A Day at Kahena Beach

Take a right at the end of our driveway and walk thirty minutes along the coastal highway known as the Red Road, scramble down a jagged lava path/cliff and you are at Kehena Beach.The beach is sand, but when the waves recede, it exposes the entryway to the ocean that is an ever changing mix of lava gravel, bigger gravel, stones, bigger stones, boulders, bigger boulders.There is a drop off in this swirling gravel pit, that can make it very hard to get out.

In spite of ~four drownings a year and countless bloody heads, people take to the waters. Richard, the founder of Kalani, is famous for his miles long open ocean swimming, where you are truly on your own. There was recently a twenty something volunteer and competitive swimmer that went out with him and the wireless coconut reported that he come back rather shaken. Apocryphally, Richard told him that he had to start somewhere. After two times in, I am going to have to find another beach to properly sample that inviting blue surf. The joy/panic ratio just wasn't quite right.

I first went here on a weekday, and there were very few people there. Lo and behold, maybe out of the sea, strolled a naked man playing a flute.

Later he put on a sarong and chilled here a while

So this Sunday, Sunshine, who is a long term volunteer, and lives in this van on a nice piece of property near by, took three of us to the Sunday festival at Kehena Beach in his van:

That would be Abby on the left, a yoga instructor, hailing from Huntsville, Alabama, taking a three month break from her teenage kids, by living in a tent in Puna, and Rachel on the right, from Roots City, Ohio, a former insurance underwriter and now not quite sure what is next. We all work in the kitchen together and Abby is my neighbor in tentland. Thanks for including me ladies!

These shots do not capture the drum circle/Sunday church scene well, but on Sundays, there is an all day drum circle, that can have as many as twenty participants tapping things, beating all manner of drums, an occasional trumpet, flute or some homemade stringed instrument. It is sometimes subtle and sublime, other times intense and pulsating. Some dancers, worked into an ecstatic trance, ebb and flow out of the circle.

Gosh, where to start about the Puna Coast, the Big Island, Hawaii? I can't speak for the rest of Hawaii, but it seems one of the last free places on earth. Smack in the path of a live lava flow and home to hippies, funky artists, alternative healers, Hawaiian sovereignty activists, pakalolo growers, organic farmers and off the grid survivalists; it is laid back, sultry, cool but very intense. You hear a lot about energy here: lava underneath your bed, the Pacific pounding the coast 100 yards away, the sunlight, the starlight, chants, oms, the winds (there are over 130 words in Hawaiian for different kinds of wind, including the spooky black wind that originates inland and blows to the coast) and jungle critters doing their thing. One settles here only by accepting wildness and impermanence. Lisa, who you met in the last post, is a mental health specialist dealing with the homeless back in Las Vegas, says some of behavior exhibited here might invite well intentioned intervention by do-gooders back on the mainland (I really want to say "back in the states", because sometimes I feel like I am in another friggin' country....er....world ). Here they are left alone and unmolested to pursue their own visions, like a naked man doing handstands and poorly juggling a broken umbrella on the beach.


After a few hours, and a few cervezas, we take our leave and I promptly proceed to drop my brand new Croc down this cliff (lava is hell on shoes) and Rachel was game enough to risk her life and limb to retrieve it.

Alors then, onward and upward, intrepid traveler

So, suffice to say, there is a lot going on. This week we had the Puna Culinary Festival.

We had dinners for Hawaiian Royalty, cooking classes, tours of organic farms and a local cooking competition. It started for me by driving into Pahoa, the nearest grocery store, for supplies for my entry in the competition, with Chef Kenny.

Which did not mean we were in such a rush, that we could not stop at the former Coconut Beach in Kalapena. In 1990, a pahoehoe lava flow (the liquid, rope-y kind, versus 'a'a ,the chunky kind) buried a picture post card black sand and coconut palm beach and several hundred yards of ocean. Local Hawaiians and hippies have planted hundreds of new coconut trees in the lava. Come back in twenty years and bring your camera.

Chef Kenny, chef extraordinaire and all around got it going on dude, from Detroit in his old life, having a morning beer as he shows me around the new beach. Too dangerous to swim.

Although the food is always great here, here is the menu for a special Hawaiian dinner, prepared by Chef Mariana, my radical vegan, "Ted, you have to put energy into the tofu and tempeh", friend

The competition took place in the largest yoga studio, the E-Max. It faces the Pacific and when the wind blows off the ocean during a strenuous class, it is another form of energy all around here, doing good and magical things.

My display...how the fuck did I get back in da business so soon?

Chef Kenny prepares to fry breadfruit. I forgot to get a picture of Diana, owner of EB rabbit farm near here, who was last employed as a cook at  the Urbana Café, near Deltaville, Va.

Kalani's fields its own volunteer Hula team

On Wednesdays, many volunteers go Uncle Robert's in Kalapana. In 1990 a redirection of the eruption that buried Coconut Beach, then known as Kaimu beach and what once known as Hawaii's most famous black sand beach, also buried most of the village. Depends who you listen to, but the story says that a shaman stood before the flow, chanted until Pele spared the bar. Kalapana is also an out post of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, which will be the subject of another blog.

The night starts off with traditional Hawaiian slack key music and stories. Kava, a local good time drink is readily available.

Then some white guys come on and rock the house until Puna midnight: 10:00 PM



Hawaiian "plate lunches" are available

My hale. I wanted to live in a tent in the rain forest, right? It rains at least once or twice a day, sometimes torrential, but you would never know it an hour later.

A heiau on property. Once a fishing shrine, that would have had thatched huts and altars on this foundation. They can tell by the rounded stones that had to be schlepped from the beach.

A guest hale on property. Thanks for stopping by.

Forweducation of staff (my two bosses were attorneys, a Norwegian engineer is in the tent across from me, a Brazillian va-va-boom breast cancer surgeon who does not know Craig Slingluff, retired military combat air traffic controller