Musings: Rise

It’s the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive, and I am.

Had a hard time choosing between mauka and makai this morning, but chose mauka, walking along the trail facing Waialeale, gloriously clear, and all the other mountains, too.

The only sounds were bird songs, buzzing bumblebees and flies, Koko’s small feet thundering up and down the trail, the gurgling of a stream in the valley below.

At the top of the hill I watched the sun, a full red sphere, rise from a placid blue sea. For a moment I wanted to be there, too, in the water, on the beach, but in a sense I was, and I had no regrets about my choice to be in the mountains.

After all, I’d been to the beach just 13 hours before, in late afternoon, luxuriating in its salty embrace, collecting noni from the hillside for medicinal use, and I’d likely be back before this day was through.

In the back of my mind, though, was a small knot of dread at the thought of today’s meeting with the Legislature, which I will, of course, attend, although I’d prefer to spend those hours in so many different ways and have grown weary of my decades-long struggle to protect our Mother, to convince people to care.

But as I walked back home, into the sun, through a corridor of dew drenched fern, the Sleeping Giant before me, I heard the words of a song come into my mind: “Rise, my people rise,” and I knew I had no choice but to go on.

Imua! Forward. Always forward.