FROM MAUI, HAWAII

Visiting Nature's and Man's Art Galleries (and Man's Nature)

Exciting Adventure Off the Beaten Track in Maui

Continued from Part 1... (after the art gallery visit)

And then I was on my way toward Kapalua... off to new great adventures at the northwestern tip of Maui...

Toward Kapalua... 

The first thing I encountered after leaving the gallery was this rooster.  Then I remembered hearing the rooster's call while at the gallery.  "Hm... his internal clock must be off," I was thinking, considering that it was late afternoon. But he strutted proudly and looked pretty wearing all his bright colors.  "Nobody cares about time around here anyway," I figured.  You sing when you feel like singing...

...especially when there are hens around. J

Nor was the rooster the only sign of domestic life.  After the horses that I had seen earlier, I cam across this herd of cows.  And they weren't even enjoying the beautiful view of Kahakuloa Head and the bay beyond.

A little further down, I came across this gorgeous scene of lush bush and pastures meeting the sky and the sea.

A hand-made road sign in the nearby town made no bones about who the top banana was when it came to making banana bread.  I resisted the temptation, having succumbed to a soft pretzel back at the Wailuku mall.

On the other side of the little town, lay this idyllic scene... a little church facing the ocean and the big rock.

The view got even better the higher I got...

...and higher yet.

And then in the other direction, looking now toward the west, I could see in the distance the northern tip of the island of Molokai.  I recognized it because I used to stay at Kapalua with my daughters in the 1980s, and our then condo faced the same scenery.

And then I saw some a few more domestic animals (again, horses and cows) grazing by the sea.  "Tough life," i thought, grinning.

Well, not for all of them... a few wayward cows did make it onto the road, too.  But they knew better than to linger on it... -)

And now, here is the "frontal view" of Molokai from the northwestern tip of Maui. The dramatic clouds above it make it seem as if the island is on fire.

The image of burning islands was repeated later on in this picture, with the island of Oahu visible in the distance in the center of the picture.

And again on the southern shore of Maui, from where it looked as if Lanai was also on fire.  

As for the next view pictures, they need no narration...

Moments later, however, I was back in the rain forest...

... this time on the western side of Maui.

And the back to the sunshine and the ocean again.

Suddenly, I was at Kapalua, probably the most beautiful resort on the island.  And at that, on the first day of a major PGA event - the Mercedes golf tournament.

From wilderness to civilization in less than half an hour.  That's Maui.

But nature's art gallery owner was not done yet.  On my way from Kapalua toward Lahaina, I came across the beautiful rainbow.  

I followed it up the hill, right up to the West Maui airport.

And then on to the runway, where multiple rainbows had formed.  What a beautiful miracle of nature, I thought.  I felt so lucky to have witnessed it all, and unwittingly at that.

On my way through Lahaina, I snapped this shot, a reminder of an era long past, when sugar cane industry dominated the economy here.  That car is all that's now left of the railroad.

And then just as I thought there was no more, and that my mind could not take in any more visual stimulation, nature put on another show... the grand finale to a wonderful day.

The sunset over Lanai...

...lit up the Haleakala Volcano as if it had reactivated it.

By the time I came home, all was calm on the western horizon.  After taking this shot from my balcony, I could finally turn on the lights inside my condo and go to work in producing this photo essay, so you could also part-take in this amazing experience.  Aloha from Maui!

Epilogue (added Jan 3)

"How was your day?" a pretty young blonde asked me this evening, after she and her male friend had joined me in the Jacuzzi.  Both looked to be in their late 20s, early 30s.  As I had been "writing" the above story at the time, sitting alone in the spa, her question was very timely.

"It was great," I said.  "Just great.  The best day I've had here so far in Hawaii.  I expected nothing at the outset, and was overwhelmed at the end.  I even bought a lovely painting at a gallery in the middle of nowhere."

Guess she didn't expect a genuine answer to her small talk question.  "It was good," would have sufficed as a reply.  She looked slightly startled.  It's funny how people can get taken aback when they see and feel real emotion.  We tend to wear protective gear all the time, engaging in perfunctory exchanges with other people, especially the strangers, instead of meaningful interactions.  So we rarely get to know one another.  One of the things I had (subconsciously, until now) resolved to do in my "new life" is to try to be genuine again.  The mother of my children used to call me (endearingly) "Mr. Blunt."

"And how was your day?" I tried to get the conversation back to the small talk level.  Sometimes, you had to thaw people out at first before you can be blunt with them.

"Oh, it's okay now.  But we've had a 12-hour flight."

"A 12-hour flight?  Where did you come from?"

"Calgary.  But we had to fly to Phoenix first."

"Phoenix?  That's where I am from."

