More October musings for a new start

Eō Lono-i-ka-makahiki! Looking to the past to the future

The new year arrived early this year in Hawaiʻi, only a couple of days after that uncomfortably named Second Monday in October holiday.

Photo of the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas I took this week from Mahukona - imagine also the ocean shimmering below under the lingering colors of sunset, and the full moon rising over the Kohala mountains to my back. This weekʻs post invites us all to consider Small Matters like celestial phenomena, terrestrial commitments, and the very nature of time and natural cycles. Last week marked a new cycle in my writing of They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir and the path has emerged more clearly in the days since then. I so appreciate those of you who have been hanging in with me for months or years. If you are a newcomer and would like to receive future essays by email, you can enter your details below.

And please donʻt forget to talk back! Like or comment or email or send me a telepathic memo.

As I explained in this December 31, 2023 post, according to the Hawaiian calendar the new year begins when the constellation Makaliʻi, the one you might recognize as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, rises over the horizon (as we would view it from the east side of the island where I reside) at the same time the sun is setting (visible from my side of the island). Sometimes that happens as late as early November. In 2024, it happened this past week. Lono-i-ka-makahiki!

The Voice into which I am settling, the Voice which in June was not quite lost but was not quite found, is one that travels between worlds. Or at least between worldviews. Increasingly that Voice is able to hold both views simultaneously, as if perched above the summit of Mauna Kea, simultaneously watching the rising of Makaliʻi and the setting of Kanehoalani (one way in which we could talk about the sun). As if sitting at a point in my life at which the past of memoir and the future of whatʻs left of my earthly bodily existence are held equally with me in the present.

As if sitting earlier this week in a circle of diverse people trying to articulate a future for Mahukona¹, a place for which I have accepted responsibility and with which I am stumbling my way into a new relationship.² Struggling with why I felt so listless, uninspired, begging someone to bring me an iced Americano to keep me awake, until the moment that future was brought alive by a singular voice, strong as the ocean and streaming salty tears, calling forth the past as present in the moment as present in the future. The land came alive; the vision came clear.

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If you own one album of Hawaiian popular music, statistically the odds are that album is Israel Kamakawiwoʻoleʻs Facing Future. What is the image on the cover of the CD? Braddah IZ facing away from the camera next to a huge pahu, drum. I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope says the ʻolelo noeau. What was missing in the vision document was the clarity that only by asking the land and its people to tell us of its past could we understand the future we should be creating through restoration and stewardship. The very place we were sitting was within view of Koʻa Holomoana, a navigational heiau, a place where navigators of ocean-crossing canoes are trained to observe the stars, waves, and winds for finding direction.

And so after the meeting I stayed with a few others, watching the sun set, locating Venus, and then, with careful observation through softly focused eyes traveling a few degrees to the North, finally locating a faint vertical streak. A vertical streak which when viewed through the zoomed lens of an iPhone became a comet. A comet that I had stayed to view out of FOMO. Because if I missed seeing it this time, I would only have to wait another 80,000 years for the next opportunity.

Were there humans watching this comet 80,000 years ago? Well according to Googleʻs AI summary and Wikipedia, it is generally believed among scientists that humans were migrating out of Africa around that time. And then, 75,000 years ago, the Toba Volcano super-eruption may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people. Think about that as an extreme example of climate change - and of human resilience.

The theme came up again later in the week. I was on Maui for a different Hawaiʻi Land Trust (HILT) event, a small gathering of appreciation for supporters of the Land Trust. Our Director of ʻĀina Stewardship³ gave a brief update on progress in stewardship at HILTʻs two preserves on that island. It was such a cool talk. In describing current research at Nuʻu, he shared how he was pondering a moʻolelo , a story of the place that described the gods⁴ getting so angry that they wiped it out entirely. The fish pond and community at that location completely gone. To Scott, that sounded like a massive tsunami.

So they put modern science to work and sure enough, were able to do 3D modeling of the evidence found on the ground of an event that reached 30ʻ high and 250 meters inland. They were able to recover proof in the geological record of what was growing at Nuʻu prior to the event. And they are now looking at how to restore the site using traditional planting techniques in a way to make it more resilient to two predicted consequences of climate change: sea level rise and more violent storms - all while growing food for the community. That knowledge can in turn be used in other coastal areas. The effort is important enough to have attracted a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Progress is not always linear. Maybe all true progress has to be circular - sometimes incremental but often marked by tsunami scale events (or at least ones that feel that way). Just as this writing returns to themes again and again but if Iʻm any good at this, each time we uncover something new in the geological record.

Happy New Year! Hope you remembered to pay your third quarter estimated taxes and marked your calendars to begin working on your personal and business plans for 2025! Donʻt forget to look to the past as you contemplate your future.

1. Please take a moment to learn more about Mahukona, a wahi pana or special place that was protected by Hawaiʻi Land Trustʻs purchase late last year, after decades of a committed stand by the Kohala community that it not be developed into a resort.

2. I was invited to join the Board of Hawaiʻi Land Trust in April 2024 - a commitment which I did not make lightly - but which I also knew came as a culmination of many of the threads of learning I have been writing about in this memoir.

3. When I describe Scott Fisher to folks I exaggerate slightly by saying the man has like 3 or 4 PhDs. Itʻs actually one plus the second one heʻs about to finish but still…he knows SO much thatʻs relevant to his work and inspires me to continue my own learning journey.

4. The akua in Hawaiian stories, the word usually translated in English as “gods,” are best thought of as elemental forces, according to Kumu Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele. You can see the force that is Aunty Pua explaining in this recent keynote address.