Mr. Fizzy’s “Feed me” dance. True to character, he doesn’t care that I’ve come back after a year, only if there’s a snack in it for him. Note how he looks toward the counter where the snacks are.

Hawaiian’s love junked cars. No yard is complete without one. I asked a friend, who’s into this kind of thing, to name this car along the road to the farm. Note the wild coffee tree in front.

I thought it was the front of a small European car. The ID plate was intact and so we had the car’s serial number. It’s not easy to trace because it’s so old.

The answer: I wasn’t looking at the front of a small European car, I was looking at the rear of a 1952 Ford Mainline.

That was too easy so I gave him a harder one.

The best clue was the oil filter part number. Without that he might have gotten no where.

A lot of help from Mr. Google led to a 1980 Dodge D50 pickup.

Note how the rectangle cutouts in the steering wheel spokes change size.

Dodge D50 steering wheel with same rectangle cutouts.

Una’s anger would more often play out like this. She’d say “Did you hear what that fucker (today’s political eruption) did?” As always my answer was “Nope, no idea.” “But you know who he is, yes?” I’d lie and say “Of course!” because I didn’t want a lecture on who the fucker was. As I haven’t seen news in a year, I had no clue who the fucker is, but it certainly had to do with Trump.

She’d say “he’s terrible and this is terrible and that is terrible and EVERYTHING is terrible.”

She has a good heart but it’s hidden beneath the anger and agitation. If she could put away her phone, radio, computer, TV, newspaper and magazines, she might be happier. That’s what I did. The absurdity of Trump and the divisiveness of the country made me frustrated, angry and embarrassed to be a part of it. I can’t do anything about it so I tuned it out for self protection.

I’ve started to receive mail from hospitals and more ominously Hawaii Life Flights, the helicopter ambulance. I don’t know how or when I’m going to open these. I really don’t want to know.

As of August 5, I was as strong as I’ve ever been. I was doing 6 hrs/day of hard farm work and I liked it a lot. So quickly all my muscles have atrophied. It’s shocking how fast it happened. I can see my legs and arms are thinner, I feel very weak and unsteady.

I made it to the closest coffee shop this morning, .3 miles away, but it was really too far. I get winded going up a slight incline. It would be useful to practice stairs, but I don’t have any. It would be useful to go to a gym, but they’re closed.

As I was in Honolulu until last Sunday, I’m still on self-quarantine, but at least here I can go for a walk. On the big island I was supposed to stay inside all the time, though I illegally took out the trash or walked to my car a dozen times a day.

I’m staying in an apartment attached to my brother’s house in Pacific Beach north of San Diego. It’s exceedingly generous of him and exactly what I need. I have Mr. Fizzy who will go for a walk any time of the day, no questions asked.

I don’t know what I’d do without Len’s help.

Makalawena Beach

Lina showing off her favorite beach, Makalawena. Best bet for sunshine is driving north of the Kona airport, like here. At any time, it’s likely raining where I live, cloudy on the coast below me, and sunny north of the airport.

Even though it’s sunny on the beach, it’s cloudy and dark on the dormant Mauna Kea volcano right above the beach. In Hawaii, one mile and you’re in a different climate.

If you include the undersea part, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world at 33,500 ft. Above sea level is only 13,800 ft.

Makalawena was so sandblasting windy, we turned and walked back to Mahai’ula Beach. To pass you have to shoo the wild goats off the trail. Where Makalawena was unbearably windy and the surf rough, a mile away Mahai’ula was calm and still.

There are 2 types of lava on the Big Island. Pahoehoe is fast flowing, and dries smooth.

A’a lava is slow flowing and dries ragged and uneven. It’s pronounced “ah ah.”

Pot grows really well here. Every Hawaiian (it seems) has a license to grow it.

One of tricks on the farm is to not get the EZ-Go golf cart with bald tires stuck in the mud. I park my car at the top of the farm, because if I drove it down to my cabin it would be stuck there until the dry season, whenever that is. There might not be a dry season here anymore. The weather is no longer predictable.

