Click on the images to see them full size.

While driving over to the west side of the island today, I was pondering on how the description "lush green vegetation" doesn't really do justice to all the plants that surrounded me. It finally occurred to me what I find striking about the vegetation here. I think it looks vulnerable. As in, it looks so luscious that the slightest reduction in water would probably kill it. Just like those luscious plants you can buy at the florist, but that die when subjected to our dry houses. But of course on this island, there is usually all the water that a plant can handle. Maybe even more: the highest point on the island averages 460 inches of rain every year (that's right...more than an inch a day). That much rain keeps the soils so saturated that there isn't any air in the soil and so plants can't survive. There are almost no plants growing in the wettest place on the planet! But on most of this island, there is enough water that plants don't really need to do much conserving of water and so they try to out-compete each other for sunlight instead: dark green leaves, big leaves, tall trunks. Having lived in Arizona and Kansas, I found it fascinating how well plants adapted to having less water than they would like to have. Now I find it just as fascinating to see whole mountains covered in plants that don't need to worry very much about where today's drink of water is going to come from. Whatever...it is beautiful no matter what the reason!

Shortly after coming to that conclusion about the plants looking vulnerable, I drove into the extreme western portion of the island which is in the midst of a drought right now! Sure enough, there's a lot of dead plants and a big portion of the parks near Waimea Canyon are closed because of extreme fire hazard. So maybe the plants really are vulnerable.

	Waimea Canyon is called the "Grand Canyon of Hawaii" and with good reason. It's 10 miles long, a mile wide and 3,500 feet deep. It looks a lot like the canyons in Utah, Montana and Wyoming: rocky, steep-walled and cut out by water erosion. It was the first time I had seen a piece of this Island that I didn't find unique. But then I got to the top of the canyon and looked westward to the ocean.
Now I was at the top of one these lush green valleys, looking down a 4,000 foot drop to the blue water of the Pacific. The only way to get to the beach down there is by boat. The only way into the middle of the valley is by helicopter--no roads, not even foot trails. There is no evidence of human influence in the whole canyon.
	From one of the overlooks on the way back out of the canyon, I could see westward to one of the lesser Hawaiian Islands (there are hundreds). This is the island of Niihau. The entire island is owned by one family. I found it sad that the 200+ people living on this island comprise the largest remaining population of native Hawaiians. The reason I took the picture was to show again how these islands are big enough to cause clouds to form over the top of them.
The last event of the day was to visit the "Spouting Horn" near Popui on the southernmost tip of the island. This part of the beach has a lot of old lava tubes left over from when the volcanoes were creating this island. A lava tube is created by a lava flow crusting over and solidifying on top while molten lava continues to flow underneath the crust. If conditions are just right, when the lava quits flowing out of the eruption, it flows out from under the crust leaving an empty tube. At the Spouting Horn, there are several of these tubes which are now at the water line. So when a wave comes in, the water goes in the bottom of the tube and sprays out the top. The Spouting Horn has two openings at the top. Water comes out of one opening, and air is forced out the other opening. The air opening makes a sound when the air rushes out--hence the "horn" name. It was quite fun to guess which waves would make the highest spout. I didn't get it figured out before it got dark.

Tomorrow I will be snorkeling on the north shore. I won't be able to take my camera underwater, so you'll just have to take my word for it!

Alan Nelson