The Story Isn't Finished Yet

Grab yourself a glass of pineapple juice and settle down for storytime. Today’s entry includes pineapples, dinosaurs, giant fairytale lizards, and mountain peaks. A lot lies ahead! 

---

Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nqUPx57vt4FW3LXT7

---

January 2nd, 2024- Hawaii Day 7

The sand was soft and cool between my toes. I wiggled them gratefully. It sure felt good to take off my hiking shoes. At the sand’s edge, waves gently rolled ashore. Beyond them, the horizon reposed in the palest pink. The beach was quiet, just the way we liked it. It was a soothing start to the day. 

This may be a controversial statement, but Tyler and I aren’t huge fans of the beach. We appreciate a visit, but we aren’t ones to spend all day sunbathing and swimming. Perhaps it’s just a flaw of our youthful vigor. What can we say? We like to stay busy! We gave the beach its due respect by wandering through tide pools, digging in the sand, and admiring the sunrise. Tyler even buried my legs knee-deep in a pile of sand. It was a lovely beach, but it wasn’t long before we were back on the road. Another full day lay ahead of us. First stop: pineapples!

We arrived at the Dole Pineapple Plantation before the doors opened, so we snagged a good parking spot, rolled down the windows, and let a tropical breeze ruffle our hair. It was the sort of day that you couldn’t help but feel happy about. Bits of sand still clung to my feet. The tropical air was warm, underlined by a friendly wind. In the Dole arboretum, vibrant tropical plants danced and nodded. Their colors competed with each other, every plant jostling for the rank of “most striking” or “singularly remarkable.” The bromeliads were my favorite. Strangely structured and extremely eye-catching, the various plants boasted all sorts of adaptions that would never survive in Ohio. It’s funny to think what one region might take for granted, isn’t it? Sure makes you wonder what we overlook in our own hometowns!

Most people who visit the Dole Pineapple Plantation board a miniature train to for a narrated tour of the scenery. We attempted this but found ourselves trapped in a line that seemed to stretch for miles. After standing, unmoving, for a long time, we abandoned hope. We consoled ourselves with a pineapple garden maze instead. To my family, it should come to no surprise that my notoriously subpar navigation skills did not fare well in the maze. Tyler, on the other hand, excelled at the challenge. Thank goodness that one of us knows where they are! If we were following my lead, we’d probably still be trapped in that maze to this day! The last notable detail about the Dole Plantation was the Dole Whip. For those unfamiliar, I think Dole Whip must be some sort of sorbet. It resembles yellow ice cream, but it has an incredible pineapple flavor that sits lightly on the stomach. It has none of the too-full, too-rich sensation that ice cream sometimes brings. In my best description, it was perfectly tropical!

(I’ve only found Dole Whip once in Ohio since our Hawaii trip. Sadly, it just wasn’t the same.)

I probably could have stayed and eaten Dole Whip all afternoon, but Jurassic World awaited us. You read that right, we went to Jurassic World. Well, okay, not quite the dinosaur park, but Kualoa Ranch was a filming site for the iconic movie (as well as several others). Upon arrival, it was immediately evident why the site was chosen for filmography. Rising above the ranch are steep mountains, pleated in green folds that hint of prehistoric times. The jungles on this side of Oahu were lush, piled high with plants and tall trees. If you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the click of dinosaur claws against volcanic stone. If you looked hard enough, you might even see a glittering reptilian eye hiding in the undergrowth. But we weren’t just at Kualoa to look for dinosaurs. Tyler had booked us a jungle electric mountain biking excursion for the afternoon! To be honest, I was nervous. Jungle, e-bike, and mountain biking were all words I’d never used in the same sentence before. I’ve ridden a bike, sure. At this point, I’d been in a jungle. But riding a bike through the jungle? I pictured flinging myself over Evil Kinevil jumps, soaring through the air over a pit of Hawaiian crocodiles. That, I was certain, I could not do. But what was to be done now? I blinked, suddenly realizing I had zoned out during the safety briefing. Best not to miss any life-saving information now. I mustered a smile, pushed back my shoulders, and tried to look like a mountain biking pro.

We were required to take a riding test before we hit the trail. This, more than anything, made me nervous. What sort of a bike ride requires a pretest? What exactly was I being graded on? The test path was a narrow strip of dirt that curved over a few small hills and around some tight corners. I rode my brakes and tried not to let the e-bike get away from me. Look confident, Grace. 

Turns out my childhood bike rides through the barnyard taught me just enough common sense to pass the test. A group of tourists behind us weren’t so lucky. One girl overaccelerated on a corner and nearly crashed the bike into a weedy meadow. The bike guide looked grim. “If she had done that on the trail, she would have gone off a cliff.” I gulped. Guess I’d be really testing my bike’s brakes on this ride! 

