It is a big tree. It rises above the canopy of the kipuka with sculptured grace. Its trunk is as thick as a bus. The branches are larger than most other trees’ trunks. It is a Koa. I visit the tree often, with hundreds of visits over the years. Only after a dozen visits did I see how expansive its crown truly spread. Nearly every visit brings...
Hawaii is a place of extreme climates. But that’s not what a mid-western couple planning their once-in-a-lifetime, mid-winter, Hawaiian dream vacation wants to hear. Nor is it a fact that the marketers of Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau spread through glossy literature. But a fact it is....
I get excited about books. When I find something on the shelf I've wanted or never seen before, my heart gets pumping and I usually buy it without a thought to finance. The other day I plucked down $79.00 for the recently published third edition of the Atlas of Hawaii. ...
Summit of Mauna Kea Photo by Kirk Aeder
The summit of Mauna Kea is a sacred place. Sacred in its stark surreal beauty of cinders, rock, colors, and technology that captures the light of sun and stars. Sacred in its geologic manifestations of fire and ice that portray an ancient conflict....
Hawaii is a landscape of volcanoes. If you're a visitor to the Big Island, visiting and learning about volcanoes is at the top of the list. That usually means an all day trip from Kona/Kohala to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. But the park isn't the only place to experience the wonder and beauty of the island's volcanic realm. Kona has its very own...
My first lesson in Hawaii was about dirt. Soil development to be more precise. Like many who experience Hawaii for the first time, from an airplane approach onto the Huehue lava flow at Keahole Airport, I saw barren, black rock. No swaying coconut trees, no Polynesian hula girls, just a two hundred year old lava flow with a few tufts of grass here ...
I like to know the names of things. Whether it’s the weed that leaves flat sticky seeds on my socks or the little worms that eat holes through my books, it drives me crazy if I don’t know their names. And though I often settle for the common name, it’s the scientific one that really catches my fancy. The long-jawed, spiny-legge...
I am the baby of six siblings. Growing up I was often referred to as a pest by my older brothers and sisters. “Mom, he’s such a pest. Do I have to take him along?!” “Quit being such a pest, Robbie.” Never lacking affection, attention or love, this pesty tag never bothered me too much. In fact, looking back, I admit ...
Hawaii’s volcanoes are different from most volcanoes around the world. In other places when a volcano erupts people flee for their lives. In Hawaii we get in our cars and drive down to the lava flow to check it out. In many ways they are gentle volcanoes; they are volcanoes with aloha. Unlike 90% of the earth’s volcanoes, which are l...
Once Hawaii was for the birds. Before the arrival of humans, it was birds, not mammals, which dominated the environment. Today Hawaii’s native forest birds are disappearing. Nearly half of the 140 bird species that were known from historic times are extinct and over 50 additional extinctions have been identified from fossil evidence. Of th...
I love my work. Most days I find myself along a trail in a forest full of birdsong or stepping across cascading streams. Other days are spent in pursuit of hot lava, steam vents, lava tubes, pit craters, and earth cracks in the world-class setting of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. I meet new people everyday. With a few exceptions, they are curi...
Kids need to be out in nature. They need to climb trees, crawl through the bushes, play in the dirt and mud, chase each other across the field, and explore the wild. Too often today children never experience the wonderful land around them. Too many of our island keiki rarely get the opportunity to discover the world-class setting that surrounds ...
