On the north side of the island of Kauai, in the U.S. state of Hawaii, there is a place where the Kalalau Valley spills down from high mountain cliffs, onto the shore of the Pacific. There, on the edge of the beach, lie the ruins of stone temple architecture and the foundations of structures from when that place was a thriving settlement, a small city on the edge of paradise.
Nowadays it is a rather barren, empty State Park. The Park Service has barred anyone from remaining in the valley or on the beach more than a certain number of days. Which means people are prohibited from living there. That could be a good thing for this time period, as it prevents the pristine environment from being developed, polluted, and degraded. However, the way the park is portrayed–as a rugged wilderness area without any context of human culture– seems very different from the reality of history on the island. I stayed on that beach for about 8 days, sleeping in caves, drinking from the waterfall, and eating very little. And during that time, I discovered some hidden structures that tell a totally different story than the one that makes it out to be an untouched wild place.
One morning during my stay there, I woke up, bathed in the ocean, and took a walk alone, following a narrow footpath going up from the base of the mountain. Ascending from the bottom of the valley, where mountain streams gurgle, slowing their descent before collecting in pools of the most precious, drinkable water, the mountainside appears from a distance to be a thick mess of overgrown jungle. But when I was 23 years old, wandering there alone in a kind of Dreamtime, I discovered something very different from the supposedly virgin, tropical wilderness that the folks at the Park Service would have you believe it to be.
I climbed down slippery slopes through rocky gorges, literally crawled through thickets of almost impenetrable, thorny bramble. My arms and legs were cut in long red gashes, like I had gotten into a cage with baby leopards. And then I climbed, crawling around steep precipices, until I found something I didn't quite know I was looking for: a flat outcropping, high on a cliff overlooking the valley and the ocean far below, a place to sit and smoke and meditate.
Actually I had initially ventured into the valley searching for mango trees because I was hungry and had packed almost nothing when I left civilization behind to go hiking along the Napali Coast.
I meditated there for some time, in the place where it was said the ancient Lemurians used to practice levitation and teleportation using crystals. I don't know how long I remained; it might've been minutes, maybe hours. But when I crawled back down from my perch, I had no idea from which direction I had come, or how to return to the path that had led me there. But I knew that the beach was downhill, so I began to descend.
The way was steep and rocky. I found myself slipping on loose gravel. I made my way through more masses of bramble. I climbed over enormous fallen trees and finally found my way into a darker, thicker part of the jungle where there was a little less underbrush and I could navigate my path more easily. And that's when I found something that totally amazed me.
Suddenly, I found myself standing on much flatter, more uniform ground. A few of the old, gnarled trees appeared to be spaced apart, in rows. Most of the vegetation seemed to be brushy, weedy shrubs; fast-growing trees; and groundcover. That's when I noticed the terraces...
I looked down at my feet, and noticed I was standing near the edge of a rock terrace, about 2 or 3 feet above another terrace built just below it. Each level of the terrace was about 8 or ten feet wide. And I looked up, and saw, the entire mountainside was covered in stone terraces. It was clear that probably as recently as 100 or 150 years ago, the ENTIRE valley was covered in tropical orchards interspersed with edible and medicinal polyculture. There had been a vast, thriving agricultural settlement there in the not so distant past, and no one said a word about it. There was no kiosk, no pamphlet, no website, NOTHING. Total silence about the fact that there was an ancient, thriving, peaceful civilization there before the land was annexed by the U.S. Government.
The next morning I tied my blanket together with the few parcels I had acquired along the way, and set out back to civilization. I don't know if I got lost along the way back to the main trail, but somehow I found myself filling my water bottle in a small pool in the jungle, and suddenly there was a man standing next to me, a man with lusciously tanned skin wearing only a sarong. He seemed gentle and quiet. He asked where I was headed and I told him I was leaving the valley. Would you like to join us for a cup of coffee before you head out? he asked.
It just so happened that one of my parcels was a bag of ground coffee someone had given to me. I accepted his invitation, and when we arrived at his beautiful open-air bamboo bungalow just a short distance away, I presented him the bag of coffee. I wasn't going to need it. He and his lady partner seemed happy to accept the gift.
Over coffee, the man told me that he was native Hawaiian, and had been attempting to remain in the valley as a resident for a number of years, and had been arrested seven times for residing there without a federal permit. Each time, he appeared before the same judge, and pleaded his own case, saying, I am a native Hawaiian. I have sovereignty to reside on any public land where I see fit. Each time, the judge let him go and he immediately returned to the valley to continue building his hut and tending the crops he was cultivating there. After the seventh attempt at arresting him, the park rangers stopped bothering him, and he'd been there ever since.
He explained to me the importance of what he was doing, why Hawaiians needed the freedom to live on the land in the traditional manner, and how everyone had a responsibility to maintain the ecology. He played ukulele for me and I tried learning a few chords. Then, he took me back to the beach to show me his pet project, his Divine Labor of Love.
On the edge of the beach, about 200 yards from the shore, were what looked at first glance like small hillocks, covered in sand, sea grass, and scrub brush. He guided me to a space between two of the hillocks where some flat paving stones had been cleared of their debris. It looked like a portion of a patio, with a kneewall and steps leading up a small pyramid. Looking on the overgrown hillocks with new eyes, I suddenly recognized them for that they actually were: ancient ruins.
This is the temple, he said. I've been excavating it by hand for the last five years. This whole area was a village. The people had gardens of watercress and taro. The government doesn't want anyone to know it's here, that's why they won't restore it, and why they tried to keep me away. But slowly, we're going to uncover the whole temple, so when people visit they know that there was a culture here, not just a park where they can kayak and hike in the forest for a few days.
I haven't been back to Hawaii since that visit more than fourteen years ago. I'm not totally sure if my experience in Kalalau was even real, or if it was all a dream. Dream or Reality, I wonder if the man and woman are still there, living in the paradise bungalow, slowly uncovering their temple, stone by stone.
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