Marriage and the Kalilau Trail

I have always been afraid to fly.  It seems unnatural to me.  But, a day after I married Adam on the banks of the Hudson River, I found myself up in the air for more than half a day on my way to our Hawaiian honeymoon.  Peter and Casey, friends of the family, had graciously lent us use of their timeshare on Kauai, had and talked us in to incorporating a hiking and camping trip on our maiden voyage as husband and wife.  They assured us that anyone in good health could do the 11-mile hike in a day or two and that it would afford us some of the most amazing views known to primitive or modern man.

So, as I white knuckled my way through turbulence over the Pacific, I tried to focus on all of the natural wonders I would see in Hawaii.  I tried to focus on the idea of my feet on terra firma while hiking the Kalilau trail. 

When we landed on Maui for the first leg of our trip, we had a terrible time finding our lodgings.  Adam, who had planned the entire trip, had booked us in a bed & breakfast that was almost literally off the beaten path.  With no streetlights, it was pitch black, and we became lost along pitted dirt paths fenced in by sugar cane.  I began to image native drug runners emerging from the cane, mistaking us for the feds, and gunning us down.  When we finally reached our destination, with tikki torches burning in anticipation of our arrival, we met the caretaker who I then began to imagine might be a serial killer who lured tourists to this secluded area to do god-knows-what to them.

Our suite was wonderful, but everything was open.  There were no locks on the multitudes of windows.  There were few drapes, many skylights.  The only thing that was hidden was the surf, which we could hear loudly pounding the cliff off our lanai. 

I was on edge as we rinsed off together in the oversized shower stall that took up the vast majority of the bathroom.  It was surreal.  Dazed, I listened to Adam talk about how being married made him feel a bit changed.  He said that even though the rules of our relationship were basically the same, he found that when he noticed the hot women on the airplane, the idea that he could never be with them seemed different – more final. 

When we went to bed, he made advances.  Obviously, the women on the plane had put him in the mood.  Resentful of that, worn out from the long day of being afraid, disturbed by his comments and his failure to read my reaction to them, I retreated and fell asleep.  This was not like us. 

The next morning, I woke up under the black cloud.  Although we had landed, I had yet to find solid ground.  I was oppressed by a new fear, that the transformation of my relationship to Adam had just begun.  On the lookout for what would change next, I was irritable.  My husband, utterly unaware of my plight, did notice the change in my tone, and didn't much care for it.  The next change came naturally.  We both found ourselves less inhibited about what we said to each other… and about how we said it.  We were in paradise, but we were lost. 

The black cloud of fear hung over several days of swimming, snorkeling, bickering, and a terrifying inter-island flight through rough trade winds to Kauai.  Then, it was time to pack up our gear for the big event - the hike.  Although, neither of us had been camping since our grammar school days in the scouts, both of us believed that we knew with an expert's degree of certainty what items should stay and which should go.  Our packs ended up loaded with everything from tents, mess kits, and instant foods to 2-pound novels, Walkmen, first aid kits and packets of Starburst fruit chews.  The whole agonizing process took us several hours and, by the end, we were both ready to throw down over whether the last spaces in our packs should be filled with playing cards, extra food, or cassette tapes.  The cards and food won out, and we each took our own private pride in the fact that we could put the packs on and manage not to keel over backwards from the weight of them.

Finally on the trail in the late afternoon, we found the first two miles difficult, but the path was reasonably wide and cliff-free, and there were lots of cheery day-trippers filing past.  Several people saw our large packs and asked if we were going all the way to the final beach.  We proudly answered that we were and everyone within earshot was almost as impressed as we were. 

We hit the first beach at the 2-mile point, and found a place in the woods nearby to camp for the night.  It was misty and the tent was nothing more than a mesh screen to keep the bugs out.  There was no opaque covering.  Again, everything was open.  There was no privacy.  Would I feel exposed to the world – or at least to Adam – for as long as we both shall live? 

After chatting up a small group of experienced campers who also planned to complete the trail, we settled in for the night.  The mist became a steady rain and, although we were under a number of large trees, we feared for the dryness of our personal belongings and ourselves.  We stretched a plastic tarp over the tent as well as we could, but spent a wet, largely uncomfortable night.  I secretly cursed Adam for bringing a mesh tent, and I'm sure that he was cursing me for not letting him buy a larger tarp.

