After making great time along the Pololu Valley Trail for the first several hours, and smoothly traversing the first few of the six main valleys I would have to cross to ultimately arrive at Waipio, it started to become increasingly clear that the journey was going to be a bit more difficult than originally imagined. For starters, food was not as readily available as I had been told. Yes, there were strawberry guavas all along the route, and yet that was the only edible fruit I ever found. Far more problematic was water – namely, there wasn’t any. Yes, I could hear rushing water nearby at almost every turn, and yet it was almost invariably at the bottom of some steep chasm or ravine that was impossible to access. And yet I kept stumbling onward anyway, hazily remembering one stretch of the walk when I was quite obviously overheating and paused for several minutes to turn my head to the heavens and literally drink the falling rain. And then to top it all off, I got lost (somewhere near the red dot on the accompanying image). I don’t know exactly where or how it happened. I simply remember wandering along on a ridge trail and looking up to realize that there were dozens of similarly-sized trails branching off in all directions. It turns out that I had wandered off onto a pig run at some point and completely lost the main trail. “No problem”, I thought at first, seeing as how I could easily see the ocean and knew in which general direction I needed to head in order to ultimately reach Waipio Valley. And so at that point I simply began forging through the brush in a straight line running parallel with the coast. What arrogance! – What naiveté! – What ignorance! For it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was no normal wilderness; that the brush was thickly matted and several feet thick, and that the “straight way” was regularly blocked by sharp cliffs falling into rugged ravines. After zig-zagging in futility for several more hours (looking not at all like Indian Jones while doing so), it began to get dark and I resigned myself to my fate as a completely lost wanderer. I slept the night fitfully on a slippery slope propped against a tree trunk, and woke the next morning determined to find my way out. Again, futility set in as I couldn’t find the trail, and I sank in resignation to my knees. I wasn’t really sad or afraid; more amused at the hubris I had displayed and the appropriate level of danger in which the same it had placed me. And then I remember praying – not to “God” so much as to my surroundings; or maybe the Universe in general. I remember telling whatever was listening that I would not be upset if I died there in that wilderness – that my prideful foolishness would indeed have merited such an outcome, and I remember telling whatever might have been listening that I was indeed ready to fulfill whatever Mission I could for the Highest Good – that I was indeed still ready & fully willing to serve humanity (and indeed the entire planet) in whatever way(s) I could most effectively do so. And then I remember a “voice” (more a feeling, actually) “whisper” to me, telling me that I already knew what it was that I needed to Do with my life – and that I was to stop looking for the same and to start Living it instead. And that was when I looked up and saw a blue ribbon tied to a tree about a hundred yards in the distance. Puzzled (and in all likelihood somewhat delirious from fatigue, lack of water, lack of sleep, and a possible overdose on strawberry guavas), I made my way to the ribbon and gazed around again – and lo and behold, there was another blue marker seen a similar distance away. It turned out that indigenous hunters used such ribbons to keep from getting lost themselves, and so I simply walked from ribbon to ribbon until they led me back to the main trail …

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way … So whatever you can do, or dream you can fulfill, begin it now. For such boldness ever has genius, power, and magic in it.” ~ via William Murray & Goethe

Filed under: My Life in Pictures by Scaughdt