Without any further ado, we journeyed into the jungle. It was a little rough at first. I definitely scraped up my legs a few times with some less-than-graceful takeoffs. But after a while, we settled into it. Turns out we both actually really like mountain biking! It’s a little scary, and we’re anything but professionals. Still, there was something exhilarating about flying around tight corners, zooming past cliff edges, and exploring the Hawaiian jungle on bike. At one point, we startled a group of squealing wild hogs into the underbrush. Another time, we parked our bikes on top of an ocean-view vista. The sun was sneaking through some storm clouds, igniting patches of ocean with brilliant blueness. Our bike guide stood nearby, looking over the landscape with the love of a local. At home, I’ve often seen large pickup trucks with the bumper sticker “Stuck in Ohio” plastered on a rusted tailgate. In Hawaii, we didn’t see any of that bitter mindset. For all its difficulties, the locals of the islands love their homeland. They love the mountains, the oceans, and their fellow Hawaiians. For them, “aloha” is more than just a greeting. It’s a mindset. 

Our bike guide demonstrated a little of that warm aloha spirit. As we stood on the overlook, he shared a traditional Hawaiian story about the creation of the mountains. 

“Kualoa translates to ‘long back,’ he began. He raised an arm and traced a finger over the peaks of the mountains behind us. “Supposedly, these mountains are the long back of a giant lizard. As the story goes, there once was a goddess traveling though the island chain. As she came to Oahu, she encountered a giant lizard (mo’o) guarding the island. She asked the lizard for safe passage to the island, but the lizard refused. So they did battle. After three days, the lizard realized that he was going to lose. As he turned to retreat, the goddess grabbed him by the tail. She yanked off his tail -just like lizards do- and threw it into the water right there.” The guide gestured to the ocean, where a rounded knob protruded out of the ocean. A bright sunray was hitting it like a spotlight. It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to picture the island as the stumpy remains of a giant lizard’s tail. 

“The tail became Mokoli’i, which translates to ‘little one.’ The rest of the lizard’s body is right here, forming the Kualoa mountains. If you look just above those trees there, you can see its eye. Above the eye is the top of the head, and then the back and the rest of his body. And his tail, of course, is in the water.” 

I ran my eye over the steep ridges, searching for the fabled lizard’s eye. When I thought I’d found it, I followed the spikes of his back, descending massively down into the ocean. I smiled. Every culture has its fables and creation stories. When I was young, I had a fascination with the tall tales of the American West: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Davy Crockett. The Western tall tales captured the wildness of the desert, wrestled by superhuman characters with the gusto of Manifest Destiny. I liked hearing a Hawaiian fable. There was something enchanting about it: a mystical being, a fierce enemy, and a triumphant conclusion. The detail that struck me the most was how gentle the goddess first appeared. She didn’t come upon the lizard with force. She was a peaceful traveler who attempted to meet the lizard on his own terms. When the lizard refused and initiated an attack, she revealed her concealed strength. I couldn’t help but wonder, was this a story about Hawaii itself? 

In my history books, I recall seeing paintings of a beautiful Hawaiian kingdom. I remember seeing photos of Hawaii’s last monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani. In the 1890s, her reign was overthrown by the combined forces of American businessmen, the American minister to Hawaii, and the US Army. In 1898, Hawaii was annexed to the United States. Much like the indigenous peoples across the United States, there was much that should have been done differently.

The narratives of our past are told in two forms: history and stories. History tells the truth (although often it is the truth of the victors). Stories narrate hope. I’m just a girl from Ohio, but I can see a lot of symbolism in the Kualoa story. The goddess was Hawaii. The lizard was an enemy from across the sea. In real life, the enemy took Hawaii. But in the fable, the goddess was triumphant. She cast the lizard into the sea from whence it came.

That night, we climbed up the side of a volcanic crater at Diamond Head. We stood atop a rocky lizard’s back to overlook the ocean. Just a few hundred yards away, a concrete bunker-like structure perched quietly on another stony peak. Its gaze stretched over a large city below, and beyond, the sea. Built in WWII, this particular “pill box” was never actually used in battle. Instead, the pill box’s greatest purpose has been as a subtle reminder of war’s grimness. The violence and necessity of war can touch even beautiful places such as these. 

What is the purpose of history? What is the purpose of stories? I had been thinking about this ever since we left Pearl Harbor the day before. History, I’ve concluded, is to provide a safeguard against stupidity. If we are brave enough to confront the entire truth of our past, we attain wisdom to carry into the future. Stories, then, are to encourage us along the way. It takes great sobriety to confess our sins. Even greater humility is necessary to learn from them. Stories about mighty goddesses and cyclone-riding cowboys bolster us along the way.

Take heart, the stories say. Incredible things can happen to you too. Your story isn’t over yet.