Kayak for One

For the first time in nearly five weeks, I woke up in a blisteringly bad mood. I hated everyone, everything, every place including each and every island of Hawaii. This may have had something to do with the fact that I had nearly died in the night. Well, maybe not really, but close. And the point was, I was feeling awful. The weird part was, this was the second time I had been violently ill on the island of Kauai after eating one of these made by this woman. I'm calling her, Bertha (inside joke for Dad).

This is a shaved ice.

Apart from the fact they nearly killed me twice, they are vastly superior to regular snow cones. Last year, I had one of these when my parents were visiting and I became so sick upon eating this that I may have, uh, thrown up cold shaved ice. Through my nose. I had attributed this to the bucket of Mai Tai I had consumed that evening with the parentals. But this year, I hadn’t had a drop to drink. I ordered my shaved ice from the same place (you get three flavors: I went with Blue Hawaiian, Pineapple, and Wild Cherry). I don’t really pick on flavor, but color. They all taste like high fructose corn syrup. Blue, red, yellow are all primary colors and quite pleasing.

I was so stomach sick and feverish that I actually hallucinated; believing there were lizards crawling up the wallpaper and that the ceiling fans were dripping black ink. Looking back, I reasoned that it couldn’t have been the Blue Hawaiian, that’s an Elvis movie. And Elvis was lovely. And Pineapple, well hey, even though it’s not indigenous to Hawaii, it’s pretty much the state fruit. But then again according to a pineapple expert* they can give you canker sores. Still, my money was on the Wild Cherry. Perhaps on Kauai, the word ‘wild’ is code for hallucinogenic mushroom flavor, because that’s how bad and trippy my night was.

So I awakened with an overwhelming desire to kick puppies and skip that day’s event: kayaking on the Wailua. Now, I’d been dying to kayak the Wailua because I love kayaking (from my Camp Nokomis days) and the Wailua, until about twenty years ago, was off limits for kayaking per the government because it had been sacred land. So I debated myself back and forth and finally, kayaking won out over the evil effects of Wild (hallucinogenic mushroom) Cherry. This is my long winded way of saying, I was in a really queasy, weak and bad mood en route to kayaking and would be exhibiting none of my usual social graces and cheerful disposition.

I arrived and as usual, it was immediately made clear that I was an anomaly for being by myself. There were 13 in our group and I was the only one in a single kayak, everyone else was in a double. Kayak for one please.

The guy who was helping us launch our boats eyed me doubtfully and he actually said to a group of four guys around my age, that one of them should be a gentleman and take the single kayak and let me ride with one of them. All of them graciously offered to be in a double kayak with me. I grimaced. I only like sexism when it’s in my favor. Obviously. So, I politely pointed out that I was an experienced kayaker and perfectly fine to kayak alone, mahalo. And yes, given my mood, it took everything I had to be marginally polite.

But the boat launch guy wasn’t through with me yet, he went over to another kayak guide helper and said something to her about me. I knew it was about me because she immediately came over to where I was standing alone with my pea green chariot.

“Excuse me, yeah? I’m going to need your parental release form before we can let you out on the river.”

I looked at her confused. “I need a parental release?”

“You have to be AT LEAST eighteen to go out on the river. So we need your release form or I’m afraid you can’t go out today. When you called us for a tour, we would have asked you over the phone whether anyone in your group was eighteen or under.”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

That was my first thought.

NO REALLY, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

That was my second thought. And my third thought was murderous and unrepeatable.

So, I unzipped my wetbag, shoved my license at her aware that now everyone in our little cluster was staring at me, the little lost orphan child. And I was blushing scarlet. “There,” I said and pointed to my date of birth, “guess I probably don’t need a parental release form.”

She looked me up and down, opened her mouth to say something when our actual guide, a tiny elfin woman with that islander tan and wavy sun-streaked hair down her back, walked between us and said, “don’t bother, she’s the year of the rooster.”

No, I’m not joking, this woman guessed my actual birth year by using the Chinese Zodiac reference, AND as she walked away, she looked over her shoulder, winked at me, and said, “and she’s an Aquarian.”

This woman had had no access to my ID which would have given her my birth year or astrological sign. I don’t believe in psychics, not really. But I was deeply creeped out by her all the same. She had one of those mysterious looks, wide dark eyes and that long curling hair. She would have looked at home right behind a crystal ball and a spangled curtain.

