Waking Up in Eden (33 page)

Throughout my stay on Kauai I had felt I was on a parallel journey with so many other travelers who enter a strange land, meet guides and foes, then return, much wiser, to the wider world. I'd never aspire to the extremes undertaken by Isabella Bird, nor her decades of rootlessness. But I did aim for her free-legged air and her break from societal and self-imposed boundaries. For Robert and John Allerton, Hawaii was their final destination and retreat. For Isabella and me, it was a beginning.

A chrysalis.

A
FTER FLYING TO
Budapest so long ago, I did live a nomadic life for several years, training journalists throughout Eastern and Central Europe and Africa. I loved the work. While I never slept in a camel's tent, I stayed in enough former Communist hotels to develop a loathing for Stalinist design and its discomforts.

I'm thankful for the career reverses I've staggered through, because without them I'd never have gone on any of those excursions. As I work at my desk now, the computer screen saver flashes through a slide show of photos taken in Hawaii, Botswana, Kosovo, Prague, and elsewhere. I remember when I thought my life was over in Philadelphia and think,
Look at all that's happened since then!

In a perhaps apocryphal story, when my hero Carl Jung met someone who had just been fired, the great psychologist would say, “Congratulations, something exciting is going to happen to you.” And when Jung met someone who had just been promoted, he'd offer his condolences.

When I watch colleagues who have climbed career ladders with steady progress and seldom a misstep, it does seem that
there is a certain predictability, a safeness . . . and a lack of imagination.

I avoided returning to the Garden for years. As I feared, it entered another bleak period. The new management fired or forced out everyone in the Plant Conservation Department, until only Steve Perlman was left, a staff of one. Rick Hanna, curator of Allerton Garden history as well as the library, was prohibited from researching anything to do with Robert and John Allerton.

At long last, the board of trustees revolted at all the turmoil and ineptitude. Chipper Wichman, the likable and visionary director of Limahuli Garden on the north shore and then Kahanu on Maui, was appointed CEO and executive director to lead the whole National Tropical Botanical Garden empire. As Chipper had worked or hiked with many of the Garden staff, he drew on deep friendships and a mutual respect. Now the Garden seems in better shape than ever. A new world-class nursery and greenhouse as first envisioned by Dr. Klein has opened, with state-of-the-art timed irrigation, misting, and temperature controls. For the first time, the Garden can replicate mid-elevation and mountain climates. Chipper rehired many of the fired scientists and increased the Conservation Department to almost three dozen staff members, who cultivate an ever-growing number of endangered plants.

The National Tropical Botanical Garden has assumed its responsibility as the most advanced and largest plant-rescue operation in the Hawaiian Islands.

Chipper persuaded Warren Wagner of the Smithsonian to spend a year at the Garden as a visiting scientist; he also hired Dave Burney, the fervent paleoecologist who had excavated at
Mahaulepu, to oversee ecological restorations. Ten-foot-tall native plants now fill the Mahaulepu cave. Burney's also turned the gorgeous Lawai-Kai at the Allerton estate into a native beach plant restoration.

To my surprise and delight, Chipper asked me to give a lecture at the Garden on Allerton history — the real history of how and why they left Chicago to settle, happily, in this remote valley.

In another of Chipper's miracles, Keith Robinson gave a talk to the Garden's class of student interns. Keith enjoyed it so much that he sat on a stone wall outside for an hour, talking to the admiring students.

On my lecture visit, I finally persuaded Steve Perlman to take me along on a field collecting expedition. We slipped and slid in the cool waters of a small stream tributary in the upper Limahuli Valley, on a mission to collect seeds from the elusive white-flowering
Hibiscus waimeae,
subspecies
hannerae.
Botanists reported this endangered plant extinct until the 1970s when Steve and Chipper discovered fifty plants here and in the neighboring Hanakapiai Valley. Although the hibiscus produces thousands of blooms, it doesn't develop much fruit. Birds, rats, slugs, borers, and weevils gobble the few seed capsules that do appear. It's a tough world out there if you are the last of your species, not very fertile, and your offspring are all consumed by terrors.

