Waking Up in Eden (23 page)

The Kahanu family of Hana eventually acquired the property, but donated it in 1972 to the newly formed Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden. The Hana Ranch donated another fifty acres adjacent to the temple. The Garden bought another fifty, promising to all that it would restore the
heiau
to full glory.

Regally tall, with mahogany skin and snowy white hair and muttonchops, Francis Lono seemed the perfect man to hire as caretaker. Everybody in Hana knew that Francis descended directly from King Pi'ilani. His father had been the last Hawaiian to live in a traditional grass hut. His royal bloodlines earned him the nickname Blue.

Back in the early 1970s, Blue Lono set to clearing the
heiau.
Reports of it spread all the way to the western end of Maui's gold coast of hotels and condos. Buzzing tour helicopters landed
on the temple for champagne picnics, leaving behind corks and trash. The Garden Club of Honolulu donated funds to build a wood pavilion for visitors. Several wealthy Hana residents donated a new pickup truck. Another funded a restroom. In one of its worst public relations blunders, the Garden hierarchy shipped the spanking new truck to Kauai for use at Garden headquarters, and returned a clunker by barge to Maui. Garden leaders ordered a latrine hole dug but never installed the toilet. Although these insults had occurred more than two decades ago, the people of Hana still remembered. Bitterly.

In Dr. Klein's first step as the new NTBG director, he drafted conceptual plans for all of the Garden's sites, including Kahanu. He hired well-known landscape architect Geoffrey Rausch of Pittsburgh for the job, and the two of them devised a plan to catapult the site from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century in one leap.

General Patton–style, Dr. Klein unveiled his plan for Kahanu with a flourish at a Hana community meeting. He ticked off planned amenities: ocean-view cottages, swimming pools, and tennis courts. “If there was one plan guaranteed to unite the community against the Garden, this is it,” warned one speaker.

Klein and Rausch deflated like pricked balloons. “We thought of everything but the people we were supposed to be thinking about, which was the community,” Rausch admitted. Never to be deterred, Dr. Klein warmed to the challenge. If told that something couldn't be done, he rallied with a war cry: Why not?

Dr. Klein decided to try a Hawaiian approach. This time, Dr. Klein and Rausch planned discreet locations, away from the
heiau,
for a traditional, thatched grass hut meeting pavilion,
offices, exhibit space, classroom, and modest apartments for interns and visiting scientists. Dr. Klein waxed large: Kahanu Garden would serve as a gathering spot, bringing together heads of Pacific states for an agriculture conference to study traditional uses of plants for food, clothing, and shelter.

To soften the blow that he was appointing a young
haole,
Adam Rose, to director, Dr. Klein decided to confer the ceremonial title of
kahu,
or spiritual caretaker, on Blue Lono. Dr. Klein gathered guests on the grass at the Maui property and passed coconut shells of fermented
'awa
— a traditional numbing liquor made from ti roots. The ceremony attracted coverage by local newspapers, causing Eric Kanakole, perpetrator of the
kapu
sticks, to seethe. As a descendent of the Pi'ilani family, he exercised his rights to visit the temple, often escorting groups of kids there to explain ancient traditions. Several times Eric had asked Dr. Klein for a job at Kahanu Gardens, maybe as a tour guide. Dr. Klein had not responded.

Then the organizers of an annual hula festival in Hana asked Dr. Klein for permission to use Kahanu Garden as the site for their opening ceremony. Adam Rose warned,
Don't do it!
Hana's Hawaiian traditionalists scorned the hula festival as a
haole
event. One of the Hawaiians wrote a letter of protest to Dr. Klein, asserting that the town's Hawaiian elders would have to give permission to use the temple site.

General Patton fired back: I don't need your permission to do anything. The hula festival was on!

And so, a few weeks later, a hundred guests, mostly
haoles,
gathered at the
heiau
at dawn as drums beat. The Hawaiians of Hana boycotted the event. A martial arts troop of out-of-towners who had come for the hula fest emerged silently from
the jungle. Garbed in loose white loin cloths, they solemnly danced to the sunrise.

A
DAM
R
OSE WOULD
call it “the Great Standoff.”

