A worker checks out a turbine blade at Hawi Wind Farm. He looked like he was using the kind of tools one would use to patch a ding on a car, which seemed incongruous on such a large machine. But I suppose even small irregularities on the surface of the blade, especially the leading edge, could significantly affect the turbine’s efficiency.
The Tong Wo Society is a nonprofit organization, founded for Chinese immigrant workers as a meeting place and social center. The society’s building, at Halawa in North Kohala, is the oldest standing Chinese building in the state. It’s only open to the public one day a year during the Chinese New Year celebrations.
In keeping with my rigorous commitment to staying abreast of current events, it was only on the day before the event that I realized this week’s eclipse of the sun would be visible in Hawaii. Despite it being only be a partial eclipse here, I thought I should make the effort to check it out.
The first issue I had was that I had neither proper viewing glasses, nor the correct filters for my camera. But I thought that, since the eclipse would already be underway at sunrise, I might be able to get a decent photo or two at that moment.
I set my alarm and, when it went off at 5:15 on the big day, I got up and headed out. It was a promising, clear sky morning as I drove to Upolu Point, the northernmost tip of the Big Island. I parked my car and walked up a grassy slope to the headland which I thought would be a good spot for photos. That’s where I saw a band of clouds on the horizon. Maybe it would break up. Maybe it would blow over. Maybe a gap in the clouds would magically appear.
None of those things happened. This was the scene right around sunrise. The sun was eclipsed by the moon, but they were both eclipsed by the clouds. A while later the sun broke free, but by then it was too late for me, with my gear, to get an image. Still, it was a beautiful morning for a walk and not too late to head home for coffee.
This small boat, chugging along the North Kohala coast, kept disappearing, then popping up again. As a marker of the action of waves and swell, it always catches my attention, possibly because I’ve been in that situation many times myself.
Waimanu is one of the few Hawaiian monk seals that live permanently around the Big Island. She has given birth to three pups, each time in the vicinity of Keokea Park in North Kohala. All three pups died, one from swallowing a fish hook when a few months old, the other two while still with their mother on the beach.
We’ll see if she returns to the park again this year for another go.
This common morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) was twined on a fence alongside the mountain road, overlooking the Kohala coast.
The rolling pastures of the Kohala hills as seen from the mountain road in the late afternoon.
The Kauhola Point lighthouse is a modern affair, an automated light atop a tall metal pole. It replaced the previous, more traditional-looking lighthouse that was demolished in 2009. In the photo, the old base of that lighthouse can still be seen as several small block shapes toward the tip of the point. Therein lies the story.
The old lighthouse was demolished because erosion was eating away at the land near the base. The passing of time will surely remove even these remnants in the next few years.
In a way, this situation is a microcosm of the whole state. Many people think of the state of Hawaii as the eight main islands at the southeast end of the chain, but it encompasses hundreds of islands stretching away to the northwest for more than 1,500 miles. These small islands were formed over the same hotspot that fuels Kilauea Volcano today, but as the tectonic plate beneath the islands moved northwest, so the islands stopped growing and began to shrink under the forces of erosion. Over time, they too will disappear one by one.
