LETTERS FROM HOME: FINDING BALM FOR THE SOUL AT CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE AND THE CITY OF REFUGE

March 19, 1998

"No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same ... In my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago."

-- Mark Twain, 1889

Dear Julie,

Landing in Honolulu at sunset, we walked outside the terminal to find ourselves amid swaying bougainvillea and the intoxicating scent of plumeria. Surely, no place on earth is like this.

Humpback whales breaching all over the place, mongooses in the bushes, geckos on the walls. There's the lava flow at Kilauea and the Lava Flow at the Tiki Bar. And in most everyone a friendliness I'd thought was disappearing as Hawaiians try to regain control of their paradise lost.

DC and I were in Hawaii on a combination professional trip and delayed honeymoon. It was her third visit, my first. Unfortunately, I came down with food poisoning the day we landed and never shook it. There were good days that allowed me to play a few rounds of pricey golf and go whale watching and snorkeling on the reef off Lanai, but mostly I compared and contrasted the tile designs on the bathroom floors of the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel on Maui and the King Kamehameha Kona Beach Hotel on the Big Island.

On the positive side, DC figures the restaurant tabs we saved outweighed the doctor bills.

Much more adventurous than I anyway, she went scuba diving off Lanai. I even caught her trying to lie to the dive master about her weight. Another morning she paddled a kayak out to get a close-up view of the whales. You're not supposed to get nearer than 100 yards, at a penalty of up to $25,000, but if the whale approaches your boat it's OK as long as you don't make any moves to get even closer.

A mother whale and her newborn calf swam within 20 yards of DC's kayak. DC wasn't scared but was glad the whale didn't go under her kayak, as they've been known to do. Once she got out of the kayak and into the water to listen to the whales singing to each other. She said the sound was overwhelming.

With cool hangouts like Cheeseburger in Paradise, Maui attracts younger tourists, but anyone who goes to Hawaii these days had better have some bend in their credit cards. The man with the rental car company on Maui was philosophical about the prices. Native Hawaiians have to survive by clipping coupons and buying specials, he said, but at least the high cost of living keeps the place from being overrun.

I left my heart on the Big Island, which seems a place you could spend your life exploring. The volcanoes are a reminder that the earth is still being created, the lushness of Hilo and the palm-lined beaches on the Kailua-Kona coast evidence of how beautiful the creation is.

No place I saw was as hauntingly beautiful as Puuhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, known popularly as the City of Refuge. In the old days, people who broke any of the leader's laws, called kapu, were sentenced to death. We think we're tough on crime. The kapu prescribed death for anyone who walked where the chief had previously walked.

The City of Refuge was one of the few places where kapu breakers could find sanctuary from their pursuers. Behind the Great Wall, a lava fortress 10 feet high, they could be absolved by a priest and were then free to rejoin their families.

There on the palmy black beach you can imagine frightened men and women swimming across the small bay toward a chance to reclaim their life in paradise. I have a tiny inkling of how they must have felt. No matter how miserable things might seem, paradise is still paradise, still balm to the soul.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.