I tried to help the neighbor pull his pickup off a muddy hill with the winch on the front of his ancient Toyota jeep. Didn’t help. Every time the truck tires spun it nosed further downhill towards a stand of banana trees. He said maybe it’s time to invest in real off-road tires for the pickup.

Homemade banana-chocolate-mac nut ice cream. Ingredients: bananas, chocolate, mac nuts. That’s all you really need.

From the last workaway on Kauai (aka. Crazyhouse). If you don’t take the last serving, you don’t have to clean the container: one almond.

Went with Lina to a Crystal Bowl Meditation and Tea Ceremony at Paleaku Gardens Peace Sanctuary (https://www.paleaku.com). How to describe this? Acoustic vibration music from quartz crystal singing bowls (see also glass armonica), like when you run your wet finger along the rim of a crystal wine glass, with a guided meditation by Tobi. Followed by a tea ceremony featuring Tobi’s Serenity herbal tea.

At Paleaku Gardens, the Galaxy Garden, “The world’s first accurate walk-through model of the Milky Way based on current astrophysical data.”

Ah, Hawaii.

Ours is an agroforestry farm, as the world naturally existed before humans came along invented productive, single crop monoculture. All the plants are mixed in together. Here, low groundcover like Hawaiian sweet potatoes and spinach. Small plants like pineapples (almost ripe!), ferns, and herbs. Small trees like cacao and coffee. Towered over by big trees like bananas, oranges, avocados.

Pu’uhonua o Honaunau

Pu’uhonua o Honaunau (Place of Refuge) National Park is just down the mountain. I hiked there yesterday along the shore trail, planning to go all the way to Ho’okena Beach. It was blazing sun, no shade, radiating hotter from the black lava (so hot you could fry a goat), so I only got halfway before turning back. No one there but me and wild goats.

One of the many great things about COVID is I get to experience Hawaii without the usual crush of tourists. I passed only one couple and asked them how far they were going. “Until we run out of beer” they said.

In ancient Hawaii, punishment was death if you violated the sacred laws, called kapu, a word derived from “taboo.” Such crimes included crossing a chief’s shadow, eating with women (still dicey, IMHO), or coming into contact with a chief’s fingernail clippings. But if you could evade the authorities and make it to a holy place of refuge, like here, you’d be rehabilitated and given another chance.

Blazing sun at sea level, rain on top of the mountain. In Hawaii you can go a mile and be in a completely different climate.

Lava rock shelf at water’s edge.

They’re not totem poles. In Hawaii they’re ki’i.

Looking from Place of Refuge towards Two Step, a black lava beach across the bay. The name comes from a submerged ledge you use to get in the water to avoid getting smashed back into the rocks by the waves.

Two Step is one of the best snorkeling places in Hawaii. Jump in and you’re in a giant tropical aquarium filled with dinner plate size, crazy color fish. The excellent snorkeling is the best thing about living on this side of the big island and Two Step is the closest beach to where I live.

(I’m in the middle.)

Last weekend was a hike at Kaloko-Honokohau Park, another black lava along turquoise water hike. You never get tired of hiking black lava along turquoise water, especially if there are lots of giant sea turtles.

Kaloko-Honokohau is a hang-out for them. Dozens were swimming around in shallow water. One monster, over 3 ft long, climbed up onto the beach between sunbathers and went to sleep.

The inland path back to the car was rough lava rock, a barren wasteland. The park ranger looked perplexed when I told him I was heading back this way. “Just watch your ankles” he said. I was going to say “Watch your own ankles, buddy, mine are stronger than yours any day,” but didn’t because he was being very nice and was carrying a gun.

It was easier to find the way back to the car on the shore path (just follow the water), but the rough lava trail was really cool. Raw, unused, trickier footing, it just seemed more hike-y. The chance of getting lost and starving to death was slim because Home Depot was just on the other side of the highway.