The first light strong enough to make it through the trees woke me.  We were slightly stiff from the previous day's hike, particularly from the knees down which we did not yet attribute to the thin tabis we had been advised to hike in.  After a hasty breakfast, we headed off to begin the remaining nine miles of the trail even before the experienced campers had packed up their gear.  We were excited.  We wanted to see those rare views that could only be seen from the narrow ridge trail that would run along the 9 miles that lay in front of us. 

We quickly found that the new trail was much more difficult than the first two miles had been.  It was so narrow that we had to hike single file.  On either side of the path were sheer green cliffs – going up to the clouds on the left and down to the sea on the right.  After about half a mile, we paused at a wider outcropping of the trail for a rest and got our first glimpse of the ridges we would be hiking.  They were breath taking.  They were impossible.  Adam said the first right thing he had said in days, "Peter and Casey are insane."

Back on our trek we found ourselves having to give way to both hikers who were making the trip back, and to the faster hiker's behind us.  We pressed ourselves against the cliff wall, nodding with respect to each hiker as they passed, as they had either already accomplished what we were setting out to do or were just much better at it.  About a mile in, there was a man who began to overtake us, but declined our invitation to pass ahead.  After several minutes of awkward silence we insisted that we were going too slowly and he grudgingly moved past us. 

Since we couldn't look at each other, there wasn't a lot of conversation.  Each of us was left to mind our own bodies and our own thoughts.  When we hit our first big switchback, I disrupted the sounds of the tropics with the first of many snippets of silly songs, belting out the chorus of "She'll be coming round the mountain." An unknowable time later, after a particularly exuberant rendition of "Coconut Hat," we came to a slippery and particularly narrow part of the trail.  For several feet, there was not enough ledge to put a foot down on.  We stopped to strategize, but there was nothing for it but to stretch a foot out as far as it could go and hope we hit land on the other side.  Adam was able to do it, but I was not.  I started slipping down the steep incline towards the waves and he grabbed my arm and lifted me on to a more solid piece of ground.  Terrified, I stood for a moment with my nose an inch from the emblem on his tank top, clutching his arm.  As the adrenaline ebbed and my breath slowed I was able to consider the possibility that he had just saved my life.  I said the first right thing that I had said in days, "Thank you."  

After that, the thought of the miles that still lay ahead overshadowed everything, and we both began to speculate aloud – jokingly at first – that we might not make it to the final beach. 

Four miles and four hours from our last campsite, we made it to a large clearing where we planned to stop for lunch.  There we again encountered the man from the trail who had been unwilling to pass us.  He wasn't eating.  He wasn't packing.  He was just…waiting.  Unnerved, we made lunch while he watched us.    

As we ate, Adam confessed that there was no way that he could go on to the end.  Clearly in pain, he said that he hated the thought of holding me back if I felt that I could do it.  I didn't like the idea of him making this decision for both of us.  I didn't feel confident that I could make it, but had been hoping that he would insist that we go on so that I could find strength in his confidence.  I was disappointed, but I was touched by his genuine and respectful outpouring emotion.  I wanted to comfort him.  "This is a honeymoon, not bootcamp," I told him.  "We don't have to go on."

Now, we faced another problem.  That creepy man had been sitting there listening to our plans.  We couldn't stay put and camp where we were.  What would happen when the sun went down and no one else was around?  We couldn't go on, and we couldn't stay where we were.  We spoke in whispers as we packed up.  We had to return to the first beach - four miles back the way that we had just come.  We were prepared to false start towards the final beach if necessary to throw him off, but seeing us readying our gear, the creepy man took off on the trail to the final beach. 

  Adam took his tabis off and donned the regular walking shoes that he had brought.  I hadn't wanted to carry the extra weight and didn't have any, so I pressed on with the tabis.  We set out with a true purpose now, to make the first beach before the sun went down.

Since I had the smaller stride, Adam had me walk ahead of him so that he wouldn't get too far ahead of me.  Much less frequently now, I burst in to my silly songs to spur myself on, or to distract myself.  My pace was slowing down tremendously, and Adam began to express his concern that if we couldn't move faster that we'd be stuck on the trail after dark. 

