Hawaii, Where are You?

Are you in the Honolulu airport complex, the regimented lei stands with their aloha-uniformed sellers? Are you in the Honolulu slums, the downtown Waikiki jungle, the bargain centers for tourists, the depressing housing tracts? Are you stifled by the sprawling military barracks, air force bases, grim Pearl Harbour, gangling freeways? Is your beauty being stripped away by the merciless developers and soulless realtors? Is your Aloha beneath the scowl of your tourist oriented populace, your racially biased white newcomers?

Is your surfing the comical Makaha International or the prostituted Duke Invitational? Is your freedom symbolized by Honolulu's snarled traffic, or the jammed parking lot at Makaha — only $1.00 per car?

Hawaii, you must be a myth — or are you sleeping while modern man covers you with a filthy crust? Perhaps your oceans will tear down the shoreline apartment complexes, your volcanoes may awaken and spew repentance into the hearts of those who destroy you. Will the ancient Kahunas warn off the fire goddess Pele's anger, should the children of the Islands ignore her?

Well, f' pity's sake man. Hawaii must grow, buildings must rise, tourists must come, Chinn Ho must develop Makaha Valley, the military must have a strategic base, the economy must flourish, you damn tourist, anyway!

It's all gotta be bigger, betta, more, more. It's the American way.

Then why not call Hawaii New Idaho, or West California? Why not advertise it as the “American home away from home?'' Why can't Hawaii be like Fiji or any of the other beautiful islands that big money hasn't trammeled on? Imagine if Hawaii had remained in conservative British hands, or better still if the missionaries hadn't "come to do good and stayed to do well."

Where is Hawaii? Certainly not on 85% of Oahu, Hawaii's capital. There is still plenty of old Hawaii on several of the nearby neighbor islands, though it's fast disappearing. The "country" or "north shore" [side] of Oahu is still a great place to surf because of the regularity of big swells hitting in winter months, but the housing shortage and some uptight, semi-permanent "haole" locals make it uncomfortable. It's difficult to walk the beach without being pestered to buy some dope or ask where some might be found. The people of Hawaii are made up of many colors and beliefs. The true-blood Hawaiian is far outnumbered by a mixture of Japanese, Filipino,

Chinese and Koreans who were brought over to work the fields in missionary days or have since immigrated. There is a huge daily influx from would-be residents who leave their 270 million Mainland countrymen to escape America's harsh winters and bathe in Aloha for the rest of their lives.

Air and water pollution are crucial problems on Oahu, believe it or not. There are some areas in housing tracts where surroundings reflect the stifled mainland trend that one can't believe is in Hawaii.

The old Hawaiian was a nature freak, living easily on the land and in the sea.

His greatest possessions were his large family, a palm shack in the cool mountains, some dogs and his fabulous body with which he could paddle a canoe to any Island destination, or spear fish, swim and dive for coral, climb, and hunt wild pig.

Today he chokes on in his eight-cylinder metal affair, and sweats his soul away as a construction laborer, since he is most suited to manual work. It is the Japanese who control the money and most big business.

The outer islands are the placed to see on Hawaii. You still have to travel by airplane and rent-a-car, but the people are much more natural and much of the countryside is left alone. Even the hotels on, say, Maui, are in some areas limited to single story cabanas spread through landscaped surroundings. It is sad, though perhaps for the best, that some of these islands are privately owned, Niihau for Hawaiians is natural environment only, no white men allowed. Some of the best surfing spots, like the precision left of Infinities, are closed off by the Robinson family on Kauai.

Oahu is the least beautiful of the larger islands, not solely because it is heavily built on, but it has neither the varied climate nor the great beauty of one or two of the others. Kauai has the rainiest mountain on earth, the Big Island has cattle ranches, tropical terrain and snow.