Early the Saturday after the
kapu
sticks appeared, Dr. Klein flew to the tiny Hana Airport, then paced impatiently for several hours at Adam Rose's cottage, waiting for Eric Kanakole to telephone and name a meeting place. Finally someone called. Everyone was waiting for them down at the
heiau.
Adam worried that the meeting had turned into a group confrontation, out of town and out of sight. Adam's young wife, Lianne, dashed outside and quickly gathered bunches of shiny green ti leaves — the plant used traditionally to ward off evil spirits — and tied them to the four corners of Adam's blue pickup truck.

With the truck festooned like a parade vehicle, Adam and Dr. Klein drove down the dirt road to Kahanu Garden. The gate stood wide open — already an unusual sign. A massive Hawaiian woman, her black hair flowing like Medusa, stood sentry, as if she had reclaimed the property already. “Who are you?” she demanded.

He responded with a booming voice, “I'm Dr. William Klein and I'm trying to find out what's going on.”

She said nothing but gave him the stink eye as they drove past. Heavy grass brushed the underside of the truck like cloying fingers. A plume of dust stretched out behind them as they passed a grove of breadfruit trees. Scattered fruit rotted on the ground, some with exposed white flesh that looked like spilled brains. A putrid smell of decay settled over everything. As the pickup rounded a bend, Adam and Dr. Klein could see ahead to a wide plain leading down to the peninsula. A dozen or so
men lounged against their trucks, their backs to the
heiau.
They wore T-shirts, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, and most had long braids and tattoos. They looked pissed off.

“Carry on, Adam,” Dr. Klein urged. “I'm here to find out what the hell is going on.”

From out of nowhere, a pickup pulled out behind them. Then another. And another. Soon Adam led eight or nine big, high-rigged Chevys and GMC models that made Adam's Toyota feel like a Tinkertoy. Adam looked over his shoulder and saw that the trucks, crowded with Hawaiians, had cut off their exit. He swallowed hard and started sweating. Dr. Klein looked ahead, seemingly unperturbed.

Adam stopped with great trepidation. The Hawaiian brigade fanned out in a line behind the Toyota, blocking the road. Adam calculated how fast he could run but looked at Dr. Klein's girth and worried that he couldn't move very fast. The Hawaiians got out of their trucks and started toward them.

Dr. Klein clapped Adam around the shoulders encouragingly and said, “Well, Adam, you may be the first Englishman since Cook to be eaten alive.” Then he swung open the truck door and bulled his way out, his chest and belly extending over his belt. He wore one of his green botanical print Aloha shirts and a wide white panama straw hat banded with iridescent pheasant feathers that gave him a slightly goofy look. With his wirerimmed glasses and fair complexion, Dr. Klein appeared very much the professor. He started toward the group, his face neither grim nor smiling, but seriously peering over his trifocals as if approaching a crowd of rare insects. Then he went face-first right into the bees' nest.

A big Hawaiian guy stuck a whirling video camera under Dr.
Klein's nose and demanded: “Did you or did you not see the sign at the entrance?”

“Yes, I did,” Dr. Klein answered matter-of-factly.

“Do you know what it means?”

“No, I don't, and that's what I'm here to find out.”

Taki Matsuda, a member of the Kahanu family that had donated the site to the Garden more than twenty years ago, waited at the head of the group. Adam recognized the other men as Eric Kanakole's
hui,
or gang. The high priest himself was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, everyone shouted and talked at once, waving their arms. “Whose place is this? What's going to happen here? Who's protecting the
heiau
? What are you gonna do about it?”

Dr. Klein calmly repeated, “We're from NTBG. I'm the executive director. I want to make things right. I want to involve you. Look, this is our place now. I understand you have cultural issues. I'm not trying to become involved with Hawaiian issues. I'm here to talk about what we're going to do here. I'm open-minded to any possibility. Let's talk about anything.”

After thirty minutes of confusion, they all ran out of steam. Even the video man got tired and switched off his camera. No one seemed to know anything about the
kapu
sticks, what Eric wanted, or even where he was. Adam and Dr. Klein got back into their truck and followed a Hawaiian to a phone booth. The man made a phone call, then reported that Eric had left for Honolulu.