The “mill” where we process coffee, cacao, mac nuts and dry laundry. On sunny days it gets sweltering. I did a lot of hot yoga in pre-COVID times, which I could do here IF we get afternoon sunshine, which is rare.

But we might when Hurricane Doug hits. Hurricanes only hit the east side of the big island and can’t cross the 13,000 ft Mauna Loa (“long mountain”) volcano. We don’t get the hurricane rain or wind, but the odd effect is it sucks all the moisture out of the west side of the island. So the hurricane might bring only sunny weather here. Weird, eh?

Leon showing nephew Tyler how to husk mac nuts. Note the action shot of the mac nut falling into the hopper.

Drying husked (brown) and not-yet-husked (green) mac nuts.

So many valuable jobs skills I’m learning. Not only can I trim a tree, but I can load the remains into the pickup and take it to the landfill. (In truth, I already had these skills but it never hurts to practice.)

Snorkeling is one of the best things about the big island.

View of the coast

View of the coast once I drive down the mountain, below the clouds.

The road to the farm–the not so steep part. It’s a real pain when you run into someone coming the other way and have to negotiate passing. The uphill car is supposed to have the right of way, because pulling off the road going uphill you’re more likely to get stuck than if you’re in the mud facing downhill.

My cabin, surrounded by plants and gardens. The big leaves on left are the traditional Hawaiian food taro, with coffee trees beyond that.

The garden has kale, collards, asparagus, scallions, beets, papaya, dragonfruit, turnups, poha, passionfruit (called lilikoi here) and others undiscovered. Banana trees on right.

Right now I’m the only occupant. Another volunteer is coming towards the end of August. It’s an unusual experience–someone I don’t know is going to be my housemate. That’s the way the volunteer world works. It will be nice to have company. I hope.

Coffee beans. They’ll turn red in September and we’ll pick 5000 lbs, which will become 600 lbs of roasted Kona coffee.

To be eaten: green beans, Tuscan kale, Chayote squash, collard greens. The dried leaves are white tea. The leaves were dried right off the tea bush. If the leaves were fermented before drying, it would be black tea.

Pulling the weeds out of the sharp, pointy pineapple plants (which should be ripe soon) and the painful, cactus-like dragonfruit.

Kealakekua Bay, 2000 ft below my house. This is the best snorkeling in Hawaii, and it’s usually sunny at sea level. A few times a week I drive down the mountain to snorkel at the beach.

Beaches here are usually black lava rocks. White sand is rarer.

It takes eons for the waves to smash coral and rock into a sandy beach. The big island has few sandy beaches because it’s the youngest Hawaiian island. Kauai is surrounded by sandy beaches because it’s the oldest.

Kealakekua: kay AH lah keh KOO ah. I actually live in Captain Cook, but got a Kealakekua PO Box because it sounds more exotic.

Shadow: a sure sign of sun. You think about these things when you live in a rain forest.

With Lina looking down the coast of the big island. This side of the island is miles and miles of arid lava flows. Older ones are covered with grass. Newer ones — as new as 1800– are just bare lava.

Her arm says “Go with the flow” (refers to life, not lava).

Running the Macadamia nuts through the husker to separate the nuts from the chaff. This is an Australian hand-crank husking machine that Leon modified to run on a motor. Some of our nuts are too big to easily go through the husker and have to be fed one by one (Leon says “Damn those Australians and their small Mac nuts”).

The nuts are then run through the sheller and the white meat is sorted out by hand. Making Mac nuts is a laborious process, why they cost so much.

Write Your Own Caption.

(Two unaccompanied ragmuffins–I hope that’s their mommies in the parking lot–at the sacred Rukraksha Forest at Kauai’s Hindu temple.)

Rudraksha trees, aka Blue Marble trees. The pretty bright blue berries taste terrible. They’re husked and dried to become rudraksha beads.

According to legend, Shiva looked upon the suffering of the world and shed tears of compassion. Those became the Rudraksha beads- the holiest jewelry in India.

Nineteen seconds in the life of a bubble. It had been atop my dish soap for hours, staring at it, mesmerized. It was a slow day. There may have been some Pink Floyd involved.

