Hawaiian Dream (a story)

So, funny story. OLD funny story.

Something like four years ago:
 

Going to Hawaii was my dream ever since my parents went there for their 10th anniversary. People made such a big deal about them going there that I figured it must be the land of the gods where the streets are paved in gold and ice cream grows on trees. 

We went as a family when I was about fifteen. 

We drove all over the island of Maui in an immaculate rented van. It is a beautiful place and the ocean was nice, but my favorite feature was the dramatic green jagged mountains. It’s everything I imagine when I think of a tropical rainforest paradise. It rains every few minutes, there are rainbows often, the greenery is stunning and it has incredible variety. It was overwhelming and I couldn’t stop gaping at it all. Green is my favorite color. As far as I was concerned it was the land of the gods, coming from Utah where the summers are yellow, the winters are white, and green is the color of pine trees. I didn’t even think it strange when we found that stray cats tend to wander all over the place.

My family has never been athletic or adventurous like me so I was thrilled with the prospect when my mom announced to everyone else’s groans that we were going on a small five minute hike to a waterfall.  We started out alright.  The sun was shining, it was slightly downhill, and things looked wonderful. We crossed a rushing river filled with boulders that made natural stepping stones. Then we came to a place where there seemed to be twenty different paths we could take all fanning out in front of us and none of them looked like the straight and narrow. How could we know which one was right? There were no signs to mark the true path.

We deliberated as a family and chose the most likely one. We called my little sister back over from where she had wandered as we calculated. She came without complaint as we began our trek anew. It seemed to be a peaceful walk through a rainforest of bamboo. Little mini waterfalls ran in several places--probably the runoff of rain from higher on the mountain. It is always raining somewhere in Hawaii. My six year old sister would run to each of them, almost as excited about them as about the real one we were hiking to.

Then the ground began to climb upwards. It became more and more difficult. Mosquitoes ate us mercilessly. The rain that I had guessed was higher on the mountain found us and turned the soft dirt into mud. The minutes stretched into hours and another family council was held. My father and my older brother turned back. I refused. I was filled with determination. We would reach that waterfall. We trudged on.

Then, we crested the mountain. 

Seriously.

We could see for miles out to the ocean and far away, down below, we could hear a waterfall. We dared to hope. We slid down the steep muddy decline feet first as fast and haphazardly as penguins on ice. We were ravenous for the water like we'd been lost for days. I imagined my clothes being ragged in places where tree branches had caught on them. My sister really had split the knee of her jeans. When we stumbled into that oasis of beauty we probably looked good enough for a Hollywood remake of our story.

The water was precious gold to us. We played in it like the Swiss Family Robinson and were immune to the cold. There was no way this was the waterfall we had set out to see, but that made the find even better in a way. We felt so secret and secluded. We didn’t allow ourselves to think of the hike back or the predicament of being lost in the bamboo forest. Then people appeared over one of the ridges of our private sanctuary.

We froze and stared at them like aliens, rather than a sweet old couple, were helping each other clamber over the boulders. There is no way they made the trek that we had. With only a hint of madness in our voices, we asked them how, where they had come from. They happily said it was a rather easy five minute walk. It was the same waterfall. We had just climbed the mountain and come down the other side in one wide sweeping circle. It was barely five hundred feet back to the place where our path had divulged. The boulders had obscured the waterfall, and the sound of the river masked its noise. 

As we walked back we recognized the area that my sister had been playing in during our first family council. She had found the right path and we had called her back from it. The sun was shining and couple of stray cats followed our sodden forms in the five minute hike back to the car where we found my brother and dad waiting for us, locked out and equally sodden because of the rain. We told them the rest of our story and the horrible irony weighed on us in the silence as we scratched our mosquito bites and wiped at the mud, trying to make ourselves clean enough to sit on the beautiful white interior. As the car door closed automatically, I made eye contact with one of the cats. 

Stop mocking me, you.