Haleiwa

January 22, 2024

The road from Honolulu to Haleiwa (Ha-le-EEVAH—pronounce all the vowels) on Oahu’s north shore is a short stretch of interstate, then two-lanes winding and straightaway, about 35 miles total. The route passes through Wahiawa, a tiny traffic-clogged burg like lots of others anywhere, then skirts Wheeler Army Airfield. The rest is lush, spectacular Hawaii, distant mountains ghostly in mist. Haleiwa shows up in under an hour.

The north shore, site of the famed “Banzai Pipeline,” is where the big waves crash. A quarter-mile off the steep Haleiwa beach young guys, just dots against the deep blue, rode the swells until they chose one, then paddled their boards into the rising slope of tons of water and stood and leaned into the thundering curl. We held our breath as they maneuvered the boards like virtuosos in a Sixties surfer movie. They slipped under the churning surf, disappeared as the wave buried them, then surfaced and climbed aboard again.

We didn’t get to this place on our own, a friend, Abigail, loaned us her car and said see what you can. She left us with some hints, get the full immersion in the place, feel the environment, appreciate it. Haleiwa is a spot on the road, cute in a touristy way, just off the Kamehameha Highway. The road then continues north along a narrow rocky beach where the giant waves break in gorgeous blue-green, tourists stop to snap pictures.

A few miles further on is Pupukea, where a few retirees have found their leafy Shangri-las along the water, defying or ignoring the “tsunami evacuation route” signs. Low-slung homes are partly visible through thick landscaping here and there up to Kawela Bay on the northernmost tip of the island. The Kamehameha road peters out and near-empty country begins. Within is the Pupukea Forest Preserve, which occupies most of the center of the island. Hawaii may seem like endless beach, but tropical forest dominates.

We got coffee and puttered through the tourist shops and looked at the pretty flowery dresses and shirts, the polished, probably fake Polynesian carvings, the earrings and necklaces mostly made in Southeast Asia. The shops and cafes were packed with folks just like us, wearing Ohio State and New York Yankees sweatshirts and teeshirts and their best flipflops. They mostly passed through indifferently, having seen it all before. Even the clerks looked Midwestern.

The beach made all the difference, it’s the draw in this remote place as it is all over Hawaii, the catalyst for the tourism. The sandy strips bracketing the island beckon at the mystery of the Pacific emptiness that draws the outsiders. It’s 4,600-something miles from Waikiki to our home town over the desolate ocean, but only (only?) 3,800 to Tokyo.

From Haleiwa the gorgeous aquamarine of the surf melds with the dark blue beyond the wave zone. The sparkling-clear colors enchant locals and visitors alike. The hypnotic crash of the breakers, fearsome riptides, and ferocious undercurrents warn of something strange that we don’t quite grasp. It suggests some fearful meaning, some elusive truth, that has to do with the vast depths and distances, to everywhere and nowhere, that haunted the American generals and admirals during the Pacific War, yet also finally helped defeat the enemy.

We get something of this in the Kon-Tiki voyage from Peru to the Polynesian island of Tuamoto in 1947. The Kon-Tiki expedition, led by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, tried to show that Polynesian peoples were related to Latin Americans who, Heyerdahl believed, sailed across the Pacific in balsa rafts around 500 A.D. Much of his research was rejected by anthropologists, who argue the South Seas peoples descended from Asian migrants.

 The Kon-Tiki story, told by Heyerdahl as The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas was a best-seller for a few years, then faded. Heyerdahl turned to other adventures, like the secrets of Easter Island. But the strange idea persisted, some scientists took him seriously.

Kon-Tiki is part scientific experiment and part mystery, maybe mystery is the larger part. Debate continues over where did the South Seas islanders come from; some of their vocabulary is the same or similar to that of Peruvians. The complicated confluence of theories underlines the questions: of the Pacific and the huge distances that isolated Hawaii and Hawaiians for centuries.

We drove north from Haleiwa along the Kamehameha road through the thickening jungle-forest accented by a few homesteads, occasionally a small pasture on the landward side. We never did make it to Kewala Bay. It became another item on a long list.

We explored Haleiwa for a while then joined the tourist gridlock back to Honolulu, past the wild jungle grass straining in the sea winds, below dark thunderheads gathering above the deep-green peaks to the south. The countryside fell away behind us. We departed a wild outpost, a remote dreamworld that calls visitors back, someday, when, if, somehow.

We slogged back into the suburban sprawl that envelopes Honolulu, then turned onto the H1 and H2 interstates, clogged with the evening rush hour. Soon we inched past the colorless jumble of no-zoning industrial sites, highrise office and condo towers, and two- and three-level apartment-type housing. It’s a city, after all, of 350,000 souls.

Come back anytime, Abigail said. We know the Kamehameha road leads into the foreignness of the place, through the vernal, vine-tangled jungle, past the rocky trails, the sunlight filtered through overhead canopy, offering intense, visceral beauty. The Hawaii of golf, sunbathing, pickleball, and luaus is another, far-distant planet.     

All those thousands of miles east, frigid temperatures and snow seized the country, schools and businesses closed from the midsection to the Atlantic, pipes froze and burst. The Iowa Republican caucus went off as scheduled. The country lunged closer to its bizarre future. Some Americans, those with uncomplicated lives, talk about emigrating.

We can promise ourselves to return to drive to the end of the Kamehameha, like all the others who wonder about this remote corner of paradise, to watch the young guys surf and listen to the breakers roll in. For now this place is a fleeting, beautiful moment existing on the fringes of our world.