Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | July/August 2007

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJII

Water Ways

PHOTO: RON DAHLQUIST / PACIFIC STOCK

Next time you take a shower, think about this: In the Päläwai Basin of Läna‘i, long ago when water was scarce, the Hawaiians would bathe themselves in dew. “They would gather long shoots of ‘ilima and slap their bodies with them,” cultural resources specialist Kepä Maly said recently as we stood in the flat, broad basin that sprawls across central Läna‘i. “That was how they showered, because there was no water here.” A native Hawaiian owl, a pueo, soared nearby, as if summoned by a chant that Maly had shared just moments earlier.

Even at the personal level, the Hawaiians were masters of water management. They recognized that the feathery ‘ilima blossoms were not only exquisite in lei, but also that their petals and shoots were natural magnets for moisture. For drinking water, according to Maly, the Hawaiians went to Mänele, “the place where the water shot up from the spring.” There, placing gourds on the freshwater springs bubbling in the ocean, they would gather household water.

Throughout the 1970s, Läna‘i was the only island where I felt safe camping alone. A Castle & Cooke permit allowed camping at Hulopo‘e Bay, the island’s social and recreational hub. Residents swam and fished (but not with nets or spears) in its warm, forgiving waters, and the ‘opihi they picked were as big as tennis balls. At the end of the day, campers were the only human presence on the beach.

On one of those trips, I watched the sun go down on one side of Hulopo‘e at precisely the moment a full moon rose over the opposite side of the bay. The sky was saturated with color. Taking it all in, silently whooping with joy, I realized that the beach was deserted—that, miraculously, I was the only person left to witness the spectacle unfolding before me. I noticed a gentle simmer in the ocean just in front of me. About 40 or 50 yards from shore, the water was agitated and black—with whales. Many of them seemed to play in the water, their skin gleaming silver whenever they broke the surface.

One day in 1997, a leatherback turtle built a nest on the same beach. It was a rare event. Although the northern shore of Polihua is a prime nesting site for green sea turtles, leatherbacks had never been seen on Hawai‘i's shores until that day. Even with the fancy hotel on the hill, the Mänele Bay Hotel (now the Four Seasons Resort Läna‘i at Mänele Bay), the massive endangered turtle lumbered ashore and laid her eggs. Residents form­ed an around-the-clock neighborhood watch to keep in­truders at bay. When I visited during that period, I found yellow tape marking the nest and a watchful guard in the shade of a kiawe tree. The eggs never hatched, but my disappointment was tempered by the in­spired commitment of the community. Kepä Maly knows about commitment. He walked the entire perimeter of the island with esteemed anthropologist Kenneth Emory in 1975. Today he works tirelessly to share Läna‘i’s culture and history, recording the stories of the elders. It is at the Läna‘i Culture and Heritage Center that you can witness, up close, the artifacts and archives of the first Hawaiian island to be inhabited by the gods and the last to be populated by people.

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