oneye view

jon waiting for goats to pass above

We started the hike under an overcast sky on a muggy and windless day. It was Jon Kim’s first and my second time up this gulch. The Honokoa Gulch is a prominent gash that started innocently enough as a small creek high up in the Kohala mountain and slashed its way down the arid slope toward the ocean less than a mile north of Kawaihae. We parked south of the road bridge and picked our way up the dry creek bed stepping on basalt boulders large and small, shaped and smooth. We traced our way upward along this gray path that splits the earth into crumbly red cliffs.  Sloping sides stiffen to walls that revealed layers of rocks, basalt and lava, barren except for dead Kiawe trees and small clumps of grass that cling to ledges.

buddha' eyes

Kiawe trees survive and thrive where the dry meandering creek bed widen and flatten enough for dirt and sand to collect. These twisted trees provide shades and hide the gulch’s secrets underneath its thorny branches. I was going back into time with each step. Smooth faced basalt boulders and rounded stones shaped by violent rush of water now lay silent waiting to tell us their stories.  In starch contrast to dusty cliffs on either sides,  these boulders and stones are clean and sterile. As signs of human  rubbish disappear, once we passed a rusted truck pushed over the edge and down onto a Kawe tree clinging mid way up the side, we heard bleating of goats in the distance. Their pellets gave them away first.  Apparently, goats have favored sites to do their business, and judging from the frequency of these outdoor goat toilets tells me that generations of goats made their home here. How do they thrive in such a sterile place? There is no water to be found here between its source and the ocean.

a cave with sealed entrance

As walls of the gulch rise taller and taller to form a canyon, its mystery deepens, water sliced clean through eons and expose cross sections of lava tubes, bubbles, small caves and niches which stare down at you with vacant dark eyes. We came across several cave entrances that were sealed with stones. Swirls in the lava wall made Buddha eyes smile as we passed. I could live here I thought, spending the night and light a small fire to bath these walls its flickering light. I would tuck in one of these vacant eyes and fall asleep as the fire below fades. What will these walls and the wind that snake through this canyon tell me at night?

Ahead we could hear young goats scrambling up the sides, kicking off small rock slides, while bleating to each other. They zigzaged their way to sixty meters above us stopping once in a while to check our progress. A straggler anxious to catch up with the rest of its family dislodged a stone as large as a man’s head. It tumbled and bounced of a ledge threw up an explosion of red dirt, then arced its way down to the middle of the creek bed. A dull crack echoed followed by smaller bounces. More small slides could be heard in the distance. We could hear everything, sounds of wind through pigeon wings high above. Those damn goats could crush us with an avalanche of rocks.

a complete goat skeleton

Up until then, we were casual, walking, talking mostly with our heads down, but that would have to change. Rocks and debris set off by a frightened baby goat could rain down on us any moment. I supposed a crusty old Billy-goat would have done the same damaged by pitching its own body from high up. I counted four scattered remains including one fading to only white bones and tattered fur, consistently closer the walls of either sides of the floor of the canyon. Jon said goats make mistakes too. Great, I thought, falling goats and rocks. Suddenly, it has become survival of the fittest. We, bigger brained, technology savvy, exposed thumbs, urban living and unfit for the outdoors are ‘pitted’ against, smaller brained, horned, hardy, eat anything, drought resistant, four legged, brown and furry, mountain climbers. They were on top and we were on the bottom, we could do them no harm. We waited for the family of goat to get further up the canyon before proceeding. We looked up, looked down, cocked our ears, and hugged the wall to tread forward.

the steepest and narrowest part of the gulch

We picked up our pace to lessen our vulnerability as these walls urged us on; we could see the next bend, just one more bend. The walls close in to twenty meters across and soar to more than 70 meters above. Taunting us just ahead is probably the steepest and narrowest part of the canyon. As much as I wanted to rub my hands on those narrow walls,  I decided to savor the canyon’s mystery and save the hard hat area for the next time. Staring up the canyon, raw and sterile, my sense of time and place was distorted. Outside the canyon, though an arid area, nevertheless we are in a tropical island. Down there it is another world: dry, barely vegetated, unknown.