Listen for the wild rooster in the middle.

Hapuna Beach

Sunset, Hapuna Beach, Hawaii.

There are beautiful sunsets on the big island. I don’t seen them because I live on a beautiful farm in a rain forest during the rainy season. It rains, roughly, all the time. It starts the moment I finish work each afternoon, like clockwork.

But a short distance brings a whole new climate. When I want sunshine, I just have to drive or hike down the mountain.

Dinner

On fresh baked rye from Sundog Bread, sold at a roadside stand in Holualoa on Wednesday afternoons:

Avocado from the tree that drops on the thin metal roof above my head in the middle of the night, Manchego cheese (fresh from Costco!) and sauteed, fresh-picked greens.

From the garden: Red Russian and Tuscan (aka. Dinosaur) kales, collards, and what I thought was Swiss chard but was actually beet leaves. With paprika salt made by Una and Leon’s friends in Alaska.

Also from the garden: homemade pickled Chayote squash and yellow, not-so-sweet papaya (seeds added for color contrast).

Time to clean the kitchen.

Finally some sunshine. On the farm, it rains every afternoon.

Today at Hapuna Beach after picking up my car at the Port of Kawaihae. It has finally arrived from Kauai and it didn’t fall off the boat on the way, as did 21 shipping containers on Monday near Hilo. Some are still missing.

Kauai is a jewel

You know I’m always looking out for you. The real reason I came to Kauai was to scout out your next vacation, to make sure you get the most from your hard earned vacation dollars.

There are so many fabulous things to do and see. Most are free, easy to get to and no special stuff needed other than sneakers and a bathing suit (and sometimes neither).

Come in the summer. In the winter everything is muddy and it could rain for some or all (that would suck) of your vacation. There were a lot of unhappy tourists during the torrential weeks. Marriages end from such things.

Reminds me of a funny story. There was a couple staying in one of our Airbnbs at the last workaway (aka “Crazyhouse”). They opened a cabinet to find a mouse had chewed the corner of an energy bar. No mouse in evidence, just a chewed wrapper. They were terrified of mice (Like really?) and moved out immediately. It was 11:30 at night.

Being the internet age, everything’s urgent. They contacted Airbnb and demanded a refund NOW. They woke up Tony, the Airbnb manager, and the owner, who was in the Philippines, to complain and demand. Couldn’t wait until the morning even though they’d already moved out. Patience is a lost virtue.

The sad thing was it was their honeymoon.

Anyway, skip vacation and just move to Kauai. Sell everything. Abandon the children (they’ll be fine) because you won’t be able to afford an apartment with the extra bedroom. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

These are few of my favorite things.

Polihale State Park: watch the sunset or better yet camp overnight, all the way at the end of the road. You’ll need to rent a Jeep, not a convertible.

Hanakapi’ai Trail from Ha’ena State park to the beach then waterfall: Extraordinary beautiful hike. You need to make reservations, maybe long in advance. They limit how many people are allowed in because it was being overrun with tourists.

Pu’u o Kila Lookout: drive to the end of the road and look down upon the Na Pali coast.

Awa’awapuhi Trail. The end of the trail is a breathtaking view from a knife-edge ridge down to the coast. Extraordinary.

Waipo’o Falls hike from Waimea Canyon Drive, thru the gorgeous Waimea Canyon.

Maha’ulepu Trail from Shipwreck Beach along the gorgeous coastal cliffs to Gillin’s Beach or all way to Ha’ula Beach, including the giant tortoises at Maha’ulepu Cave.

Wailua Falls, climb down the “closed” trail to the bottom of the falls and go swimming.

Climb Sleeping Giant Mountain for a view of the entire east side of the island from the giant’s chin.

Anahola: Hike the now-delittered remote coastline of Anahola. You’ll need a local (like me) to take you. Tourists can’t do this alone. I’ll fly over and meet you if you’ll buy lunch. You can get a simple burrito for as little as $16.

