THE FREE SHOW AND ENDANGERED

THE FREE SHOW

   One summer after I had complained about "nothing to do" my mom said why don't you go outside and just watch the clouds. All these decades later, I'm still watching. 

   Sometimes there is nothing better for you than just watching them.

PEEK-A-BOO PEACOCK

     Difficult photo subject, the peacock.  Looks a bit grumpy

    about being stalked by yours truly.  Hoping for a fan spread but left with trying to spot the retiring bird in heavy foliage.

    His crown feathers are fascinating.

NEARLY EXTINCT

   The Hawaiian Common Moorhen is considered a secretive bird. Experts say the population dropped to only 57 birds in the 1960's.  Today it's estimated there may be 1000.  

    It's a challenge to consider there are only 999 others like him, or her.  

HOOSIER COUSIN

   This little guy, a little soft in focus, is a Red Crested Cardinal. He's a cute variation of the Cardinal, the Indiana state bird and mascot of my alma mater Ball State University.  There the male cardinal is full on red.  As my old friend David Letterman, also a Ball State grad says, the "Cardinal is the fiercest bird in the Robin class!"  This guy gets style points.

WILD CHICKENS

    This fellow is one of what must be thousands of wild chickens in the Islands.  From my limited and somewhat distracted observation there is indeed a "pecking" order and Roosters crow whenever they feel like it, which is often.

     See you down the trail.

DOWN TO THE SEA

PACIFIC TRADITIONS

    Over the course of three weeks we've taken great delight in watching guys from elsewhere on Kawela Bay take to the big water in an outrigger.

   Historians say Polynesians who first traveled to the Hawaiian Islands used outriggers.

   Fishing here requires an eye on the breaks coming over the reef.

    On another day on Kawela Bay a family puts out to surf together. 

  A new generation of surfers in training.

   On each outing the outrigger fishermen appeared to be successful.

   Even inside the reef the north shore can produce heavy surf requiring mindful attention.

    The lateral float support, the outrigger, makes the canoe hull more sea worthy and stable. From Australia through Polynesia migration across big water as well as fishing was accomplished by outriggers.

     Paddling an outrigger in seas that routinely toss up 20 foot waves adds a new dimension to fishing from a boat.

      See you down the trail.

     

ICONIC COINCIDENCE

A WORLD CAPITOL

GROUND ZERO

HALEIWA

    1,860 miles from the nearest continent, further away from "mainland" than anywhere in the world is a funky surf town that is a premier sports capitol of the planet. 

   As fate would have it, just a few miles down the road is ground zero for an Industry that is now world wide. In 1899 recent Harvard grad James Drummond Dole came to Oahu and began what became Dole Foods, the folks who turned Pineapple into a major crop and built an empire in the process.

Dole

Courtesy of Dole Foods

Kahanamoku

Courtesy of www.nnbd.com

   The creation of modern surfing is attributed to Duke Kahanmoku, born on Oahu nine years before Dole arrived.
In many ways their lives paralleled. Kahanmoku was a champion swimmer, actor and a businessman. 
    Surfing and Pineapple-icons of the Islands. It is a cosmic coincidence these vastly divergent influences share roots on Oahu and both attract visitors from around the globe.

    At a Disneyesque location just a few miles down highway 99, people cue up to ride on the Aloha Express to view the red oxide volcanic earth that helped Jim Dole take the Pineapple from Paraguay and make it as Hawaiian as the North Shore has made Surfing.

     Dole is now about a lot more than Pineapple.

   Surfing is also an industry. Dole and Kahanmoku are revered. Their iconic legacies remain neighbors in North Oahu where Kings and Queens were once the royalty and where chickens strut on the court house lawn.

   Aloha!

   See you down the trail.