With a mile and a half left to go, and with no other human beings in sight, we turned in for a switchback and saw a gigantic double rainbow that arced all the way from one ridge to the next.  Behind me, Adam's voice asked, "Do you see that?"  "How could I not?" I asked him right back.  He was having a terrible time, but he was better off than I was.  So, now, he found himself in the role of the encourager, telling me that the incredible rainbow was a sign that we would make it.

The last half-mile took us well over an hour, because my stride had become barely as long as one of my own feet.  My singing had stopped altogether.  Adam kept asking me if I wanted to stop to rest (hoping that after a break I might be strong enough to pick up the pace), but I felt in my gut that if I stopped I would be utterly unable to start moving again and would spend the night upright, clinging to the ridge.  The sun was setting by the time we turned in for our last switchback and saw the beach below us. 

In the dusky light, we reclaimed our camping spot from the night before.  Adam took off his pack and then helped me off with mine.  Crying from the relief, and then from the pain, I laid down on the ground while Adam went to get fresh water.  When he came back, he put the tent up by himself, and even figured out a better way to cover our tent in case the drizzling rain became worse during the night.  I got dinner started just as it became completely dark. 

As we sat down with our little plastic headlamps on to eat our meal, we simultaneously realized that there were no other campers around and that there were strange rustling noises in the underbrush nearby.  Each time we shone our headlamps in the direction of the sound, it would stop. 

We didn't speak of it, but we looked at each other knowingly.  We were sure that we were being stalked by the creepy guy.  Exhausted and terrified, we didn't finish our dinner or even take a pee.  We holed up in our mesh tent to wait for what would come.  To make our position less obvious, we turned off our headlamps.  It was just Adam, and me, and the darkness, and whatever was out there.  For a long time, we strained to differentiate the sounds of the rain on our tarp from the rustles and the snapping of twigs.  With Adam next to me clutching his pocketknife, eventually, somehow, I fell asleep. 

The aurora revealed that we were, in fact, alive, well, and being stalked by feral cats.  We emerged from the tent with stiff, painful muscles, and still not totally at ease.  Anxious to be on our way, we agreed to pack up and eat granola bars for breakfast as we hiked the last two miles out. 

Once we were underway, we both felt notably better – at least emotionally.  In the lead again as we urged on our weary bodies, I told Adam how grateful I was for his help.  He told me how terrible it was for him to watch me finish the hike the night before, knowing how much each step must have been hurting me.  With pride, he said, "I have incredible respect for your ability to just keep going – to do what you had to do no matter what."  I felt the same way about him. 

We didn't make it to the far beach, but as I felt the pebbles burry in to the soles of my feet and felt my husband's hand grasp mine, I felt I'd finally made it to solid ground.  We proved that we could do for ourselves and for each other whatever we had to do. 

When we returned to civilization, we decided to do the most touristy thing that we could think of – attend a luau.  We drank watered-down maitais, which relaxed our muscles.  We ate salty pork, and tried the poi.  We stole looks at each other and watched the hula dancers.  I heard the drums, looked at the skirts and adornments made out of leaves.  In my mind, I saw the dancer's ancestors on the beaches and in the forests that Adam and I had just visited.  I remembered my own awe at the beauty, my own fear.  As I listened to the "Uncle" tell the story of the next dance, I was flooded with a feeling of being in the presence of something better than magic.  I was overcome by the knowledge that mankind living in the wild, with no hope of a hotel and a hot tub at the end of the day, had not JUST survived. 

            As Adam and I limped back to our room that night, I spoke to him of my epiphany.  People living in conditions worse than those we had just suffered through created rituals (including the rite of marriage) and had created art. I felt that it was representative of something unspeakably spectacular about the human race.  He responded in an intellectual way: "Well, you have to think about why people created rituals and art.  It was for survival."  But, should it diminish my awe to think of myself as belonging to a species that needed create, that needed to tell its story, in order to survive?  I was deeply disappointed that he didn't understand.  What if I put it a different way? What if I told him that when it came down to choosing between beauty and fear that we chose beauty?

            It occurred to me, as we walked in silence now, that I had not always understood him either.  Maybe we would have to live our lives like we hiked the trail – whichever one of us was having the hardest time would set the pace and the other would be patient.  Tonight, I would be patient.