Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

Five and a half million years ago, Ha'upu mountain was the molten heart of a new caldera. Kipukai was  another erupting core.  When the oceanic plate shifted, and the hotspot venting lava with it, Waialeale became the active volcano, and Ha'upu began to succumb to the wind and waves. Two million years later, as the volcanic activity settled down, pu'u-- or small cinder cones-- erupted from the volcanic plain all around. Enormous sand dunes piled up on the south shore of Kaua'i, in the wet shadow of Ha'upu-- no longer a living volcano.  The years layered the soft round sand, and the rain leached the minerals out. The dunes lithified into limestone. Ribbons of minerals twined under the sand: olivine and silicates. Cathedrals beneath the hard packed mineral protected hollows full of ancient ocean sand. Ice ages came and went-- the polar ice caps grew and froze the earth's water. Water leaching through the limestone formed intricate stalactites under lithifie...

It's September. This morning I I flipped the page on the calendar over and shouted to my four year old, "hey! It's a new month! It's September!" This seemed important enough to interrupt her drawing time (detailed vignettes of fancy girls in triangular dresses, backdropped by loop-dee-loop clouds). "Summer is over, now it's Fall." She gasped: "Oh no! So we can't go anywhere?!" I was puzzled. She broke it down for me: "Because it will be cold now?" She ran to the door to look for a library book scene of corn-stalks and pumpkins and scarecrows and maple leaves. Nope, not cold. Light green kukui nut leaves, pale yellow cascades of starfruit like pinatas, hard green mini grapefruits on the trees, bittermelon vines choking the compost bins. But still, Fall. The beginning of the new school year -- that rhythm that pulses throughout a post-school (or pre-school) life. The storing away of summer, reporting on my summer vacation, con...

We've been on Kauai for almost 3 months now. The first three months someplace are usually the hardest-- no friends, no routines-- unfamiliar roads and disorienting landscape, not to mention a mountain of unpacked boxes. But not this time. This time, I think I'm in love. Everywhere I go-- out to the dry and stunning Waimea Canyon or to rainy and dreamlike Hanalei Valley-- I'm awed. Even riding my bike every day on our little muddy road and through the pastures I sigh and giggle. It's just all so beautiful! And the food! There is good food in every nook and cranny, in every little lean-to town--the ramshackle little place serving steaming bowls of rich brothy Pho with spicy basil and cool lemon grass on mismatched tables and wobbly chairs, or the cafe with the ugly ripped booths and flourescent lights serving buttery apple turnovers crusted with sugar. And my favorite, genki sushi-- where the sushi comes around on a conveyer belt and you can pluck it off like gleaming li...

Today Rosie and I went to our favorite beach. I buckled her in, drove less than a mile from our house through wide open pastures in the shadow of green cliffs, through a tunnel of Rainbow Shower Trees (their real name), and voila, we're at the beach: blue skies, shading palm trees, golden sand and pounding surf on a hot December afternoon. There was a huge storm last night-- the rain whipped our metal roof and the lightening lit the room. Our dirt road washed away by morning, and some new rocks are poking up through, jostling the car as I drive over them. And the ocean was still frenzied-- 10 and 15 foot waves breaking right on top of each other, pushing up over the lava rocks, and hiss-foaming long up the beach. Even the little protected baby lagoon water was wobbling with the heavy waves pounding over the break-- round little waveletts rolling quickly up the sand. We played on the playground. There were triplet boys, about 7, in matching khaki hats and long-sleeved rash guards (...

In April 2006, my husband moved to Hawaii to start working for the state. I stayed behind for a month and packed up our apartment in California and sent all of our earthly posessions off with a long-haired Israeli in an dubiously unmarked van. I crossed my fingers that our stuff would make it and not wind up abandoned in some industrial park. My mother-in-law dropped me off at the airport with two overweight roller bags and overloaded backpacks and a guitar and a couple of armfuls of miscellany that hadn't made it into the moving containers. Everyone else in the Hawaii-bound ticket line was cheerful in optomistic shorts and colorful t-shirts-- well primed for their impending vacations and sunburns. A blond dreadlocked guy started chatting up my guitar-- "Is that a bari Uke? No--a mini-Martin?" He said that Puna is the place to go to party, and that he was staying with some friends down there for a couple of months, maybe longer, who knows? On the plane I sat next to a gu...