Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
Febrary 22, 2010
In the last four months, I’ve sailed in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California), met friends in New York City, dropped in on my aunt in Milwaukee, visited other friends in Austin, counted albatrosses at Midway and worked as a volunteer in Bangladesh.
Now, I love to travel more than most people, but this was too much of a good thing, even for me. One day last week, after a fitful night’s sleep, I woke up in the dark of pre-dawn depressed. I didn’t want to go anywhere. Even to the kitchen for coffee. I’d hit the wall.
As a woman of a certain age, I’m no stranger to wall-hitting and know that lying in bed when I’m feeling overwhelmed only makes a spell of melancholy worse. And so, with great effort, I donned my running clothes, leashed our little dog, Lucy, and headed up the trail near my house.
This is no average trail. I live at the base of a hill that from the top overlooks Kailua and Kaneohe bays on one side, Makapuu Point on the other and the Koolau Mountains behind. This stunning site is known as the Pillbox because at the top sit two concrete lookouts, called pillboxes, built during World War II.
Pillbox, Kailua, Enchanted Lake, Lanikai from Olomana
Courtesy of Scott R. Davis
It’s hard work getting up the steep hill, and both my body and brain balked. I’m too tired for this. My knees hurt. It’s going to rain. I’m old. Ahead of me, Lucy, who is nearly 11, pranced up the trail like a puppy. I wished I felt like that.
Pushing to the top, I stopped, sweaty and panting, and stared at the horizon. No cheery pink and orange sunrise that morning. Dark clouds dropped rain in patches on the water, turning both air and ocean a blurry gray.
Directly offshore of the pillboxes stand the Mokulua Islands, Lanikai landmarks that jut from the water like two big Hershey’s kisses. Beyond those islands I noticed a powerboat charging like mad into the wind and waves, white water flying impossibly high in its wake.
Mokulua Islands
Courtesy of Scott R. Davis
The boat looked odd, slowing abruptly to a near stop, then bursting forward again in an explosion of speed. I squinted in the low light and drizzle to see what kind of boat could be making such commotion.
And a miracle of nature occurred. The clouds broke open in a circle, and a ray of sun struck the ocean’s surface. As if on cue, an enormous humpback whale rose almost entirely from the water, its skin glistening in the sunlight like 40 feet of polished chrome. When the whale fell backward, I recognized the splash. The boat was a whale.
The humpback made one more incredible appearance in its own personal spotlight. Then the clouds closed the stage. The show was over.
That brief moment in the mist, with those islands, and the bays, and that breech-in-the-sunbeam, was so perfect it brought tears to my eyes. How lucky I felt to be able to witness such an amazing sight, to be healthy and fit enough to hike the pillbox, to be living a life I love and doing it with Hawaii as home base.
I’m in my sixth decade of life now, roaming the world and merrily ticking off locations on my must-see and must-do list. (Funny, that list. It never gets shorter.) Traveling is sometimes hard, but I’ve learned to push through the tough times and something good always happens. Besides that, without those lows, I’d never get such highs.
It took a workout and a whale to recharge my batteries, but together they worked wonders. Lucy and I practically danced down that hill together. And when I got home, I booked a flight to Oakland.
Click for Large Panorama from the top of the Pillbox.
Courtesy of Scott R. Davis