Boyhood Adventure Dec 6, 2005
When I lived in Hawaii, my dad would take us to the beach almost every weekend. Sometimes we'd go to the big white beach with the coral reef just under the suface of the water. Sometimes we went to the black beach with its lava-rock sands and dark water. Sometimes we'd go to "the toilet bowl" with its cliffs rising high on 3 sides and it's far out reef breaking the ways into gentle ripples as the slushed in and out of the bowl with the tide. And, occationally we'd go to the military beach.
This was where I had one of my first solo adventures as a boy. The camp was a converted bunker beach left over from WWII. There were still cinderblock shelters in from the shore, now hidden by brush, where you could have snipped your enemies as they came up the landing. But, other than these the place was very changed. The beach itself was shallow, sometimes only a few feet from the water to the thick bunches of trees that cling to the rocks where sand turns to grass. They formed a hedge, seperating the tide from the road and the cleared field where concrete weekend bungalos nested, hidden in the trees or by tall grasses. As I remember it, the windows had no glass, only shutters.
The beach was short, and was a resting place for washed up seaweed when the tide was low. It ended at a cluster of trees on the right and at the broken remains of a hand built stone wall on the left. One day, I decided I was going to walk that wall, to see where it went.
It was difficult to say where the rocky volcanic shore ended and the wall began to my untrained 8 year old mind, but I could see where it was going. It rose and solidified as it left the beach, rising at the top of an emerging cliff face, a lean protector between the wild sea and the grass and trees of the inland world. I was able to walk upon the wall itself after only a short while, and I was on my way.
I don't remember having any idea of where the wall might lead me, but I was determined to follow it until I came to some special place. I walked carefully atop it for probably 10 minutes, ducking branches and stepping over loose stones, and I grew above the water with it as the torn and jagged cliff face stretched out further and further below me. Eventually, the wall stopped climbing and leveled off, and the trees that had been herded against it trying to get to the ocean were fewer and not so near. The water below me was far and clear, and the reef formations seemed only inches below the surface on a canvas of the lightest blue because of the white sand beneath them. They looked like continents on the map of an alien world.
It was then that I stopped, for what I saw grabbed all of my attention. Beneath the air below me, great shapes swept in from the deep waters on my left. As they came from the darkness in a gentle glide I saw that there were two of them, of similar size and shape, with the larger in front. They flew under the water, and I thoguht I must have slipped into some magic world. Sea Rays! They glided up close to the rocks below me, revealing to me the great depth of the clear water at the cliff face as they slowly swam over the world under the sea. They drew near to me and then they turned back out into the darkness.
They were gone as quickly as they had come, and part of me went with them. Part of me wanted to go with them. Part of me still wants to go with them. I watched for a moment, looking into the far dark water to my right and hoping that they would return, but knowing that they would not. The moment was gone, but it has never left me.
I sighed, older now than I had been when I began my climb up the wall. I looked around me, but there was no one else there, nothing significant to mark the spot. I sighed again, turned back down the wall (I could not hope to see any greater thing that day) and pondered my way back to where my family waited for my return, unaware that I had been to the mountain.
This was where I had one of my first solo adventures as a boy. The camp was a converted bunker beach left over from WWII. There were still cinderblock shelters in from the shore, now hidden by brush, where you could have snipped your enemies as they came up the landing. But, other than these the place was very changed. The beach itself was shallow, sometimes only a few feet from the water to the thick bunches of trees that cling to the rocks where sand turns to grass. They formed a hedge, seperating the tide from the road and the cleared field where concrete weekend bungalos nested, hidden in the trees or by tall grasses. As I remember it, the windows had no glass, only shutters.
The beach was short, and was a resting place for washed up seaweed when the tide was low. It ended at a cluster of trees on the right and at the broken remains of a hand built stone wall on the left. One day, I decided I was going to walk that wall, to see where it went.
It was difficult to say where the rocky volcanic shore ended and the wall began to my untrained 8 year old mind, but I could see where it was going. It rose and solidified as it left the beach, rising at the top of an emerging cliff face, a lean protector between the wild sea and the grass and trees of the inland world. I was able to walk upon the wall itself after only a short while, and I was on my way.
I don't remember having any idea of where the wall might lead me, but I was determined to follow it until I came to some special place. I walked carefully atop it for probably 10 minutes, ducking branches and stepping over loose stones, and I grew above the water with it as the torn and jagged cliff face stretched out further and further below me. Eventually, the wall stopped climbing and leveled off, and the trees that had been herded against it trying to get to the ocean were fewer and not so near. The water below me was far and clear, and the reef formations seemed only inches below the surface on a canvas of the lightest blue because of the white sand beneath them. They looked like continents on the map of an alien world.
It was then that I stopped, for what I saw grabbed all of my attention. Beneath the air below me, great shapes swept in from the deep waters on my left. As they came from the darkness in a gentle glide I saw that there were two of them, of similar size and shape, with the larger in front. They flew under the water, and I thoguht I must have slipped into some magic world. Sea Rays! They glided up close to the rocks below me, revealing to me the great depth of the clear water at the cliff face as they slowly swam over the world under the sea. They drew near to me and then they turned back out into the darkness.
They were gone as quickly as they had come, and part of me went with them. Part of me wanted to go with them. Part of me still wants to go with them. I watched for a moment, looking into the far dark water to my right and hoping that they would return, but knowing that they would not. The moment was gone, but it has never left me.
I sighed, older now than I had been when I began my climb up the wall. I looked around me, but there was no one else there, nothing significant to mark the spot. I sighed again, turned back down the wall (I could not hope to see any greater thing that day) and pondered my way back to where my family waited for my return, unaware that I had been to the mountain.
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