1/30: Lost and Found

Three are many things I would do simply to heighten my stack of experiences. Neither good nor bad, they simply wait to be had, like cold bullets resting in a chamber. Today Kenny drove me through Hawaiian seascape to the end of the world. We began in a truck high on the mountain's slope, with two hitchhikers perched in the cab for purposes of weight and stability, Kenny declared. They each wore thick blond dreadlocks clinging stiff to their sides, and dark brown teeth rounded on the edges, and long cracked nails. They cheered us on from the back, asking to go faster as the truck careened down dusty paths.

Kenny promised he had driven the path at least several times. The pavement ended early in our descent, tapering to coarse broken black rock. The path began a steeper descent, and we left the rock behind for red sand. The earth seemed gutted by brigades of heavy four wheeling vehicles before us, stripped of solid pathways. Our truck plunged and bounced over sharp, three-foot tears in the land, spinning over rifts that snared one wheel at a time.

He insisted on speeding through the steep pits of sand, because otherwise, he said, we would simply be stuck. The white truck was turned red by the time we came to the coastline, and the springs beneath it groaned badly. Gutted steel frames of trucks were rusting in several places along the way, and I realized, if you get stuck on those paths, your car is there forever. WE reached the sharp lava rocks, leaving the sand. On one horizon the blue sea was limitless and bright, and on the other, stacks of broken, black lava towered high, without interruption by a single plant. It seemed like the inside of a molecule.

And finally we were there- the Rainbow Gathering. Kenny said it would be lovely time. "Dancing by the fire light," he said. We approached the edge of a wide grove of trees, crouched on the shoreline .The first human we saw was an old man, completely naked. He stared at us silently, only his dirty dreadlocks quivering in the wind. We found the colorful banner draped across trees behind him: "Welcome Home," it read. Another man crouched in front of it in the sand, his eyes fastened on the ground. He pulled minute blue pieces of plastic out of the sand. Later, I learned he was on an LSD-induced litter crusade. And inside the hollow stirred the most bizarre world.

It seemed almost post-apocalyptic, a teeming cluster of motley families, wearing only rags and cracking coconuts around pit fires. Naked children ran in and around crowds, people were sleeping beneath trees and sprawled on the sand, and guitars and flutes were humming in different directions. A man drew breath from a plastic bong, his back to the wind, then scooped up his young bumbling daughter, and waded into the tide with her. So I sat in the sand and read and let the wind talk to me, because, honestly, I hate that hippie shit.

They are a band of voluntary outlaws, wearing masks of compassion over hearts of bitterness. They have chosen isolation rather than integration, savoring the secrecy of being high every waking hour, and talking smack about the rest of the world behind its back. They group government, commerce, and every family that is foreign to them into an entity that is hostile, one that has driven them there. I hear comments spliced in every conversation about how much better this life is, about constant reassurance for the struggle I hear a diatribe about how the government is poising Americans with sugar-laden Skittles.

So I chose the high and challenging road home, deciding not to break Kenny's bliss by asking for a ride. "Kenny- if you can't find me, then I've found the path home," was the note I left propped inside his truck. Three hours before sunset I started walking back the jagged lava path, the sun dawdling before me and the moon staring at my back. I made it way from the beach, away from the black rock, and into the sand pits, and suddenly, I was lost.

The jeep trail simply faded away into nothing but brush and tall grasses. Every horizon faded into infinite rows of the same plant I was standing in. Brown grass, black brushes and windswept trees were the only pieces of the landscape. Nothing stood out. I began sweating and my heart was ticking louder and louder and then I started running. I ran uphill, fast and hurdling bushes. I ran until I reached the crest of a hill and looked in all directions. Still no change in the horizon, just the infinite fractal bushes. I could smell the fear leaking out of me. But then I saw something moving- a shifting black mass.

I looked at the pies of poop blanketing the ground and realized that I was in a cattle pasture, and the specks roaming the slopes far away were enormous cattle. I found tractor tread marks in the dirt and followed them up and up the hill, turning my red shoes brown with coats of dust. In my head echoed over and over: Where there are tracks there are roads. Where there are tracks there are roads. I climbed and climbed the hill, slipping in dust like I was walking through flour, and then I heard a cow's cry, ringing like a scream rather than a gentle moo. I kept walking with my head down, and began hearing more moos, breaking into chorus and after every cry rang another one. Then the ground began to tremble and the dust shivered around me, and I watched dozens of cattle running across the plain, slowing to a halt in a semicircle on the path before me. I was surrounded by a massive mingling cry, by massive animals, alone on a desert plain without trees. My heart began racing and I walked back down the hill, quickly, quietly, and low to the ground.

I watched them move step by step towards me, still screaming, and I began to run. I ran down dusty slopes, sliding through thorny bushes and over rocks. I ran until I saw a fence far-off, and and then ran harder towards it. I rolled under the barbed wire, and looked back at the cattle I had left on the other side. Then my mind rang with joy again: fences lead to roads.

I looked down tot realize I was red with dust and blood, after running hard. But I kept a quick pace along the fence, moving tirelessly uphill. After miles of walking I saw bright and tiny arms waving on the horizon and I knew they were the white arms of windmills, the windmills I knew from South Point Road. I yelled victoriously and showed the finger to any cattle watching, and walked two hours along fences until I climbed over at last, at the road near the windmills.

I came out of the ranch around sunset. The road is narrow and poorly paved and only connects two points. At the bottom is the Southernmost beach on the island, and a the top is where I live. Cars passed seldom, and it wasn't until the eighth one that I got a ride. The man asked me where I'd been, and I told him I was late walking back form the beach. I asked him if he lived nearby, and he said yes, that he owned the 4,000 acre cattle ranch behind us.