Hawaii: One Week

Details:

• black sand melts underfoot, until it remembers that it is sand, in fact, and cannot consume your entire foot.
• a tree, lonely and leafless, stretches out of the sand, standing on its tip-toe roots, a sprawling foundation
• a root dangles down the cliff, begging to be climbed. I watch a man climb it, long hair swaying behind him, and decide I can do it. Minus shoes, I grab the root and walk up the cliff, leaning back and supporting myself with my arms and shoulders. I pause to turn and look at the ocean, dark bluegreen and waving, and the naked butts on the beach smiling sideways. I continue up and reach the top. Tip-toe across sharp lava pieces, say aloha to three dreadlocked dudes, and meander down the rocky path back back to a relieved sis and aunt.
• the flowers! plumerias, white with a gleeful yellow gradient, deep pink with while, orange, yellow, purple... and they smell like a perfect Hawaiian summer.
• living in a high-ceilinged one-room house, matresses and pillows comfortable on the floor, a perpetual sleepover.
• lizards creeping about, at first surprised us on the window screen, but now our indoor/outdoor pets, as Jeni says.
• Puna, the sad-eyed basset hound, always longing for a belly-rub