Regardless, I was here, at the mouth of the beautiful Wailua River, the wind at our backs, sun shining. I even got one of the four guys I had refused to kayak with to take my picture and help me drag my boat down. Apparently, I wasn’t totally lacking in all feminine charm. Life was aces again.

We took off and I hung back in the rear for a very simple reason. I can get out of the way of a newbie kayaker better than they can get out of the way of me, and since I don’t think kayaking was intended to be like bumper cars, when I’m in the back, I can see what’s going, stop, and not plow into the boat in front of me.

(This is me cultivating the sexiest water shoes tan ever. Jealous?)

The first thing our guide, I’m going to call her Maya, asked us was to not take pictures of us, something to do with capturing the soul. I was only half-listening to that because the boat in front of me was just godawful, full of the two most coordinated people I’ve ever encountered. In just under a minute, the girl sitting in front seat had managed to whack the guy behind her not once, but twice with the paddle and he had nearly capsized the boat in the reeds. Then they got stuck in the overhang for a good three minutes. Maya tried to talk them out of the overhang, but there’s only so many nice ways to tell people they’re being morons. It was stunning to behold. I imagined this is what it must be like when someone was watching me dance, a slow, grisly car wreck of movement that one couldn’t help but smirk or grimace at.

(Hopeless.)

So we set off and Maya explained to us a little about the Wailua. Wailua translated into the place where the heart meets the soul. We would be kayaking down it, beaching the boats, and hiking to a sacred waterfall where the last queens and kings of Kauai had bathed. I of course, nerd of nerds, was lapping this up, but even I noticed that this woman was off the reservation and I was perfectly okay with this. I liked a little crazy.

My suspicions were further confirmed when she kind of cornered me on the river and told me that I had beautiful strokes and that I was obviously a kayaker. Doesn’t take a psychic to know that. But the ego stroke was nice all the same. Tthen she asked me if I knew about 2012.

I looked at her doubtfully, “The John Cusack movie?”

She looked at me like I’d just kicked her puppy. “No, do you know what will happen on December 11th, 2012.”

I thought, no. Why, do you? Instead, I shook my head.

And she replied, and I’m not exaggerating a single sentiment here, “the age of the patriarchal Pisces is coming to an end and the feminine age of Aquarius is dawning. It’s going to be a golden age.”

It’s all I can do to stifle a giggle because of course I’m now thinking of Steve Carrell in his pajamas at the end of the 40 Year Old Virgin musical montage. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the age of Aquariusssssss. Aquariusssssssss.
But it’s the absolute serious expression on her face that stops me.

Then she says, “this is a sacred feminine space we’re approaching, only the queens could bathe in the waterfall, the kings had to bathe downstream.” (Don’t even get me started on the mental image for that one, all sorts of snarky fun). “Groups from all over the world come here to dance and restore the feminine rites.” I literally had no idea what this woman was talking about, so I just smiled, nodded wisely, and kept paddling. Deeply creeped out.

She pointed to a high green cliff to my left. “That is kapu, you understand?”

“Why is it forbidden?” I asked to let her know I wasn’t a total idiot.

“It is the forbidden cliff, some people must stop there on the journey, they don’t get to reach the enlightenment and feminine wonder that awaits us.” And if you think I’m augmenting the way she talked, you’re just dead wrong. If anything I’m missing some of her stunners.

It got even more fun once we reached shore. Maya started talking to all of us about the Menehune. Now, the only reason I didn’t bolt back for the boat was because each one of us got a really cool walking stick for the hike in and this made me feel like a hobbit (awesomeness!). Now, the Menehune mean different things to different Hawaiians. For most, the Menehune were the race of humans here before the Hawaiians got here. They were little people and not like dwarfs, but just small sized, regular proportion people, only bite sized (like Kit Kats).

The Menehune were expert masons and tireless workers and legend had it that they would only undertake projects that could be finished in a single day. And while that doesn’t sound overly awe-inspring (I know what you’re thinking, you can reorganize your sock drawer in a single day and that doesn’t make you legendary. Just dull.) What I’m talking about are huge projects no one could finish in a day. The most common example of these are the Menehune fishponds. The Menehune were clever little buggers (haha, pun), and they would build fish ponds with walls and the walls would have small holes in them for the fish to fit through. Once inside they would munch on the oh-so-delicious water plants the Menehune would conveniently stock, and they would be unable to swim out the holes again. And the ones that could, well, they weren’t fat enough to eat yet, anyway.

