Musings: Transformations

After a night of much welcome rain, dawn arrived as a band of bold crimson sandwiched in between layers of gray. It didn’t feel like a day for rushing, so I let Koko sniff to her heart’s delight as we made our way down the road, which was devoid of cars, save one, but not of bird song and flower fragrance, which were present in abundance.

The sky grew bright and turned everything gold: the light streaming through the trees, the raindrops hanging from leaves, the spider webs strung between branches, the distant cinder cones and Kalepa ridge, which I recalled seeing from the top of the mountain trail the other day.

I was standing amid ohia lehua, with their vibrant red blossoms, one of which I picked because I was really hoping for rain, which made me think that perhaps that legend is tied to the understanding that the forces of nature do, indeed, respond to our acknowledgement and appreciation, which brought to mind the urgings of Kehau Kekua to renew our recognition of nature as a living being, as Native Hawaiians believed, and so do I.

As if in response to these thoughts, I saw a rainbow alight upon the northern end of Kalepa and stay there, where it proceeded to stain the land with all the hues it possessed — aqua, turquoise, deep blue, purple, yellow, among them — until the mountain was transformed into a palette of vibrant color.

I’ve had a several people approach me over the last week and express their concern about the transformation of Kauai People into MidWeek Kauai. The new paper, they have correctly discerned, contains a lot less information about Kauai than the old one, and they’re wondering who is going to print the stories about this island that just aren’t being told.

Their comments are invariably accompanied by story ideas, and they aren’t all investigative pieces or exposes, either, but articles about the people who live here who are trying to do things differently.

And then they’ve asked me: Can’t you start/do something?

Which got me thinking that yes, I could, although time and money are always factors to be considered, but I’m already spending time on this blog, which doesn’t pay me any money, and I’ve been feeling like I want to do something different with Kauai Eclectic, anyway,, so maybe I could shift some of that energy into doing more stories, which I could publish here and then who knows where it might go.

What do you think?