A few days ago it started raining, and it hasn’t really stopped since. That’s why I’m glad that before that hit, we took our chance and headed north with no real idea of where we were going. It had been a couple months since we went towards the North Shore, a few weeks since we had done a good hike. Sometimes we just know that we need to do something else, find something we haven’t found before. Something new.
WE wanted something new, but the boys were perfectly happy with this manhole cover in the middle of the jungle. Kids are strange.
This feeling, of feeling trapped in the place where you are, is one familiar in our lives lately. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten”, (Mark Twain? Henry Ford? No one knows who actually said it first.) Regardless, it applies, whether in the going crazy being cooped up in the house or in jobs and situations in life.
I assume it’s much the same feeling that this poor water bug has right now.
It means that there comes a time when we have to make a change. I don’t know where that line is for you, but for us it is now. It is after Joe being in a terrible work environment for years now, after my being desperately sick twice without family support, and it is after finding our 256th (I’m only a little bit exaggerating) cockroach on the floor when we came upstairs in the morning. (We’re planning on moving ANYWHERE where there aren’t cockroaches. Greenland? Put us there.)
So that day we left the house and headed north up the Likelike, which threads its way in between the sheer mountains and crashing north shore waves, until we saw a sign for Kahana State Park. We had brought both hiking gear and swim suits, but this seemed like the place for the morning, so we followed a road back and parked.
Hiking is getting a bit easier these days, as the boys are getting better at walking (and Eliot is getting better at insisting that he walk EVERY SINGLE FOOT OF THE WAY). Between them, they probably did 2 miles on their own.
Excitement on the open road.
After we cleared the neighborhood that sits right in front of the park, we found the map of the park. There were paths that were miles long, where they warned us there was no cell phone coverage and rescue would be minimal if you hurt yourself, or got lost. But the other way there was a tiny little .2 mile stretch that looked like it ended on a river dam. Short trails and water? Yes, please. So that’s the way we headed.
A helping rope down a steep hill.
And this day trip, this getting out of the house and heading to the first place that seems right, turned out beautifully. It was a little muddy, but not too bad, and the path was broad enough for all of us at once, and this portion did indeed stop at a dam, and the boys spent a good hour throwing rocks into the rushing water.
So many splashings.
They would have stayed all day long, but we had to draw the line when the mosquito cloud got big enough to see hovering in the air. (“Do you have lots of bug repellant?” One of the men in the neighboring houses had yelled at us when we passed them on the way in. “We’ll be fine!” We yelled back, always the masters of indirect answering and trusting our own thick skins to get us through things. It has almost failed us a couple times, but hasn’t QUITE.)
And if all else fails, at least we have blankies.
Every hike now, every ocean stop, is filled with a tingling bittersweet feeling now. Leaving this place of deep green jungles and this place of comfort in the military is both difficult and scary.
Such green.
We have loved Hawaii with our whole hearts, and with all of its downsides, the military is a sure job, unlimited health care, and a safe and secure lifestyle. It is also a place that increasingly can isolate us from the real world, where the choices are narrower and become more knowable. (Will we move to North Carolina or California? Maybe Virginia? One of those.)
Wherever it is, it probably won’t have mountains like this.
But we’ve decided we need some days when we don’t know what is going to happen; we need to have a more wide-open world again. We’ve forgotten how people live who aren’t in the military, and we’ve started accepting things that are thrown at us without asking any questions. And we’re tired of it.
So we got out of the house Saturday, and we are doing it on a much larger sense in a few months. Sometimes we just know that where we are isn’t working, and give the next thing a chance to work, even if we don’t see a way through right away.
A way through.
So in a few months, we’ll leave the place we know and head out to one we don’t, trusting that the future will be there waiting for us. Because if we can’t trust that, what can we trust?
Comments