Steve collected enough of its seeds last year to propagate seventy seedlings in the nursery. A restoration crew carefully airlifted them by helicopter up the mountain and camped out for three days to transplant them. So far, nearly every single one survives.

As he led the way through the jungle terrain, I noticed that Steve has aged along with the rest of us. After a prolonged recovery from a rare blood cancer that almost killed him, he has whiter hair. If anything, the near-death experience only increased his resolve to botanize more of the Pacific islands before the native flora is wiped out.

After a decade of grimy weed-whacking, chainsawing of big trees, and backbreaking brush clearing, some footholds have been gained in the Limahuli Valley. Restoration efforts are concentrated on a modest twelve acres in the lower valley and another five in the upper — a mere 1.7 percent of the entire onethousand-acre preserve.

Success is measured one plant at a time.

“We shouldn't lose any of these species. But as far as saving the forest, that's a more dismal picture.” Steve says bluntly. Restoring entire forests, he predicts, will take hundreds of years of determined effort.

“The key is to start with something good,” Steve says. “Constructing a forest from scratch is really impossible.” That's why he is so excited about Chipper's plan to fence the Upper Limahuli Valley to keep roaming pigs and goats out. More than 90 percent native, the upper forest is among the most pristine in the state. By fencing it, reintroducing some of the plants that used to grow there, and watching over it, there is a likely chance that the valley can stay that way.

We couldn't find the rare hibiscus that day. But as we walked down through the valley, Steve pointed out some of the treasures that grow in Limahuli. His beloved
Brighamia
dot the landscape by the dozens. Fewer than ten plants of
Schiedea kauaiensis
continue to grow in the wild; here several examples
thrive. Another rare hibiscus,
Hibiscadelphus distans,
had nearly died out in its habitat, the Waimea Canyon. Steve and Chipper had collected some of its seeds in 1990, and so it also lives here, protection against the day when it will completely die out in the wild.

The work he and the others do is Herculean by any standard. Helicoptering fences and men to mountain summits, snaring and hunting animals: It's much slower and more difficult than what is now possible in the laboratory, where scientists can make endless clones from snips of a plant, then use tissue culture to produce thousands of sprouts. Those methods produce plants with a reduced gene pool, but at least it's a way to keep a species alive, barricaded in the botanical garden, our Noah's Ark.

Neither god nor beast but somewhere in between, species
Homo sapiens
has used its higher intelligence to dominate the plant and animal kingdoms. And in doing so, has abused the planet. Perhaps God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for this exploitation — not for the theft of an apple but for their failure to tend the orchard, to replenish the earth's bounty and to protect it. Dr. Klein liked to say that gardens are for growing people, but we must not forget: People are for growing gardens.

S
OME OF MY
most evocative childhood memories come from my mother's backyard garden. Her magenta peonies provided deep shade for our dog, while grape-colored lilacs filled the house with scent. She grew a brown iris—she called it root beer—which I've been looking for ever since. The bleeding hearts, columbine, and virtually all of Mom's garden plantings began as tubers and divisions from Grandma's garden on the other side of Minneapolis.

So when the gardening bug bit me later in life, I realized that I descend from a long line of gardeners. Unconsciously I tried to duplicate the sweet smells and visions of those Minnesota gardens. I also aimed to match the New England perennial borders tended by my mother-in-law, Lucette Liebig, not only a master gardener but a master chef. “Gardens take a lot of time, and a lot of mistakes,” Lucette instructed.

She could have been talking about writing a book. Although this project required many hours with the seat of the pants applied to the seat of the chair, it was not a solitary act. All of the writers I've read, worked with, revered, conversed with, and consulted are with me when I write. Writing a first book required
learning a literary style as well as how to find an agent and publisher. I'm not sure which took longer.

B
Y GOOD FORTUNE
I was referred by writer Peggy Anderson to agent Fredrica Friedman, who took a chance on a first-time author, as did my editor Amy Gash and the rest of the crew at Algonquin Books. I was lucky to have such smart women on this project, who insisted on rewriting and rewriting. Amy helped me find the core of the book and bring it to conclusion. I'm grateful to Michelle Daniel for her high standard of copyediting. Several people read relevant excerpts and provided guidance and corrections, including Janet Klein, Steve Perlman, David Burney, and Warren Wagner. I am grateful for their help, but any mistakes are my own.

