I seek to travel to isolated places in the islands because I’ve found that these natural areas have unforeseen characteristics that make each place distinctive and even mythical. Before I flew to Moloka`i to kayak the northeastern coast with my dad and my uncle, Andy, I studied the maps and read stories about the impressive valleys and cliffs I would see, but nothing prepared me for the emotional experience of traveling in such powerful landscapes.
Upon landing on the island, I was immediately struck by the rainbows of Moloka`i. The normally dry southern side of the island had a bright mist covering the ravines and it rained heavily on us while the morning sun beamed from the east. Later, while kayaking the wetter north coast, time and again, the erratic rain would shift into sun and then quickly back into pounding rain. The second night, it rained so hard, and I was so wet and cold, I built a rock wall around our tent to protect it from the rain blowing in sideways. After I finally finished the wall, the skies cleared for the rest of the trip.
The rains and the legendary northern swells that cut the cliffs back have shaped the fantastic landscape; water dominates the land in northern Moloka`i.
The first valley we paddled to was Papalaua, a steep-walled but shallow V-shaped valley with an amphitheater cut by twin falls, which reminded me of Waipi`o’s treasured Hi`ilawe and Hakalaoa falls. The left waterfall of Papalaua is gusty and explosive, as the water cracks against the washed rocks of the pali. Its twin is its opposite: an unusual type of high falls that calmly pours over the top of the pali and follows a straight, smooth line down. The twins unite and create a deep gorge in the back of the valley where the splash pool hides.
Paddling from the deep, lush Wailau valley, I observed a waterfall in the distance surrounded by a ghostly mist that reached far out from the cliff. This was Wailele, whose soaring water is caused by the cascade hitting a rock. Splashing out into the air, the water is caught by the winds and floats up as spray. Further down, the water reaches a smooth rock and divides into many little falling streams that slip onto the trees below. The pali between Wailau and Pelekunu is the highest sea cliff in the world, with waterfalls over three thousand feet high. A Hawaiian word – pahihi — describes those vine-like rivulets that slip and curve through the many tiny depressions in the pali. The falls are spreading white veins that follow the contours of the cracks.
The jagged, many-creviced cliff faces of Pelekunu Valley gave me reverence for the power of water. The walls of the valley are so high that I wavered between feeling inspired and ennobled by them, on the one hand, and, on the other, tiny and sinking in comparison.
I swam into a cave on the eastern side of Pelekunu that went back a hundred feet into the mountain. Deep inside, the water turned murky and the waves echoed like some low, delirious voice speaking in another language and gurgling in frightening spasms. I found another small cave by the beach that smelled terribly. I walked barefoot into the cave despite the fact that I’d cut my foot on the reef while surfing before the trip. Stepping into the darkness, I felt my wounded foot sink into the hairy carcass of a pig that had probably been dead for a month. Fortunately, Pelekunu is full of beautiful clean springs to wash up in.
Pelekunu constantly resounds with the songs of birds, although few are easily seen. I would lie in the tent at night, their songs echoing in my mind.
As I passed under the enormous cliffs and often-violent ocean of Moloka`i’s North Shore, I understood how Hawaiians could have believed in menacing mo`o that would drop boulders from the sheer walls and trick people into using unsafe cliff paths rather than enter the seas and swim around the impassable areas. Even today, I learned, some Moloka`i residents feel that the fabulous Kaholaiki bay is a kapu area. Once, according to a resident, as someone was leaving the bay in a speedboat after gathering ti and taro plants in the valley, the boat flipped over for no reason, and the plants arrayed themselves in a straight line on the hull of the boat. The bay is an extremely remote scallop with a thin strip of land at the base of a looming, thousand-foot-high cliff. I could easily understand why disturbing Kaholaiki could give that resident “chills all over my body.”
One evening toward the end of the trip, we stood at the rim of Pu`u`uao crater in Kalaupapa, watching the sun set. Far out to sea, too far out to be a shorebreak, we saw ripples in the calm ocean that we thought were caused by schooling fish until the ripples broke into a wave. My father was reminded then of another legend about a valley half a world away. If this had happened in Scotland, he said, everyone would say it was the work of the Loch Ness Monster.
Finally, after several puzzled minutes, my uncle saw the fluke of a whale emerge. As we followed it with our eyes, the whale headed east toward the grand valleys, becoming one more part of the astonishing, mythical, unequaled coastline of North Moloka`i.
— Emma Yuen
Volume 13, Number 1 July 2002