To the Man in the Bed Sheet Hammock

On the southern embankment of Koko Head Crater, a trail ghosting the old railroad shadows views of the Haunama Bay shoreline and the extensions continued parallel Kalanianaole Highway (if you have ever driven Highway 101 up the Oregon Coastline, just add 3 dimensions to the crayon turquoise,  20 degrees Fahrenheit, volcanic ‘leftovers’ and massive surf culture and you could be here in under five senses).  Upon bumming up this vertical slope with a full Nalgene (sometimes two if the sun is feeling mischievous), my own homemade blend of roasted cinnamon and Truvia blended walnuts for power fuel and my Moleskine pages, I have found that the best time to experience the purity of  description begins around 5:45 p.m. Hawaiian Time...for here on the island, the sunset still remains a mystery to me.  It encroaches the horizon unlike anywhere I have seen, usually two hours earlier than Idaho at least, but in a way that teases you, for unlike what I assumed (huf! How we always assume too much! What good is true assumption anyway?), the sunset always finds a way to avoid lingering- unsynonymous to the people here who have perfected the art of Linger.  Furthermore, upon trek up the 1700 ties that now serve as an almost Great Wall version of hiking steps- only a heck of a lot more vertical and spaced apart causing a sixty-five in person to hurl their body forward or thus take twice as many steps as the rest of mankind, I have begun to crave the gesture of Silence upon encounter with each fellow hiker in passing.  There happens to be a moment so serene, an almost invitation into the soul, where the barter of glance, of a trepid, but almost curious (to the extent in which the terms are often hilariously muddled) question, or perhaps rather statement of honest exception found only in acknowledgement of the beauty being shared.  For sunset, a crowd in to which I have decided I much more suitably belong, brings in a different breed than the hikers of the dawn (watch your toes if you get antsy to experience this- Silence doesn’t seem to penetrate their Preparatory Mind as well as the Thinkers of Dusk).  This invitation is momentary at most and addicting at least.  But it does make me wonder, each and every time, what so happens to bring them to the mountain at the end of the day…are they as I- an artist of the day painting freely as I choose with a tendency toward the beautiful, or are they perhaps lovers in Romantic scene, businessmen with a secrecy for spirituality (humor not intended, but accepted),  National Geographic enthusiasts (yes, I do believe this would make quite the spread),  or, as my favorite, a local aged around fifty-five who hikes up nightly with an old bedsheet to hang as a hammock on the old bunker….

Either way, my delight is full and my attention soft- it is to these secret fellow companions, in which my dedication to this hour exists.   I know not their lives, but only a single passion in which we share the view of the world from the top of a crater in the middle of the ocean at dusk at the end of all of our different days, until at last, we begin the hike down....silently parting ways until we are to meet again, possibly the next night…or possibly never…but it doesn’t matter…for the moment will always exists just as it is, nothing more, nothing less.