Early readers included writer and editor colleagues Jonathan Neuman, Patsy McLaughlin, Gioia Diliberto, Charles Layton, and Mary Walton, all of whom helped me focus. My friend Julia Cass was a constant sounding board who read several drafts. As she was working on her own book during the same time, we encouraged each other during the ups and downs.

I am ever grateful to Dr. William Klein for rescuing me with an out-of-the-blue job offer, and for his dependable friendship. On Kauai the Klein family extended their welcome—particularly Janet and her daughter Melissa, a fellow horse rider. Several friends offered me their houses to stay in on Kauai: Diane Forsyth, Janet Klein, Anne O'Malley, Judy and Doug Bean. Fran and the late Diego McConkey hired me as cat-sitter for several extended stays in their fabulous oceanfront condo that provided time for research and writing. Best job I ever had. Michael and Betsy Claffey lent me their cottage in County
Cork, Ireland, for a six-week writing retreat. My sister, Libby, and her husband, Max, allowed me to use their Milan apartment as a base during my year in eastern Europe. My cousins Bill and Gerry Epmeier in Chicago, as well as the late Ihma Epmeier, my aunt and a formidable pioneer and gardener in her own right, were hosts during my lengthy Chicago research. Mathea Allansmith invited me to stay with her in London, where I began to research Isabella Bird. The folks at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., granted me two fellowships: a Knight International Press Fellowship and the McGee Journalism Fellowship for Southern Africa. Both allowed for some writing time while teaching, as well as breathing space for reflection and redirection.

I kept notes as I experienced the events depicted in this memoir. Memory was also aided by dozens of interviews with those involved, and by others who shared with me recollections of the early days of Allerton Garden. In real life, many things happen all at once; to separate them out into a linear narrative, I found I had to make some minor adjustments in timing of events. All names are real, except, of course, for Cal, as well as the Miami doctor.

Many people dredged up recollections of their stays at the National Tropical Botanical Garden and consented to interviews. The list is long, and I fear I will omit an important name, but I will attempt to list the primary interviews here. Special thanks go to Rick Hanna, collector of Allertonia and a frequent resource. Field collector Steve Perlman and botanist David Lorence were always ready to answer my plant questions. I thank David Penhallow, a prominent Kauai figure and actor who was the stand-in for Lieutenant Cable in the 1957 filming of
South Pacific
.
It was David who told me that a scene representing Bali Hai was filmed in Allerton Garden. He also remembered for me his visits to the Allerton estate and an evening costume party. Former NTBG board member John Plews recalled his early days at the estate, accompanying his mother, Edith Plews, to discuss Red Cross business with Robert Allerton during World War II. Derral Herbst shared with me his recollections of late evening talks with John Gregg Allerton. Hideo Teshima allowed me to garden with him in Allerton Garden a couple of mornings and recalled his time with the Allertons, as did his brother, Joe, his sister, Masaki, and his wife, Nancy. Geoffrey Chauncey at the University of Chicago and Chad Heap, now at George Washington University, shared with me their research and pointed me to Special Collections at the University of Chicago Regenstein Library. Dr. Heap's University of Chicago Ph.D. thesis on the Pansy Craze of the 1930s was a particularly valuable resource. Dick Babcock, editor of
Chicago Magazine,
encouraged me by publishing a longer version of my Chicago chapter. The late John Rapozo, and his wife, Florence, gave information, dinners, and friendship.

For help with history about the Allertons and the National Tropical Botanical Garden, I interviewed David Chang, James Elder, Steve Frowline, Hobey and Nancy Goodale, Woody Hume, Doug and Liz Kinney, the late Charles Lamoreaux, Mateo Lettunich, Scot Medbury, Kerin Lilleeng-Rosenberger, Francis Lono, Geoffrey Rausch, Adam and Lianne Rose, Michael Shea, Scott Sloan, William Theobald, Chipper and Hau'oli Wichman, Keith Woolliams, and Ken Wood. Also helpful were former Allerton estate lawyer Robert Joynt and former Robert Allerton attorney Frank Bixby.