The Great Standoff ended in a draw, although Adam declared it a triumph for Dr. Klein. “We didn't get killed. We didn't get lynched, so he did a good job.”

• • •

T
HE
KAPU
STICKS
remained standing all through the summer and into the fall.

At night in their cottage, Adam and Lianne Rose peeked out through closed blinds to watch meetings convened in the Hana Cultural Center and Museum across the street. They could see Francis Lono and other elders seated on the floor of the traditional Hawaiian grass-roofed hut. Adam never learned directly what was said, but he knew that the
kapu
on Kahanu was under discussion.

Meanwhile, Adam implemented his own measures of cultural glasnost. He grew his dark hair down his back and began braiding it, in the style of young Lono and other Hawaiians. “Adapt and survive,” he explained.

N
OTHING BUT MILES
of cane fields lined Route 50 as it wound through the dry west side. But I had learned to recognize that a line of parked cars along the roadside was a sure sign of a trail to one of Kauai's surfing haunts. As my interest in surf culture grew after meeting Cal, I sometimes stopped at Pakalas, the break also known as “Infinities,” to watch him or others ride the long pipeline curl. Some call it the best wave in the world.

I hiked through a shaded forest to the beach. Until the 1980s there was no public access to Pakalas. Surfers had to sneak through two miles of broken-glass fields, risking arrest for trespassing on private property.

“After a good day at Infinities you'll brainstorm for any implausible scheme to raise the cash to purchase a piece of property nearby. Failing that, you'll commit every waking second on Kauai to planning another session here and wonder why anyone would ever want to surf anywhere else,” writes Greg Ambrose in his
Surfer's Guide to Hawaii.
He also warns of Pakalas's dangers. In wipeouts, surfers can land on the shallow reef, turning their backs or other body parts into raw hamburger.

Today, monster swells radiating from a recent far-off tropical
storm in the South Pacific had arrived, washing up on Kauai in ten- to twelve-foot waves. No Cal, but plenty of other surfing demigods ducked and shot through walls of water with balletic grace powered by brute strength. I could never watch without awe, laughing in remembrance of the Beach Boys song “Little Surfer Girl.” Every American female growing up in the 1960s must have harbored a desire to be somebody's Surfer Girl.

My one surf lesson gave me an understanding of the appeal. The instructor — a young dude named Lance — stood in the water, held the back of the board, and gave it a push so that I could experience the surge of catching a wave. Although I stood for only seconds, I felt the ocean momentum and the wish to do it again and again. I emerged from the lesson beat and bloody, my ankles scraped by reef rocks. It's a sport for those who still feel young and immortal.

And Cal and I were riding our own waves.

D
R.
K
LEIN AND
I often had meetings in Honolulu, the New York City of the Pacific, and would either fly over for the day or spend the night. Bill introduced me to Alan Wong's, arguably the best restaurant in Hawaii. Neither the location nor ambiance was particularly fancy with its plain dining room in an unfashionable section of Honolulu. Oh, but the food!

As late as the 1970s, the joke used to be that the best food in Hawaii was what you got on the plane coming over. European-trained chefs at the big resorts shipped in all their food — even frozen fish — for classic continental menus. Tourists tasted local cuisine only if they went to one of the commercial luaus or ventured into hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Wong, along with a new generation
of Hawaiian-born chefs, began to explore local fish markets, exulting in their bounty. They searched out island farmers to grow specialty vegetables and ripe fruit — not the green pineapples or papayas picked for export. The chefs contracted with cattleman to raise island-grown beef and lamb. Lychee and macadamia nuts, coconuts and local fruits such as the soursweet
lilikoi
(passion fruit), mangos and guava soon appeared prominently on menus.

Fossils and electron microscopes aren't the only way to decipher Hawaiian history. Food historians study the ethnic origins of food for what it says anthropologically about the people and evolution of multicultural societies. Sociologists have focused on Hawaii because of its large range of ethnic groups, no majority, and a 50 percent intermarriage rate. Like everything in Hawaii, food underwent a constant melding of outside influences as people arrived, improvised, and adapted.