sit. It is turning westward and towards winter, but it still makes sharp shadows on my jeans and on the grass.
Too soon, you have passed on before me. My walks with you are over.
I listen for birds. You taught me about pheasant, chukker, and turkey and how they hide. You taught me about early mornings and shooting stars at the breath of dawn.
You taught me to listen, to wait and to see. Without you I never would have seen.
High above a jet plane tails across the sky, leaving a ghostly white line.
A crow calls.
I am missing you.
