Spirit of Aloha | Features | November/December 2007

Travelers’ Tales
By: Allan Seiden



A WALK IN THE PARK

PHOTO: BRETT UPRICHARD PHOTO: DARRELL ISHII PHOTO: STACY POPE

There is something endearing about a gift dedicated with true affection by a man to his wife—an affirmation made regal, since that man was a king, his wife was a queen, and the gift was a 150-acre of park in her name at the foot of Diamond Head. The queen was Kapi‘olani, the king Kaläkaua, and theirs was a love match that survived the tumultuous years of his reign.

In 1877, when the search for a park site began, however, the youthful royal couple was not yet involved in the political discord and economic complications that marked Kaläkaua‘s last decade on the throne. The park spoke of optimism, of Hawai‘i’s coming of age in terms of urban planning and accomplishment.

My connection to Kapi‘olani Park goes beyond the historical, although I love the sense of history that links the land to its Polynesian past, a time when these grassy flatlands were largely wetlands draining rainwater off the Ko‘olau mountains on its way to the sea. Taro was grown here then, with malo-clad surfers heading out to catch the waves, perhaps after prayers at one of several nearby heiau, including Papa‘ena‘ena, a luakini linked to Kü, which accorded sanctity to the lands between the temple and the sea.

This was before the wetland waters were diverted by the building of the Ala Wai Canal in the 1920s, and the land planted in the grassy lawns and beautiful trees that make this park a perfect buffer between the frantic pace of Waikïkï and the timeless grandeur of the setting, with Diamond Head towering overhead and the highest of the sawtooth Ko‘olau peaks etched against the sky.

It was as a swimmer with a periodic commitment to the quarter-mile wind-sock swim at Kaimana Beach, part of the park’s prized window on the sea, that I became familiar with its open spaces and the views they allowed, all a reminder of O‘ahu’s great beauty.

Far in the lee of the mountains, sunshine prevails, occasionally bested by clouds that float by in the big sky that overhangs Kapi‘olani Park’s great open spaces. I am familiar with that sky. At times when the clouds or mountains were particularly spectacular, or, when possessed by the smell of acres of newly mown grass, I’d be forced to the ground, the Earth at my back, my eyes to the sky, communing with memories of an East Coast childhood, when I’d laid down on some grassy Maine hillside and watched the clouds roll by.

Then there are the trees. Having admitted to an affair with Mother Earth, I must now confess to a fondness for trees, something instinctive that fills me with calm certainty and reverent awe.

Kapi‘olani Park proves a tree-lover’s case. Here the trees, most of them 60 or more years old, rise like shady umbrellas from Kapi‘olani’s lush green lawns. With time and room to grow, magnificent trees of many species are found throughout the park. Here is the great-limbed keawe, angular and resolute; the wide-spreading ficus, with its dense, small leaves; moaning ironwoods powered by the ever-present breeze that tames the midday heat. Date palms rise like minarets. More than a century old, they were planted alongside the racetrack that was built here in 1878, establishing Kapi‘olani Park’s credentials as the place to go, with horse-drawn trolleys making the 45-minute run from downtown Honolulu. There are also weeks when shower trees, unassuming most of the year, explode in cascades of yellow and coral-peach that cover the grass in pastel snow when their petals fall to the ground.

The racetrack, like the hula show that closed a few years ago after a 60-year run, has disappeared, but other vintage park attractions remain. Among them are places of cultural initiation into the community like the Waikïkï Zoo, Waikïkï Aquarium and Kapi‘olani Bandstand, and most memorably for me, the Waikïkï Shell, where, as a newcomer in the mid-1970s, I fell in love with Hawaiian music as I listened to ‘Olomana, Cecilio & Kapono, Gabby Pahinui, Aunty Genoa Keawe, the Brothers Cazimero and the Beamer Brothers, as well as many others. Sitting on the lawn with my newfound musical friends, facing a star-studded sky, I was in sync with my choice of Hawai‘i as my new home.

It used to be that I’d hunt for a parking place close to Kaimana Beach when I went for a swim. After two or three searches that lasted too long, I decided to leave the car across from Kaimana on Päkï Road and cut through Kapi‘olani Park. From my first crossing I knew I’d made a fateful discovery that would thereafter make the park the start and finish of my swimming routine.

It was late afternoon. Massive, sunlit cumulus clouds hung against a luminous blue sky. Diamond Head and the more distant Ko‘olau ridges were brilliant with color. I stopped to look. Shouts from a far-off soccer game came toward me as a muffled crackle. The wind pushed its way through the trees behind me. I turned toward the cool breeze that blew down from the mountains like an ocean current. Holding my breath, eyes closed, I found myself swimming even as I made my way to the shore.

ALLAN SEIDEN, writer and historian, has written many books about Hawai‘i, with themes as diverse as Diamond Head and Pearl Harbor.

Features Archives