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It's the Journey: 
Surviving -- No -- Thriving On the Road to Hana
by Sheri McGregor

In Maui, a friend and I re-learned the lesson of this Roy Goodman quote:    

             "Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination."   

Lured by ads that talked about “surviving” the Road to Hana and the tempting possibility of absorbing some writer’s muse from the great beyond (we’d heard that Hemingway was buried there), we set out on the journey with much excitement.

Wanting to savor our last full day on the island, we stopped in the town of Paia. We parked in a street-side space in this old beach town that reminded me of ones back home. Along the sidewalk, we meandered past tattoo parlors and shop windows where Hawaiian-print shirts were displayed among colorful flower leis. And against the drab background of strung-up fishing nets, bright sundresses hung, caught like colorful reef inhabitants.

After lunch, we stopped in at an antique shop and browsed the cluttered shelves. Our eyes feasted on old paintings and ivory carvings, teapots and banners, dolls and coral jewelry, lithographs, movie memorabilia and wooden tikis. Each item languishing in this tiny shop held a history only guessed at by browsers. Each awaited an eager buyer who would prize the obscure.  

We questioned the owner, an older woman whose leathery skin told the story of a sun-loving youth, about her accent. She told us she’d hailed from Texas some thirty years earlier, and had raised her children here. She described her grandchildren, her own life history depicting possible tales for those that lurked behind the goods in her store. She shared tidbits about the town, the locals, and the eclectic mix of pieces collecting dust on her shelves. Among my many Maui memories, this store and the woman whose antiquity matched what she sells, is a favorite.

Ready to see how much of the road we could “survive.” My friend got behind the wheel of our little rental car with the dents and scratches, and we headed out. The smooth, dark-paved road wound past rocky beaches and an inlet where windsurfers played. Their colorful sails dotted the gray-day sea like the dorsal fins of circus sharks. The road narrowed some. The houses alongside became sparse, dotting thicker vegetation until soon there were no homes, only a tiny, corkscrewed road, like dark soutache trim on a lush green fabric.  

The road narrowed further, switchback turns tightening my grip on the handhold. On one side, my eyes devoured gently cascading water that dripped over a filter of moss-covered rock. On the other side, yellow flowers lined the sheer drop-off. The cliff swept straight down into a breaking sea of brilliant turquoise. 

Soon, the road narrowed even more, occluded by encroaching vegetation and slender ledges. With waterfalls and lush scenery vying for attention, staying in the appropriate lane became a challenge. In some spots, the paved artery required us to wait while oncoming traffic passed, a single auto squeezing through at a time. Then we’d inch forward, rocks along the roadside sometimes tumbling down the cliff.

Bridges suspended over crashing waterfalls propelled drivers to pull off to the side, sometimes blocking traffic from behind. Snapshot seekers leaned over the rails, gawking through camera lenses to preserve the scene. Tall trees rose heavenward, stretching toward the clouds from narrow gulches and from between rock crevices, their brilliant red, waxy leaved flowers perched like tropical birds among the green. In some spots, bamboo grew so thick it looked like 3D wallpaper lining the narrow pavement.

At the halfway point--hailed by signs congratulating roadsters for surviving this much of the trip--we stopped at a treat shack a lady had constructed in her front yard. We ate caramel corn and licked at shaved ice drizzled with sweet flavored syrup. As I listened to the shack lady on the phone to her kids, a small slice of my home life wiggled into focus. “Your father is grouchy,” she told her children. “You’d better do your chores.” I couldn’t wait to get home to my family, but for one last day, I savored my freedom.

Back in the car, we continued the Hana journey, wondering what awaited us around the next bend of the road. There were fruit shacks and floral-covered cliffs, air so fresh that lichen covered every bare rock. Root-strewn paths led deep into jungle terrain where Tarzan vines hung from every ancient tree.  There were also Monster trucks that nearly ran us off the road, squeezing past on their hasty descent as we made our way upward to Hana. We sometimes stopped, fearing for our lives near road edges that dropped into a tropical abyss that might swallow us whole, leave behind not even a trace. By the time we arrived in Hana and got out to stretch on shaky limbs, we understood why they said, “survived” the journey. And we’d done it, survived the road to Hana. Perhaps our little rental car with the dents and scratches had traveled this journey before. . . .

The town itself featured old neighborhoods constructed above the sea. Little stilted cabins lined up in rows, their green clapboard sides bright in the late day drizzle reminiscent of eras gone by. At Hana Bay, the people proved the saying “big is beautiful.” Here were the real Hawaiians, the dark-skinned people with the pearly-white smiles you see in travel guides. Until then, I’d seen mostly white-skinned beach bums, migrants from the mainland who’d been lured here by the sun and surf. Or newlyweds and wealthy tourists at the resort--some deeply tanned and weighted with gold, their expressions complacent to their exquisite surroundings.

We gazed at the bay, our nerves lulled by the rippling water and salty breeze. Rested, we exchanged a few banal words with a fisherman whose mouth hid somewhere beneath a waist-length beard of gray, then headed out of this peaceful inlet. We stopped some people on a golf cart and asked them how to find Hemingway’s grave.

“Hemingway?” the young girl asked, turning to her partner whose eyes began to twinkle as if the two shared a private joke. “Hemingway isn’t buried here.”

“Well, there’s some famous writer here.” My friend cut her off.

“No.” The woman looked thoughtful. “Lindbergh maybe? Lindbergh is buried here.”

We thanked them and pulled away, laughing at the natives’ expressions. A couple of dumb tourists who drove all the way to Hana for a non-existent grave, they must be thinking.

“Author, aviator,” said my good-natured friend, gesturing with her hands as if they were weighted scales.

The rental car needed gas, and we pumped it as the sun was dipping its red-gold flame over the mountain. “You should have come to Hana earlier in the day,” warned the attendant inside. “You’d better turn around and leave right now.”  Back on the road, we realized why she’d been so adamant. The shadows of early evening fell like velvet tricksters over the car hood and dappled the road with confusion. And there were no streetlights on this narrow descent.

So we hadn’t seen Hemingway’s grave, we thought later, as we pulled back into the resort. Our minds were full of the sights of the jungle, our senses brimming with the gentle calls of unseen birds, the fragrant bouquet of wildflowers that papered the hills (one tucked neatly into my wallet).

The “destination” we’d originally sought hadn’t even existed there in Hana, but the journey would soon become the happiest of travel memories--tucked away like the flower for future journeys down a reminiscent lane.

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