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Hey Haleakalā

2 min

Hey Haleakalā

You are mighty tall

Every 10 minutes driven, you have a new ecosystem.

I started off in a brown desert looking straight from the Disney movie Holes.

Then into the mossy greenery and lush shrubberies.

They looked like where the hobbits live in Lord of the Rings

To a tall shaded forest, like from the Twilight Saga in Portland

filled with invasive species of pine trees.

These were some happy trees,

I’d love to watch Bob Ross paint.

Then came the roaming cattle.

We slowed and came to a halt

To watch the calves and cows in the clouds.

They were living a happy simple life.

A family of pheasants scurried by

But what we really wanted to see was

The nēnē state bird of Hawaii.

My dad zipped around the snaking road

Through the clouds hugging the outside of the lane.

The road kept vanishing and coming back

The winding was never ending.

As if we’d take a step out into nothingness manifested:

The void.


The clouds were calming

And then irritating with the lack of visibility

We commentated:

“Okay Mr. Cloud you have made your point,

and can leave now.”

but he doesn’t seem to listen.

We were like the peas in pea soup.

Hey Haleakalā

You feel like the end of the earth.

The minimal amount of your life diminished.

Until we spotted silver sea urchins above ground.

The silversword plants in Hawaiian are ‘āhinahina

Endemic to the island of Maui

One of the only survivors at the summit

Designed with its silvery leaves to reflect sunlights

And deep taproot to stand the high winds.

It’s what I imagined lunar landscape would look like.

With the crater and the red hill and magnetic peak.


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The air felt like the freshest

yet lacking in actual oxygen

My mom was getting dizzy.

We stumbled upon 25 cent citrus on the way down

And a bistro with decadent pies

That surely improved the rider’s morale.


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