And that was it.  The protective barrier had melted away like an icicle in a spa. Make it the spa, in this case. J From that point on, the three of us had a wonderful conversation for almost an hour.  It ended when I finally got out of the Jacuzzi for fear of turning into a prune. J By then, we were "old friends."

She had been to Maui many times before, but this was his first trip.  "I have so many wonderful memories from here, so I am hoping we can make some new ones together," she said.

That told me immediately who was driving the boat in that relationship.  When the conversation shifted to day trips around the islands, they both basically confirmed it.  

I told them, for example, about my Lanai "Whale of a Trip" experience.  When I finished the part about the males fighting each other only to have the female tell the winner, "I just want to cuddle," the young man nodded and smiled. "Aha... where have I heard that before?" he said.

His fiancé smiled, too.  "I know," she said meekly, without elaboration.  She didn't have to.

Yes, fiancé, not a wife or a girlfriend.  In the meantime, she had told me that they were getting married this Thursday, right here on the island.

"At first, we were planning to get married at the Mayan ruins in Mexico," she said.  "But our trip was canceled, and so were our wedding plans."

"Weather-related?" I guessed.

"Yes.  Air Canada just told us they could not fly there."

I remembered something about a hurricane in Mexico in late November, so mine wasn't totally a wild guess.  "That's too bad," I said.

"Not at all," she replied.  "Then I started making some calls around here, and was able to get us a condo in Kihei for early in January.  That was my first choice anyway.  So I guess we were meant to get married here in Maui."

"That's wonderful," I said.  "Congratulations!"

We sat silently for a while.  The conversation then meandered all over... their home in Calgary, my former place in Australia, congestion in big cities.

"It's the same thing with the elks," the young man suddenly said.

"Excuse me?" I didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Your story about the whales.  The elks do the same thing.  My father filmed the elks in southern Saskatchewan.  The male elks also fight each other over females."

My whale tale had evidently left a lasting impression on the young man.  But his elk story also evoked long lost memories from my childhood. 

"Do the male elks cry out loudly when they fight?"

The young man nodded affirmatively.  "How did you know?"

I told them that my father was a forestry engineer.  And when I was quite young, maybe five or six, he used to take me with him to listen to the deer in mating season.  "The noise was incredible," I said.

"Well, they want the female to notice them," the young woman opined wearing a seductive smile.

"You would know," I thought but did not say anything.  There are limits to how much bluntness even friends can take, especially new friends.  "I am sure they do," I said instead. 

I also thought of my love struck rooster-friend this afternoon, who was compelled to croon his tune in mid-afternoon (just realized I was thinking in rhyme).  He also wanted to get the hens' attention.

Whales, elks, roosters... sea, land, bird creatures - all exhibiting the same traits.  And the feminists think they can undo in a few decades what has taken nature thousands of years to create? (see "When Genders Collide...").  Good luck!  

The following is an excerpt from a scientific essay on sexual selection that they can chew on.  It was written by Dr. M. Tevfik Dorak, B.A. (Hons), M.D., Ph.D., a professor at the University of Newcastle Medical School (Great Britain).  Some feminists may even choke on it, especially on the harem idea: J

Competition among males to obtain mates caused the evolution of intrasexual and intersexual selection... In some mating systems male aggression and female choice for male characters are both involved (post-copulatory counterparts of these mechanisms are sperm competition and cryptic female choice, see below). 

Elephant seals are polygamous; pregnant females arrive on the breeding ground and gather together, giving birth in September; within three weeks they are ready for mating again. In October, a single male, which can be three times larger than the female, will claim a harem of as many as a hundred females, and will fight any other male that approaches his territory, proclaiming his ownership with a loud cry. Only fully mature males have the size and strength to keep such a harem. When a male approaches a female, the female cries and starts a fight among males to be copulated by the strongest of them (Le Boeuf BJ, 1972; Cox & Le Boeuf, Am Nat 1977;111(978):317-35). 

This is an example of sexual selection enticed by the females. A female elephant uses the same tactic to make sure she is mating with the strongest male in the group. Wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) exhibit explosive, synchronous breeding on a spring night. They gather in thousands at ponds where males compete intensively for females and even attempt to dislodge the amplexing male. Females also show choosiness by physically dislodging weakly amplexing males from their backs, therefore showing their preference for larger males. 

Red deer is another polygamous species in which a few dominant males mate with most of the females. It has to be noted that the harem masters among elephant seals and red deer have very much shorter reproductive lifespans than the females they defend. In elks, during rutting, the larger males are preferred by females through the correlation between the body size and pitch of the voice (the larger the body, the lower the pitch).

To there you have it... I am letting the science have the last word on  "When Genders Collide...".

End of Part 2 - CLICK HERE to go back to Part 1

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