Like many people, my life on the island of Hawaii involves, figuratively, my wearing many hats...today I am wearing my "Independent Filmmaker" hat and driving from my home in Kona south to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to film the fire-fountaining eruption at Kilauea Volcano.
It was here, in the village of Pahala, that I first lived when I fled the frigid Rocky Mountain winters for a new life in tropical Hawaii a decade ago.
After living 20 years in the high plains, I was packed, ticketed, excited and ready for my move to Hawaii. When I come to Hawaii, I am coming home. I love Hawaii with a tender fierceness that sometimes surprises me with its intensity.
Moving from Wyoming to Hawaii I had expected to experience eagerness to explore my new home, perhaps some home sicknesses, and certainly a bit of culture shock but I was absolutely unprepared for this, what would become one of my most enduring visions of Hawaii.
Friendly, clean, quiet, scenic; Pahala seems a perfect community. Twenty years ago Pahala was a prosperous, bustling center of activity for the Pahala Sugar Company, but with the demise of the sugar industry, Pahala residents have either moved on to other towns seeking employment, or hunkered down to await what future may come.
The support was cut to a level where it still made sugar a profitable crop in sugar states that went Republican, such as Wyoming, Utah, Colorado Kansas, Florida and California, but bankrupted the sugar industry in Hawai'i, the only liberal-voting sugar state. The usual miseries of substance abuse and poly-generational sexual abuse, crime, hopelessness and degradation of the educational system moved in with the unemployment and small towns like Pahala have writhed in agony because anyone with ambition leaves town to live near work elsewhere, while those too old or unskilled languish; the human flotsam of a political system that rewards vindictiveness and cynicism. To be fair, shortsightedness among residents played a role in the misery of sugar-plantation towns in general and Pahala in particular.
It is located in the Pacific Ocean.
The state of Hawaii is made of over a hundred islands. The main islands, Kauai, Nihau, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, Kahoolawe, Hawaii and Maui, are located to the south east of the archipelago. Hawaii is the largest of these islands and thus, is referred to as the Big Island so that the name is not confused with that of the state.
The capital of Hawaii is Honolulu. All the islands forming Hawaii were formed as a result of volcanoes. Hawaii is home to a lot of different types of plants and animals.
It was here, in the village of Pahala, that I first lived when I fled the frigid Rocky Mountain winters for a new life in tropical Hawaii a decade ago.
After living 20 years in the high plains, I was packed, ticketed, excited and ready for my move to Hawaii. When I come to Hawaii, I am coming home. I love Hawaii with a tender fierceness that sometimes surprises me with its intensity.
Moving from Wyoming to Hawaii I had expected to experience eagerness to explore my new home, perhaps some home sicknesses, and certainly a bit of culture shock but I was absolutely unprepared for this, what would become one of my most enduring visions of Hawaii.
Friendly, clean, quiet, scenic; Pahala seems a perfect community. Twenty years ago Pahala was a prosperous, bustling center of activity for the Pahala Sugar Company, but with the demise of the sugar industry, Pahala residents have either moved on to other towns seeking employment, or hunkered down to await what future may come.
The support was cut to a level where it still made sugar a profitable crop in sugar states that went Republican, such as Wyoming, Utah, Colorado Kansas, Florida and California, but bankrupted the sugar industry in Hawai'i, the only liberal-voting sugar state. The usual miseries of substance abuse and poly-generational sexual abuse, crime, hopelessness and degradation of the educational system moved in with the unemployment and small towns like Pahala have writhed in agony because anyone with ambition leaves town to live near work elsewhere, while those too old or unskilled languish; the human flotsam of a political system that rewards vindictiveness and cynicism. To be fair, shortsightedness among residents played a role in the misery of sugar-plantation towns in general and Pahala in particular.
It is located in the Pacific Ocean.
The state of Hawaii is made of over a hundred islands. The main islands, Kauai, Nihau, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, Kahoolawe, Hawaii and Maui, are located to the south east of the archipelago. Hawaii is the largest of these islands and thus, is referred to as the Big Island so that the name is not confused with that of the state.
The capital of Hawaii is Honolulu. All the islands forming Hawaii were formed as a result of volcanoes. Hawaii is home to a lot of different types of plants and animals.
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