Northeast Beaches: there are so many: Larsens, Pila’a, Secrets, Papa’a, Moloa’a, all beautiful. To get to the best ones you have to hike from the car to the beach. More remote, less people, more beautiful.

Tour the Hindu Monastery, under construction since 1990. Each stone is individually carved in India and shipped here. Do this soon because it will probably be finished sometime in the next few decades.

The rainbow eucalyptus trees at Keahua Arboretum. Unretouched photo. That’s what the trees really look like. It’s sublime.

Queen’s Bath and Hideaway: Swim at Queens Bath and snorkel with green sea turtles at Hideaway Beach.

Hanalei: Beautiful beach, a cute little town, amazing sunsets.

Let me know when you’re coming.

The Big Island

It looks glamorous, but working on a farm is hard work. It’s hot, heavy, dirty and everywhere I’m followed by a group of mosquitos, called, appropriately, a “scourge of mosquitos.” It’s a challenge and I want to see if I can do it. Six to 7 hours a day of manual labor. Good argument for getting a college education, though that doesn’t seem to have saved me.

You don’t need a trip to the gym after a day on the farm.

So many new, marketable skills: industrial weed whacking, picking Macadamia nuts off the ground on hands and knees for hours, all day spray-a-thons, and navigating a golf cart through mud and avocado slime. Add this to all my other newly learned skills: cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, picking up trash, adjusting to adversity, and most importantly, dealing with idiots.

I came at just the wrong time. Two long-term volunteer/workers just left and it’s been unnaturally rainy (maybe supernaturally rainy), so everything is overgrown and behind schedule. Still, it’s an amazing place. The owners, Una and Leon, are wonderful and generous people, and unlike my last workaway, they’re sane.

A few things I picked. They grow hundreds of fruits, veggies and herbs, plus Kona coffee. I could eat an avocado every hour in perpetuity and never run out.

Making mamaki, tulsi, lemongrass and mint tea. I accidentally threw some green onions in because it all starts to look the same after a while. How many times in my life have I picked fresh herbs and made tea? Once now.

Picking bananas. The E-Z-Go cart is helpful because the entire farm is a hill on the side of a dormant volcano. Everything you need is uphill. To shower it’s 300 yds up. It’s a pleasant mile walk down to the main road, grocery and hardware store, but the return trip is a slog, a 600 ft increase in elevation over a mile.

Making chocolate. After whacking open the red, yellow and orange cacao pods, you pull out the white, slimy seeds. Once they’re fermented, dried and ground you have cocoa powder. Mix in cocoa butter and sugar and you have chocolate, which we will make on Monday.

The fresh cacao seeds drip a liquid called miel de cacao (“cacao honey”). Tastes like pineapple juice with honey and lemon, but better. Una says few people ever taste fresh miel de cacao. I am one of those few.

The neighbor’s cows, on the other side of a very thin wire fence, after I tossed them a bucket of tasty honohono grass–you know it as the houseplant Wandering Jew, which is a little ironic because I’m Jewish and I’m long-term wandering. They watch every time I pass by, hoping for honohono, banana leaves, or a bucket of slimy avocados. All good stuff if you’re a cow.

Another marketable skill: spraying a non-toxic, organically friendly fungus on 2000 coffee trees. It kills a beetle that destroys coffee beans and has to be sprayed once a month. New invasive species, like the beetle, show up all the time and add to the cost of farming.

As close as I get to an ocean view. I’m a couple miles above the water and my car doesn’t arrive until Monday. Leon and I have gone snorkeling a few times (snorkeling is amazing here), but otherwise I’ve been stuck on the farm alone in my little cabin.

Soon a new volunteer or two will move in, but the unknown is who. I was threatened with a pair of 24 yr old women as housemates, but thankfully it fell through. Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe it would have been fun (as I cringe).

In the volunteer work/trade universe, you never know what might happen. Dealing with adversity comes in handy. It’s an adventure.

