Emma's Column

Walk Softly and Hear the Valley Sing

As I kayak on the north coast of Hawai`i, I glimpse a rocky point over the crests of waves. Then I drop into the trough where I must paddle, paddle. The froth mingles with the grayish-blue water and the thin tops of chopped up water blast against me, or the white caps are blown as strong mist. I am struggling with my kayak, and when I round the point where waves and wind hit me at the end of their journey of several thousand miles, the swells lift me up. There, I am struck with something even more powerful: the sight of the valleys. Usually the slopes whisper to me to explore over the next ridge, but from this sudden view, they sing!

In the summer, when there are smaller swells, I often paddle across the coast overlooking the valleys of Kohala. I must launch out of Waipi`o before the trade winds come, heading north, with my back to the early sun. It is four peaceful miles to Waimanu, the next valley. There is an amphitheater-headed crevice in the back, where the land and water plummet 3,000 feet in one sheer drop. There are usually five main waterfalls on that single curved wall, but when rains drench the mountains above, I have seen fourteen. People who once lived in the valley say that one morning, they awakened to the sight of nearly 30 waterfalls.

On this day, the winds pick up by the time I reach Honopue, eight miles from Waipi`o. Honopue is a perfectly symmetrical valley shaped like half a canoe. Where the canoe’s bow can be imagined, a distant cascade drops down the valley walls. From past trips, I know the strong sheets of water there drop down in fierce gusts, but today, from the ocean, the falls look completely frozen.

Waves flick my kayak onto the shore and at once, all my emotions and physical sensations are heightened. I am alone now and can sing back to the waterfalls, or raise my arms, stretch my wet fingertips and see them united with the rising cliffs.

Once, when I paddled to the most isolated and hidden valley, Honokea, I came across a secret life that showed me a rare kind of environmentalist. After I pulled my small boat through the surf and over the rocky shore, I looked up to the back of the lonely valley and saw before me a man clad only in a loincloth of coconut tree bark. His hair was long and tangled. With apparent excitement, he signaled me to follow him until we arrived at his tiny hut, made of the same scratchy and rough bark.

When I tried to communicate with him, I found that he would only use hand signals and never spoke. Through a long game of charades, he told me that the main part of his diet was coconut, which was also his name. Coconut astonished me because he had absolutely no possessions and his only tools were the blunt rocks by the shore, which helped him open his food. He didn’t seem to have any kind of fire for cooking or for warmth, and he refused any food I offered him. Honokea is a dry valley with very few edible plants, but he didn’t look famished. I kept asking him, “but.what do you eat?”

Coconut had no boat, either, and he had had to swim three miles against a strong ocean current to get to his world inside the steep walls of Honokea.

His life is an extreme version of something I hope to do someday – immerse myself in nature, in the valleys, and make no impact on the environment. For the period I would stay, there would be no opportunity for me to hurt the Earth by driving a car, making trash, or using any electricity.

Still, my avoidance of technology wouldn’t go as far as Coconut’s; once I came upon him as he was leaving the valleys for a time and had just walked miles over the hot road from the lookout of Pololu Valley. I pulled over and offered him a ride. His only response was a “thumbs down.” I think if I lived in the valley, I would have to compromise a completely natural existence with a few creature comforts, but my life would be much simpler and I would be surrounded by brilliant landscapes. Being isolated between enormous cliffs is gleeful freedom.

For now, I am always escaping to the deep valleys where the views make my eyes drink with joy and the water drips over my skin in a misty waterfall. And I never forget – the valleys sing. When I lay on the sand, I hear the waves crashing and rustling the rocks under them, and when I climb and explore, there is complete silence when the thick and unmoving ridges are blurred with clouds.

I ask Coconut why he never speaks, and he cups his worn old hands around his ears to say: “so I may listen.”

— Emma Yuen

Volume 12, Number 4 October 2001