(Menehune fishpond on Kauai).

Legend had it that when the Tahitians came along and brought black magic to the island, the Menehune disappeared into the hills and were never seen again. Now, most Hawaiians believe that the Menehune were legends or at least that most of the stories surrounding them were legends. You can’t dispute the fact that there are in fact fishponds and large stone walls on Oahu, Maui, and Kauai and that these things were built by people with a skill eye (and rumor has it that the measurement used is called the Pyramid Inch, the same type used at Stonehenge). And then you got people like our guide who not only thought they were real, but believed she was descended from them and that we had to make offerings to the Menehune.

Now Maya led us into the jungle with our walking sticks and maybe I was crazy for following her. But again I told you, having the walking stick was so fun. Normally, I made fun of those people on hiking trails, but hey if someone was telling you HAD to carry one, then it was okay. And I felt like a hobbit. So Maya made the rounds and worked the crowd (she wasn’t just being a creeper to me, I heard her tell a young woman in front of me, married 6 days and on her honeymoon, that she would have a baby before the year was out. The woman was actually excited about this news). When she came to me I braced myself for whatever crazy train was speeding down the tracks. And this one was a doozy (although not the biggest one, that was yet to come). She reached into her pockets and handed me some wilted Ti leaves.

I asked her why she’d given me Ti leaves just to her know that I knew what these were. The Hawaiians would plant Ti around their homes and also cemeteries to keep the spirits from getting in/getting out. And she said, and I swear, “a spirit is following you. A woman’s spirit. It’s a friendly spirit but you can’t have spirits following you around. Life is for the living (or something like that).” I was just about to write her off, anyone could say a throwaway line like that, when she added, “I believe it’s the spirit of your grandmother.”

Nope, not making that up. Kinda wish I were though. My grandmother had passed away at the end of January and I’d delayed going to Hawaii a few days because of it. Now I got kinda cold all over, even though it was eighty degrees out. I was also a little angry, quite certain that somehow, somewhere, someone was playing a joke on me and it was seriously not funny and that any moment Stierman, Seth, and Matthew were going to come crashing out of the underbrush with a big “gotcha” sign. No such luck.

But, I’m a logical person so I reasoned that this could have been a throwaway line, she had a 50/50 chance that someone at some point had died in my life and had been a female. It was just the timing of it. She’d gotten lucky.

I chewed that over until we reached the Falls. They really were beautiful; you could see why only queens could bathe here. No sense in sharing this with the common folk. I didn’t care how cold it was, I was going swimming. I was dirty from the hike in and covered in bug bites. But to my dismay, I discovered my bathing suit top had lost its string. A bad omen. This was not the kind of place you could swim topless, so I resigned myself to the fact that I was going in, t-shirt and all.

So I sat on a rock, eating dried pineapple, making small talk with other people on our kayaking trip (I want to point out for the millionth time that I love Canadians, just love them and want to hug them and squeeze them and…). I was getting ready to head into the water, having already handed my camera off to someone who would take a picture of me, when I heard Maya call me over.

Oh great, I thought. Another deeply creepy life reveal. But if she tells me I’m gonna be pregnant before the year is out I’m going to whack her with the hobbit stick. That’s the deal.

But she doesn’t guess the name of the first boy who kissed me or tell me my worst fears or where I’ll be in ten years or the date of my death or anything like that.

Maya: “Jessica, you have a pure soul. I want you to make an offering to the Goddess.”

Me: I got nothing for you. There is so much wrong with that sentence, I’d need a wrecking ball. Also, I have no idea which Goddess you are talking about. But remember, I’m only snarky in my head so I said, “umm okay, sure.”

Maya: (reaching into her pockets and pulling out bits of stone, shells, string, goose feathers, a pearl, and something white and oblong that reminds me of a Good N’ Plenty, but clearly isn’t). “Pick your offering.”

