the road to show us the truck. Somehow, it was even smaller than the other one and the holes in the bed were even more gaping. It fired right up, though, and had a peppy little personality. We figured we might as well keep it, considering there was no way we were getting back the money we had already spent. We quickly named it “Tonka” because it was so toy-like and pretended that it spoke in low-pitched Asian grumblings. He gave us the key and tried to sign the title over to me in crayon. I dug a pen out from under the front seat amongst spent .22 casings. We completed the transaction and walked back across the road to finish paying the thing off.
As we left the bar later that afternoon we contemplated going back down to the private beach, knowing it would be unguarded, but decided to stretch Tonka’s legs back to Hilo. He shook vigorously whenever you accelerated and really didn’t like anything more than a gradual incline. Braking was generally questionable, to the point where we actually discussed which ditch to bail into on several occasions. He was pretty smooth between about 30 and 40 mph, unless it was raining, which was often on the windward side, but he never crashed or failed to start.
Soon after our indoctrination to the rougher edges of Hawaiian lifestyle, Elizabeth and I began exploring the Big Island in earnest. Those were some of the happiest times of my young life – times that would become impossible to forget later no matter how hard I tried. Tonka took us 3,000 miles around the Big Island before we ultimately parted with him, a fan, and two pillows for thirty bucks and a ride to the airport. The only difference was that Tonka’s new owner paid us in cash.
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We bumped south from Hilo to Kehena, as breaks in the dense vegetation afforded distant views of the steam and smoke marking new land along the volatile coast. The last active flows along this northern edge of Kilauea’s East Rift Zone were in the mid-50’s and the vegetation had a decidedly mature sense. A narrow, two-lane road hugged the verge between sloping jungles rolling down from the Pu’u Kali’u lookout to two hundred foot cliffs at the ocean’s doorstep.
After bouncing over its knobby roots, Tonka shuddered to a standstill beneath an expansive banyan tree. We were still buzzing and sweaty from the vibrations of the ride and hot wind. Soon we were pleasantly soaked as heavy drops from the most recent rain leaked through epiphytic plants living parasitically along the far-reaching, hundred-year-old branches.
As we stepped out from under the banyan into bright sunshine it was as if night had been lifted. Tonka was in like company with other vehicles clustered around a tiny trailhead. The ocean below was as profoundly blue as I had ever seen so close to land, though it would be rivaled by subsequent journeys to the Kona coast and a hint of the Mediterranean. The edge fell straight to the water and hot air shot up with such regular force it felt as if you could balance your entire weight above the perilous drop. Spots of life flickered on ledges along the sheer face; a small mountain apple tree clung improbably to the cliff, an ancient remnant of the early Polynesian settlers.
The narrow trail wound down the steep face ending in a warm tide pool. We waded across, towels on our heads, to a narrow strip of coarse black sand bunched against the mighty backdrop. We hung our things on the low branches of a tree whose trunk angled out from the base of the vertical black wall. Its roots were laced in crevices of the monolith’s foundation, appearing to squeeze life-sustaining nutrients directly from the slab. Cool water, pulled from damp tropical breezes by the sudden vertical excursion of rock, trickled steadily down the cliff, painting it with streaks of green life, before melting into the sand.
I quickly noticed that the other people on the beach were scantily, if at all, clad. I had never been to a nude beach before and found it somewhat odd and uncomfortable. Having an unexpected conversation with one of my hippie professors while wearing nothing but swim fins (and he nothing more than a straw hat, a talking parrot on his shoulder, and a joint in his mouth) contributed to the strangeness of the experience. My initial misgivings about the merits of swimming au naturel quickly ended once I entered the water.
It was colder here than other edges of the island and my skin came alive in the embrace. Having nothing between my body and the water was an extreme, liberating sensation. I had underestimated the extent to which the absence of swim trunks could enhance the experience of water. I could feel the strong undertow tugging me down the steep shore, sucking my feet into the black sand with each receding wave as I adjusted my mask and fins. The sky was filled with swirling dark clouds. It began to rain.
One of the most remarkable aspects of snorkeling or diving is that first moment of semi-shock when you push off and take flight. In the hundreds of dives I have made thus far, I have never failed to feel exhilarated at the very outset. Senses tingle as you adjust to an entirely new tactile perspective. You go from looking down on the water or just splashing around in it to feeling thoroughly engaged. Sounds are almost entirely muffled and you mainly hear your own heavy breathing, which at first seems as odd as a recording of your own voice. The water is all-encompassing and you breathe without loosing its vantage and wonderfully dense, surging support. It is an almost out-of-body, space-walking sort of encounter.
Piercing rain peppered my shoulders. The dim conditions limited the corals visible among black rocks. There were the expected tropical fish in widely-scattered clusters – Moorish idols, spectacled parrot fish, puffers, and the ubiquitous little sergeant majors I’ve seen in abundance on every shore of the four Hawaiian Islands I’ve dived. Within the small bay leading up to the nude beach, however, there were no big coral formations or established reefs of the sort that attract hordes of fish and larger predators. Because that part of the island was still expanding, the fringing reefs were quite young. The corals there were just the seeds of future reefs that won’t be fully realized for a thousand years, depending, of course, on how they respond to climate change, ocean acidification, marine debris and other global and local stressors continuing to threaten the existence of coral reefs.
I snorkeled along in the damp, dim visibility observing what pockets of life I could find and trying not to get pulled out to sea. I noticed a shimmering dissonance in the water like the heat mirage above burning lava fields. For a moment, I was certain the rising water was scalding hot, and that somehow this stretch of the East Rift Zone was about to open up again after 40 years of inactivity. Then I noticed little fish darting through the wobbling column. I approached cautiously. The water rising from the sand was freezing cold.
In one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments, I realized that the water I had seen disappearing into the black sand actually went somewhere. It filtered down from streams feeding off the cliff and eventually bubbled out of the island back into the ocean. I held onto the bottom and pulled myself in for a closer look. Like the discharge of an under-gravel filter in a fish tank, little jets of water flowed out of tiny holes in the rock and sand. I spit out my snorkel and sampled a little. The ancient Hawaiians knew these springs intimately and would dive through salt water with large vases to collect containers of fresh water. I drank copiously, amazed by how pure it was considering I was in the ocean.
After swimming in and out of the fresh water column, feeling the radical changes in temperature between the spring and surrounding water, I drifted back out into the mouth of the little bay to look for some larger and different fish. I was soon rewarded with a very different aquatic interaction.
The bottom drifted further from me and blurred to dark grayish-blue amidst the fuzzy specter of lava rocks. I began to hear clicks, squeaks, and squeals, seemingly from all directions. I scanned the area, but the visibility was limited to some 50 feet – poor by Hawai’i standards, though a range I would later find to be a rare treat in northern California. As the racket approached, fish moved into shallower water and I looked toward the ocean. A large pod of dark, sleek rockets of energy were splashing and twirling straight toward me – spinner dolphins!
These little fireballs are perhaps the most energetic animals on Earth. Aptly named for their aerial acrobatics, these marine mammals (part of a group called “cetaceans” that includes porpoises
