On The Kalalau Trail

After a day spent trekking across the strenuous 11-mile Kalalau trail, situated along the Na Pali Coastline, we’d been left intoxicated with fatigue and maddened joy.

The trek ascended hellishly hot, steep dirt tracks of brittle red lava rock; descended valleys of shimmering transcendental brilliance that were aglow with wild flowers, waterfalls and sparkling crystal walls.
Goats frolicked on far away green hills and down on impenetrable glossy riverbanks.
An abundance of native birds: I’iwis, Alae Ke’oke’os and Red-crested Cardinals flapped around the wilderness with radiant colours that rivalled those of the flowers, blossoming numerous and anarchic as we walked.
We ventured deep into forests, over foot-wide paths that stood a terrific hundred metres above the sea and then rolled down dry ruddy dust spewing slopes to grassy shorelines.

Constant dehydration felt narcotic and caused the world to shimmer; like the Road with Cypress and Star. Legs burnt from our uphill exertions, eliciting feverish cravings for Hershey chocolate bars and baked beans on toast.
Sporadic cooling breezes would come and replenish the senses, drawing tears of appreciation from our on-looking eyes that gazed once more at the world beatific.

That night the tide came in; the crash of a fear-inducing wave opened my eyes to a moon that now shone fuller with a wide-eyed stare into our still open tent.
The sea thus continued its furious, loud battering of the shore, seemingly intent on consuming the beach whole.

On the previous night, 15-miles east along the northern shore, at the stroke of midnight a raging tempest had sprung up out of the Pacific Ocean drenching and very nearly obliterating our $20 pop-up Wal-Mart tent.
Anticipating another storm, we decided to seek shelter for the night in a cave; the one we were now camping under and trapped inside of. The tent was hidden away from the other campers by a cove that separated our beach from the main one.

The path between the two beaches had been drowned by the tide and the opportunity for escape had now gone: it was us the sea would swallow up next.
Dark froth grew visible from our tent as waves crashed into and jumped over the meter high sand bank, that was now our only barrier between the sea and us.
Dreamed hallucinations of an imaginary evacuation seemed real as we muttered with a last, semi-conscious effort a series of now forgotten escape plans.

Our entire four-week journey had led us to this cave and that spectacular ominous night. I’d slept soundly despite dreaming that I’d opened the tent door and found us to be floating, with nothing but ocean surrounding the two of us, like a watery desert.
At dawn the beach lay before me, with the tent door still open and all was as it should be.
Another day had ended and the next one had arrived, we were thankful for our lives and with that we promised to make the most of the day ahead.