Maui seems to typify the real dream of Hawaii to me. The mountain and crater of Haleakala opposite a jagged mountain range to the northwest, separated by a green plain, make Maui appear as a figure eight, Haleakala having the lower, larger half of the eight. The mountains are more like jagged ridges that have been split. It is the high rainfall of these islands that makes them so richly endowed with a green covering that may only be absent on the western side of an island, since the prevailing northeast trade winds leave their moisture high in the mountains, the center of every island. It seems every island has its Waimea, Kaena, Kailua, Honolulu, because these names are given to many similar locations resembling each other on different islands, as if the old Hawaiians ran short of new names.

The islands are very close together, and when on Maui the islands of Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe are separated by a narrow channel and make radical silhouettes for sunsets when seen from the historic old whaling port of Lahaina. Then, should you turn your gaze inland, you look up into vertical rain shrouded peaks and deeply cut valleys that appear as narrow pathways into the crusty heart of the island. It's difficult to imagine just how great an eruption it must have taken to thrust these magnificent islands from the oceans' floor.

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There seems to be endless surf in the islands. There is so much swell ,other than in the summer months, and unless the island you are on has a cliff coastline, as on parts of Hawaii, there are huge stretches of reef that produce every kind of wave known to surfers.

The wind can blow from any direction is and it will be offshore on one side of an island. The air and water are ideal. The locals may feel the seasonal changes in temperature, but a visitor rarely feels variation from the 75-80° water and air. You can imagine how ideal this is for big-wave riding. These islands are the place where the elements get together and provide the most sympathetic surfing environment anywhere.

There is every kind of wave to be had by every kind of surfer, regardless of ability. One side of an island is always bigger than another side. In winter it is the north and west sides, in summer the south and east shores are best.

It is impossible to get across to someone who hasn't been to Hawaii just how powerful the waves really are. I compare the takeoff at Sunset and Waimea to jumping off a 15-20 ft. wall then having the wall collapse. No place in the world can prepare you for Hawaiian waves. The takeoff is always the most vertical, the wall the longest, the speed the greatest and the end result the most exciting. I have seen Point Surf at Makaha where the waves threw out as far as they were high and the thickness of the lips was equal to half the height of the wave. The answer is that these waves are created by thick, free-running ocean swells that erupt suddenly on shallow reefs of coral and lava and pour over like a dam that burst its retaining wall. I have seen the lip spill so far out in front of the wave that the surfer riding it was confronted with a wall of water in front of and behind him, then with the end closing over the surfer, the surfer has been perfectly entombed for seconds, then driven to the bottom in a thundering wipeout.

This year saw 50-foot waves on the North Shore! Kaena Point has waves this big every winter. Sunset, Waimea, Laniakea and Makaha are still the breaks that produce the biggest rideable swells, and surfers who ride here with the skill and ease that they do, must surely be counted as the greatest we know.

In Honolulu, it's Gerry Lopez and Reno Abellira the birds rave about. These guys spin, side-slip and tube their way through the outer-limits performance of the Ala Moana hollows. On the North shore it's Jock Sutherland encased at the Pipe, Eddie Aikau behind a Waimea explosion, Joey Cabell investigating the dark pockets of Sunset, Filipe Pomar and Bobby Cloutier skating on the east walls of Laniakea, and many, many more who stuff their bodies into horrendous, unforgiving tubes and make moon-walking seem tame and conservative.

Surfboard design varies from 7' side-slipping darts to 11' charging guns that carry their riders to the very bowels of the north shore monsters. Every conceivable wind and wave condition influences the city and country shapers who cater to the Honolulu hotdogger and the Waimea super-athlete.

These guys train like athletes, since the waves play for keeps and the rips are rivers of tormented, confused water hurrying seaward. Living on the North Shore is an ordeal. Locating a house, paying outrageous food and rent prices, fighting the bugs and coral infection, avoiding the dopers and narcs, and sitting out the foul onshore Kona weather for weeks at a time.

Then one morning the wind turns trade, the clouds and the rain give way to brilliant blue, the air is warm and sweet from the rain-washed foliage. You walk down a grassy path under palms and squat in damp, cool white sand and watch the day's first big swells heave on the offshore reefs. You find some company for the big waves and you discover again, Hawaii.