I’m in the Pacific Ocean praying for a miracle and chewing raw ginger as my seasickness ebbs and flows with the rocking waves. Our kayak is slowly starting to sink and everything I own is stuffed in a black back pack in -between me and a completely naked woman, my Hero of the day Clara.
I’m only 17 on a mission for the impossible, to hitchhike out of Kalalau valley onto a willing tour guide boat and take a free ride to the other side of the island. My life depends on it.
I’m sick. Too weak to hike the 12 miles of cascading cathedrals to make it out. I started to get naïve and lazy about filtering my water as the month’s past. The tedious work became annoying, so I gave up. I thought Id be fine. Sitting for long whiles to pump multiple times a day felt ridiculous. I started instead, to drink right from the waterfall that fell in high ribbons down to the beach. Then the abdominal pain hit me like a crippling gang of bad decisions. Along, with fatigue and weakness.
I landed on Kauai at 17 alone with nowhere else to go and nothing but magic to find.
I got off the plane and the thin layer of sweat that instantly accumulated on my skin was enough of a bath in Hawaii’s special sauce to propel me further into my whole new unidentified life.
I could be anyone. The rush of that realization hit me like an ocean wave. I was fluid and all of my own creation was suddenly possible.
I hauled my overstuffed backpack onto my thin frame, walked to the main road leaving Lihue airport, stuck out my thumb and in that very moment I changed my name to Loki, and I was free. This was my very first sense of unconditional freedom. It was an indescribable experience it was one of the most memorable moments of my entire life.
I was going North but knew nothing else. The old, dirty, red pick-up truck that first slowed for me was driven by a native who claimed to know everyone who lived on the north shore. I shifted nervously in my seat, as I was hiding the truth that this was actually my new life, and I had no idea where I was going, who I would meet, where I would sleep, or what was next.
I went North as far as the road would go and this final drop off was a tiny campground at Haena state Beach. I set up camp and started to meet people, and with people came story and the magic tales of the Kalalau valley.
I met Gregg a boy I had an immediate crush on as he played guitar by the campfire. He offered to hike with me for my first-time in. I was thrilled.
Within 2 days I had reduced my back pack to as light as possible. I hid my favorite clothes in a black trash bag in the jungle off the road and prepared for the treacherous adventure that was to come.
Gregg hiked in with his guitar and therefore my heart and my gushing for him was smothering and potently palpable. As soon as we made it halfway, Gregg decided to go ahead without me. Now, much lonelier, I continued on.
I made my way in one piece, but only after surviving a fall towards the cliff, in a bad decision of chasing my camera case that had fallen down a crevice. The following day, getting incredibly desperately lost. I did eventually make it all the way in alone, and proud. I rounded the last red walk feeling like my own warrior.
I spent 2 months surviving with little human contact out in the valley. It was hard to adjust, I craved connection and here, there was the least amount I had ever experienced. I sometimes hiked through the valley on trails trying to find where the flute music was coming from, I’d scream “Marco” and hope and pray someone would say “Polo”. No one ever did.
There were no payphones, no way to communicate an emergency, no way in or out except that daunting trail that at best would take me 3 days.
Clara, my hero was also a single young woman who was a survivor. In Kalalau, on the beach and in the Valley, we hardly spoke, not many people did. But, when she heard of my plight of abdominal pain and weakness, over a rare pancake breakfast gathering, she helped me devise the impossible rescue. She was 24, I trusted her.
It was her idea that I would wait until Saturday when more frequently than not a man would arrive on a kayak to Kalalau beach. We would ask to borrow his kayak, if he did come, and we would attempt to make it through the breaks, flag down a tour boat and ta-da I would be rescued. easy right?
That Saturday James the Kayaker did come, and Clara and I bargained with him to borrow the two-person kayak. We packed the ginger, I strapped in my back pack and we prepared to launch through the breaks. It was terrifying. The waves were huge. We nearly flipped it, but I was desperate and paddled as hard as I could. In the end we made it through, back pack still secure safely in-between us.
Clara never put on clothes, literlly not one piece of clothing, nor did she even have a sun hat. My hero was light skinned, and plump with large heavy breasts, and baked in the sun.
We had nothing but the sound of the ocean and time. This is when Clara told me why. Why she came to Kalalau. Why Kalalau saved her and exactly what she was running from.
Her mother died of cancer that year, and she took care of the whole family while she passed. She had to leave once she died. So, she did, leaving her little sister to fend for herself. She was on the verge of a total mental breakdown when she came to Kalalau. She was trying to heal. Trying to be embraced by the huge jungle mother spirit. Trying to escape reality and become found rather than lost. Trying to outrun the pain.
I shared about my new life and my own story but I could not equate the difficulties of being 17 and on my own, to her tragic loss.
The hours passed and our boat began to sag deeper, as my bag accumulated more and more sea water, and after all our stories were told there was nothing left to share. We started to discuss if I’d make it out. We would give up the mission before we sank or lost my backpack completely.
I was scared, everything I had was now very, very, wet, the last 700$ to my name, my birth certificate, and my journal. Everything was in that black salty wet bag. I couldn’t risk it. I knew I had to turn around and give up and crawl out of Kalalau. Clara knew it too. As the sun and our kayak began to sink, we turned around. We started to paddle back.
Then we saw the boat.
I could not believe it. We turned the kayak. I waved my arms, and so did she and somehow the tour boat came close enough for me to explain that I had been drinking the water and was too sick to hike out. they agreed to pick me up, a native man grabbed my hand and lifted me up. Next, another boat hand grabbed my sopping wet baggage out of the kayak, his face shocked at its heavy weight in water.
Clara totally nude, radiant, and real, waved goodbye as all the tourists on the boat gawked at her. She was unashamed and the most beautiful, real, woman I had ever seen. I saw her freedom in reclaiming herself, her whole self.
It was then that I realized that changing my name and dropping my identity was the exact opposite of the healing work that Clara was doing. She was embracing all of her, in all her imperfections and she saved me that way completely raw, exposed and real.
The crew on the boat gave me a sandwich and a can of coke and in that moment the reality of scarcity and wild jungle life collided in a crash of where the trail of magic ended.
I got off the boat on the southern end of the island, found a payphone and called my mom.
She had not heard from me in months, not even a letter could have been sent. She did not know about my near falls off cliffs, my breaking away from men who wanted to rape me, or my rescue from Kalalau.
She couldn’t have known, and I’n that 10 minute conversation I could not tell her. All I could do was tell her I was okay and that I loved her. She still knew me as Tawnya, she would always know me as the name she gave me. I hung up and began the long hitchhike journey it would take to get back to the North shore. Thinking about Clara and reclaiming my true imperfect raw self.