Musing

[written & published at Kamaole Sands, Kihei, Maui]

Maui weather today: strong winds and high surf overnight and early this morning; mostly sunny with isolated showers, breezy, 76-81F, chance of rain 20%; tonight at 10PM Maui time (1AM Calgary time) I fly ‘home’ to Calgary via Vancouver

To Wanda at Wildflowers: many thanks, you’ve been doing a great job for me

beach walkers on any given day are probably 5% folks going home that day - just savoring the experience one last time, leaving a last set of footprints in the sand; today I think the other 95% stayed inside; wind and surf are pummeling other shores and other islands more than this one, but this is sufficiently dramatic for me to get the point of it all; this morning’s photo (scroll down) shows my 'regular' beach on the homeward leg, shot just after a wave receded; there is usually about 120-150 ft. of sand exposed then ... so you can imagine how high the water was as I was walking southbound at 5:45AM in the dark . . yikes! . . instead of having occasional waves wash my ankles, every second one was between knees and waist; awesome sight by starlight

BB, KN and others can take heart – this beach is not gone, just reshaped and I am sure the surf will re-deposit what it has withdrawn; palm fronds and associated debris littered paths, hotel staff need not pull their little harrows across the beach for a while as ‘beach front’ property takes on new dimensions (pretty good pun eh!)

who am I?

what do I think?

what do I feel?

what do I want?

what is on my mind?

the answers are here - among the footprints, laid down over and over, washed away only to be replaced by new ones, better ones, fresher ones, deeper ones – then washed away again, then new ones laid down in their place – answers are not in concrete so if you don’t like the ones you get, pour water on them and try again and again until you get it just right

we all ask these questions – frequency varies, depth of answers and/or avoidance of answers varies, our audience varies

when we answer these questions, to someone who asks, or just ‘to the air’ when someone just happens to be in the room, I think most people – me too – tend to posture our answers, be less fulsome in what we say, often being superficial in our honesty so that we obscure the scary stuff that is down deep – not dishonest, just not laid-bare the way we need to if we are going to accomplish something meaningful

I find I can do that alone on a beach, staring at a wave, waving at a cloud going by; when I have solitude I am solitary but not alone; we are together with ourselves . . just the two of us with no one else watching, no one listening in

if you cannot get some time to be ‘alone with myself’, then I recommend a solitary vacation somewhere; it could be Maui or post-hole Sask, it could be on a beach, on a mountainside or in the middle of a crowd somewhere – but it will be away somewhere

just you, you and yourself, just the two of you

this place, Maui, is one of those places where you can get down to the very root of everything – it is safe, you are among friends – that is a warm place to be where great things can happen, where lessons can be learned, where problems can be solved or dissolved

this is a place where figuring out what matters most, who matters most and where you need to be is far more valuable than sporting a tan or knowing some local lore

it is not so much about reaching out to touch the stars as it is them reaching down to touch you; ancients here had a culture driven by climate and plentiful provisions of land and sea – today much has changed but the magic of the past is here if you let it waft over you

if you don’t have your priorities in life sorted when you get here, you surely will when you leave; I want to go home to squeeze my squeeze, catch up with Gusta to see how her vacation has been, curl up in my own bed and catch a few winks

I’ve left footprints in the sand . . they will wash away so I need to come back to leave some more

Aloha

Mark Kolke
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