The yard was flat and smooth

This was the dry run for a kayak trip, in a smooth, flat yard. One thing I wanted to do before leaving Kauai was go kayaking with Nectar. He’s a professional guide and can take you on all kinds of adventures. As usual, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

We’d talked about kayaking up a nice, smooth canal, but ended up planning an ocean trip from Kapaa, past the coastline we’d just cleaned, all the way to Anahola Beach Park, about 7 miles as a group of crows flies.

The day we made the plans the ocean was flat and calm. The day we launched the ocean was MUCH rougher. Nectar says “You can pick the day but not the weather.” It wasn’t dangerous, but the swells were big and progress was slow. It was fun — never paddled up and down before — until an hour later when I started to feel queasy. I was worthless for the rest of the trip. Nectar was well capable of handling all the padding himself. He’s pretty tough.

A school of dolphins, called a pod, hung out with us for a while (a group of crows, by the way, is called a “murder of crows”). They’re small spinner dolphins, named such because they jump up in the air and spin. It was extraordinary. They were close enough to reach out and touch. One took a selfie with BopBop.

Wind was coming from starboard (right), so be sure to throw up on port (left). It didn’t come to that, but we decided to end the trip a little early because I wasn’t a happy camper.

We were heading in just safely to the side of a steep cliff when a rouge wave smashed us starboard and threw us into the dangerous gyre at the base of the cliff. The kayak flipped end over end and I swear I heard a monk seal call my name.

What actually happened was we cruised towards a nice little beach, the wave broke and flipped the kayak over. We grabbed BopBop (he didn’t know what he was getting himself into either) by the carry-on handle of his cute little life jacket and hauled everything up onto the sand.

The snorkel gear and water bottles went flying. They bobbed up a little later and we had to swim out to get them. The label on my water bottle dislocated, and will, ironically, wash up on the very beaches we’ve gone to so much trouble to clean.

BopBop’s PFD (Personal Flotation Device).

The Surfrider (https://kauai.surfrider.org) going away dinner at which I was awarded the Rookie of the Year Award, which I probably still would have received had there been other rookies.

From left: Scott, who’s not fat just close to the camera, me, Scott, Mike, Barbara, Nectar, and the tiny corner of Charles’ white t-shirt.

With Scott and Nectar, the last and final trailer #29 of trash removed from the Anahola DHHL, approx. 22 tons, plus 6 pickup loads of tires, from March 25 to June 3, 2020. A friend said “That was a very generous thing you did.” I replied “OMG I am sick of trash,” but we both know that’s not true.

Time to throw out my (originally off-white) beach cleaning socks.

Act II

When the plane landed at the bustling Kona airport on the Big Island, I texted Una that she could spot me by my red t-shirt. I needn’t have bothered. After picking up my bag —one of two at baggage claim—I was standing at the curb alone. No people, no cars, no violent protests, no movement. It was weird and made me think how many people aren’t earning a living.

We’re on the slope of a mountain above Captain Cook, Hawaii. This is Kona coffee country. It’s been rainy and cloudy for a couple weeks, not the way it’s supposed to be now. The weather’s been weird, like everything else.

My rustic cabin is at the end of the road. It’s a mile and half muddy walk downhill to the grocery store (and uphill to get back) and my car doesn’t arrive for 2 weeks. They provide all the food I want, most of it grown here. There’s little need of the grocery store. That’s kind of the point of this, working on an organic farm.

This is it: https://kuaiwifarm.com

Unfortunately, I’m alone in the cabin for now. There were supposed to be one or two others, but you can never tell when volunteers might come or go. We’re an unstable lot.

View from my balcony, called a lanai. Bottom left coffee. Top left avocado. Bottom right bananas. Top right some kind of hardwood blocking the view to the ocean.

Cell service works and I kind of get internet on my phone from the balcony. There’s no wifi or internet in the house, though I can walk up the hill to the guesthouse and use the internet there. I like the idea of less internet, less intrusion, less of the world.

I still haven’t read or seen or listened to a news story since I left Virginia in October. All I know are the random bits and pieces I overhear, and it all seems crazy.