Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 31, Number 3, 1 March 2014 — Crossing the Pali [ARTICLE]

Crossing the Pali

Dana Nāone Hall We're all young enough to remember what it was like when we were growing up in Hilo small to\\Ti or Kāne'ohe where it rained rivers of red dirt in the winter ffom all the new cut hillsides. There's still the suggestion of old streams and lo'i under the sunken lawns. My grandfather had a house stepping down to a small stream hidden like a secret, the shy green spring of a young girl flowing in the shade of a mango tree. Years later we went away to college climbing the peaks of Westem thought. But I remember the stories — my unele sleeping on the heaeh in a hole lined with newspapei; his youngest brother not far away in his own hole for the night. In the morning they gathered coconuts that had fallen from the night sky. On the other side of the island, my mother's popo is cooking bird's nest soup in the kitchen. One of my father's sisters had a husband who used to twirl knives for the Samoan fire dance, whieh he perfected and later performed somewhere on the East Coast. Another sister lived in Maple Shade, New Jersey, while the rest of us grew thick as bamboo in Kāne'ohe. These people are still around like the brightly colored fish swimming in the aquarium at my grand-aunt's house in Kaimukī. I know that you have the same kinds of stories lined up the way you used to line up with your fathei; mother and brothers all in a row at St. Joseph's on Sundays. Now you're an attomey and you act different. You part your hair in the middle. You look like you never get enough sleep. You're almost always in an offi.ce, twenty-seventh floor, air conditioning, mirrored windows, in downtown Honolulu, and you think the guys riding around with big tires and tinted glass are funny. Look at you, you don't go to the heaeh, you say you don't have fun, you work too hard and for what? So the big Japanese company ean carve up the coast like so mueh raw tuna. Very refreshing with a litfle

Kirin after a round of golf. Meanwhile another company ffom Wyoming wants to drill deep into the mountain directly above your client's new resort to extract high-temperature steam for electricity. Never mind that the gases escaping with the steam will smell like rotten eggs. Worry about that when the time comes. It's almost midnight on the day when you questioned me for more than six hours about my interest in keeping the old road in Mākena open to traffic of all kinds. All the while, hammering away for the developer who wants everybody off the heaeh before the hotel opens in late summer. It's almost midnight under the same moon. Who says you have to go along with it?

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