Me: (to myself) Choose your destiny, young one. Sow your own seeds of fate. You are the chosen one. There can be only one. And so forth. I have no idea what to pick, I ended up debating between the shell and the pearl because I like ocean things. Eventually, I decided on the black pearl because the shell had a crack in it and the black pearl has seriously deep literary roots. ‘This one.”

Maya: “That’s interesting. Now what I would have chosen for you.”

Me: (thinking) WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN??? You can’t just say something like that and not explain it!

Maya: ‘Now, you go into the waterfall all the way under the falls, you leave the offering for her and wait for her to take it. Only then do you come out.”

Me: “Okay.” I have a billion questions, like, how will I know if she takes the offering? Are there snakes in the pond? Does the kayaking company know you’re off the res?

Maya: “And you must carry it in your mouth.”

I’m floored. Literally floored, although I do have a passing snark thought, thank god I didn’t take the feather.

This is not my life.

I’m an attorney, a deferred one, but I went to law school, damnit. I’m risk adverse. I eat poptarts. I go to the dentist regularly. I subscribe to Bon Apetit. Occasionally, I argue with the ESPN PTI guys, even though I know they can’t hear me. I jog with an i-pod.

I’m not seriously going to wade across a waterfall with a pearl in my mouth and make an offering to an unknown goddess, am I? Am I being Punked?

But Ashton Kutcher doesn’t jump out of the underbrush with Nikon in hand and trucker hat on head. And part of me, the anal type A part, just can’t bring myself to let someone down even if it means acting ridiculously mystical. I want Maya to know I’m honored that she chose me for this…this…thing. And I don’t wish to insult her.

So I put the pearl in my mouth. Right up front on the bottom row between the two front teeth. You are not going to swallow this, I told myself, just so we’re clear. The Goddess would not be pleased. Then I picked my way down over the rocks to the waters edge. It was deeply green and murky. I’m not such a fan of bodies of water where you can’t see the bottom. I like to know what I’m getting into. So I sighed and began walking out through the cool water.

Then I stopped. I feel like if you’re going to go all crazy train, you might as well go ALL crazy train. So I reach into my pocket, take out one of the rumpled Ti leaves and I place it on top of the water. If it floats, no water lizard. If it sinks, your a$$ is grass, expect a watery death by lizard.

The leaf floats. Safe passage.

I waded out until I reached the falls and could stand under them. Behind them lay a big, black rock that looked volcanic (not a bad guess when you’re in Hawaii). It had a concave top perfect for depositing the pearl. No I didn’t spit it out or lay the pearl on there with my mouth. That was just too much. I took it out of my mouth with my fingers and laid it there. The water cascaded down over it, making it rock back and forth, until a particularly potent jet of water carried it down and off the rock.

Offer and acceptance.

We have a contract.

Snark snark snark. But I’m still calling the pearl sliding off the rock because of the water, a total win. The goddess took the pearl.

I actually stood there for a good, long minute having a peaceful moment. The waterfall felt great and it was loud, the water rushing down, but also somehow quiet. My trip was ending in two days and I felt this wonderful feeling of appreciation and connection, maybe not to a Goddess or anything like that, but I felt incredibly serene and happy. And that was enough for me.

On the way out, I posed for pictures. And yes, I was wearing this Bob Dylan t-shirt last year when I went swimming up at Manoa Falls for those of you who read the blog. Yes, it’s my favorite shirt. And it’s black and won’t show, uh, anything if it gets wet, which makes it ideal for waterfalls, kayaking, and other water recreational activities.

I headed back to the rocks, thankful to have not been struck down by an unnamed Goddess who did not appreciate snark or dragged to a drowning death by a water lizard (remember the Ghost Tour blog? Yeah, the whole drowning child calling for help nonsense wouldn’t have worked on me. You know what I would have done, mahalo). I met Maya at the waters edge. She asked me if the Goddess took the pearl and I nodded.

“That’s good,” she said. “You’ll finish now.” She gave me a mysterious smile, full of promise.

And that was the last thing Maya said to me for the remainder of the trip, other than a thank you at the tour’s end when I tipped her and thanked her for the tour. She did give me a big Hawaiian hug (hug, slight chest bump, cheek kiss) and despite her having really, really freaked me out with the whole, “I know things about you,” shtick, I had kinda enjoyed Matya. It’s good to hang out with people who you have nothing in common with other than being a carbon-based life form.