THE KEALIA BIKE PATH

 The Kealia Bike Path

 

I always double knot my shoes and use the
public restroom before I start out walking
the Kealia Bike Path.

I do this because I’m getting older
and no longer have time for the
slips and spills of my younger years.
Urgency is gone as the rope of
time tugs towards its final knot.
Oddly though, “old” never felt so
young as it does today wandering
past crashing waves out in the
middle of the ancient ocean.

The bike path starts in civilization –
a homeless camp near the
seawalls of Moanakai Road.
It’s really not so unsightly as you
might think, just hippie-looking
locals smoking weed on 

faded park benches by their
pup tents in paradise,
hanging out in front of
crashing waves, ready to
run if they see a cop,
or shoot you a dirty look
for being a Haole if you’re a Haole.

It’s not so different than that
park in Deerfield, Illinois where,
after washing dishes at Ravinia,
the chef and I would cruise to and
listen to “Smoke on the Water” and
toke on a bowl, with a park full of
freaks who looked almost homeless,
but from a teenager’s perspective,
were wondrous and breathtaking
like Local Hawaiian potheads
beside a beachside parking lot.

But nowadays, in this congested,

Godforsaken working world, 

I require a massive and remote
ocean expanse to inspire my
awe and hope and wonder.
Today I need the broad blue
brush of nature and the
naturally thatched green weeds that
drape hidden secrets on the
other side of the great divide.

These secrets dance and spin with the
wind and the waves and the roosters
crowing on the lawn. These
 secrets call out from behind the
individuated world of a tropical island’s
shades of green and blue.

The Pono Kai Resort, further along the
path, is also nicer than you’d think,
and not because it comes just after the
iron girder bridge  over the Kapaa Canal
that segregates it from homelessness, but
because it’s really quite modest and
accessible and on a vast stretch of
downtown beach that nobody really
pays attention to – except those in the know,
although, after a storm it gets rather
rank and sketchy with stirred,
sandy brown water and all sorts of
unsightly shit like inexplicable
shopping carts tossed willy-nilly
into the surf until a crew comes to
clean it up.

I want to be on that crew that
cleans up the beach just like I
want to be the husband who brings his
wife tea in bed and comforts her
in all ways possible when she has the flu.

The parks and library and Sam’s
Restaurant and the cute boutique hotel
on the north end of Kapaa Town are a
quant distance past the Pono Kai
until you finally find yourself at the
cliffs just up from Kawaihau Road.
There it becomes a real walk along
beaches and shores of the Pacific Ocean,
and you know you’re out in the
middle of the Pacific, miles and miles
and thousands of miles from a
continent with super highways and
skyscrapers and suburban sprawl that
has eaten up the once beautiful
farmlands and wilderness that
made us feel a part of life – 
at least, that is, in the universal sense,
as in the Universe and the
cosmic sense of the ever-present
consciousness of a loving and nurturing God.

The cliffs last for a while but (in full disclosure,)
the path borders on the Kuhio Highway.
Sometimes you can see it sometimes you can
hear it sometimes you can’t, but it
makes no difference as a highway’s significance
pales in contrast to the infinitude of the busy
ocean that stretches from pole to shining pole
and from China to South America with
indifferent emptiness upon its surface, and
multidimensional doings down below –
down to its very rocky or sandy bottom,
miles deep depending on whether it’s canyons or
cliffs or the muddy ocean floor.

Past the Kealia cliffs there is the
great panoramic vista: Kealia Beach –
my favorite stretch of sand in the world.
And when it’s a little gray and overcast,
the beach can be a half-mile stretch of
ecstatic vacancy save for the life-guards and their
groupies, but usually there are flocks of
surfers and waders and at the far end,
where the water is safe and shallow,
protected by a rock wall. There are
dads with their daughters and sons and
sunbathers in foldout chairs, and a
splattering of colored umbrellas
protecting family outings that include
toddlers and dogs running wild in the
hot Hawaiian sunshine.

The walk along the Kealia parking lot goes
quick (quicker than you’d think for a
half-mile stretch of pavement) and then after the
last stop – another public restroom – the trail
climbs back up along the cliffs, and
empty hillsides of grass and forever
green trees interrupted only by one small
gated community up above, protected by a
chain link fence and threatening signs that say,
“stay out” at the risk of prosecution.

The path goes on for another half-hour
(depending on your pace) with the occasional bike
utilizing its rights and privileges on a
route that was designed for riders.

Paliku (Donkey) Beach is the next broad stretch of sand,
and this one is exclusive to the residents and surfers
who know the secret (or not) quarter mile paved
path off the highway. These beach bather’s presence is as
apt and organic as the sea turtles, monk seals and
flocks of egret who make that stretch of sea their home.

The trail continues on in warm bathing serenity
for one final stretch until you bump into a
dead end of tall grasses that guard a stretch of
Kauai wilderness. My friend Katie told me
there are homeless encampments there on the
other side of the creek – exclusively Hawaiian
locals from outside Anahola who
aren’t as friendly as the potheads in Kapaa –
 
but I sometimes pretend those
tall grasses are kind of like how the
Universe ends at the edge of infinity;
tall grasses of unknown origin with a
couple narrow paths that sneak in but are
designed for those who were there at the
dawn of the lay of the land who
live and breathe with both feet planted
firmly in infinity with no need for
civilization or libraries or boutique
hotels or colored umbrellas
for their family’s protection.

But I wonder if maybe they are missing out,
missing their feet tied to the world of
form, organized into societies while they
now float free out in the world of
consciousness, never knowing the
contrasts that bring the formlessness into
focus and provide a deeper understanding of
within from without.

This is what I think as I stand before the
tall grasses at the edge of the Kealia Bike Path
before I turn back and head into my life that I
believe has a meaning but is really only given definition
by this and other poems.