Spirit of Aloha | Features | January/February 2008

My Good Life on Kaua‘i

By Joan Conrow


A sense of secrets, mountains draped in mist, fern-lined trails, valleys carved by nature

Tell him about your routine,” urged my friend Thea, who was visiting me on Kaua‘i with her new boyfriend, Paul. “I don’t really have one,” I replied; and, in my mind, it was true.

“Yes, you do,” Thea corrected me, with a hint of exasperation. “You know, with the chickens and horse and ocean and all that.”

Oh, that: the animal care, walk, swim and meditation that I performed around dawn each morning. I viewed it more as my ritual, a spiritual practice, a way of life—at least, the life afforded the caretaker of a private 21-acre estate. Since every day was different, it didn’t seem like a routine.

I never woke at exactly the same time, although it was nearly always before sunrise. Some days the box beside my front door was filled with bananas, and some days it was empty. When it was full, I peeled a ripe one and tossed it to my Golden Retriever to eat. I dropped a couple of the mushier ones into a five-gallon white bucket, which I then filled with alfalfa cubes.

Slipping into my rubber boots, I walked to the pasture where Rocket, a small, gentle horse who had been blinded in one eye on the polo field before his owners dumped him, was always waiting patiently. After filling the bucket with water, I retrieved Rocket’s feed pan from wherever he’d kicked it the day before. I poured in the soggy cubes and squashed bana­nas, topping them with a scoop of molasses-coated sweet feed stored in a metal garbage can to keep out the rats and secured with a bungee cord to deter Rocket from unauthorized snacks.

While the dogs hovered, waiting to snatch cubes or a banana piece dropped from Rocket’s grinding teeth and thick lips, I headed for the chicken coop, where the hens—we wisely kept no roosters—flocked, true to their nature, at the wire gate. I always had to push through them as they mobbed me for feed, which I poured into a metal tray. While they ate ravenously, I cleaned and refilled their water container, which was invariably muddy.

Then I swept the droppings and soiled straw out of the hen house; built from Hurricane ‘Iniki debris, it had ma­hogany roosting boxes, sliding glass win­dows and a solid-core door. It could probably have fetched $400 or $500 a month in Kaua‘i’s rental market, if the landowner had been so in­clined, but being a half-billionaire (seriously), she wasn’t.

Those minor chores done, I continued on my walk, dogs frolicking around me, across a bridge that crossed a stream which poured over a waterfall into a narrow valley choked with tall grass, brilliantly colored bougainvillea and coconut trees, and shortly made its way via another waterfall into a rocky cove and thus the sea.

Then I crossed an expansive, grassy flat where, every winter, a few pairs of Laysan albatrosses nested and raised their chicks, which, when they were about five months old, climbed to the top of a knoll with sweeping 360-degree views of mountains and sea, flapping their wings until one day in early July they’d finally take flight.

I liked to climb to the top of that knoll, too, where I could see and hear the surf and watch the sun and moon rise and sometimes set, depending on the time of year. I gazed upon all the North Shore mountains, either clear or cloud-banked depending on the ever-changing mood of windward Kaua‘i weather.

Most mornings, unless the waves were barreling in too big even for tow-in surfing, or the wind shrieked cold and harsh from the north, I took a path, illegally carved through conservation land and crisscrossed with shearwater burrows, down to the black lava rock of a reef dotted with tide pools, some big enough for swimming. I liked nothing more than to be inside one, wet and shiny, when the sun poked its head up over the horizon.

After that I’d find a seat on a flat piece of basalt and do the prana yama deep-breathing exercises I’d learned from studying yoga, settling my mind and contemplating that which can only be felt—viscerally known—and not spoken. If the day was hot and sunny, I might make a second trip to the tide pools to cool off in mid-afternoon, and another in the early evening when the setting sun tinted the sky, the water and me (if I was in its path) orange, red, gold, multihued.

In the winter months, when the big surf rolled over the reef and smashed into the base of the cliff, I would perch on a rocky ledge and feel the ground beneath me shake as the waves exploded in pyrotechnic spray infused with countless rainbows.

When it was time for dinner, I cruised in a golf cart down to a large garden, kept immaculate by two gardeners. As the dogs grazed on green beans and cherry tomatoes, I loaded a basket with the organic veggies that would soon become my meal and picked flowers to set around my house, which had an unstinting ocean view.

At night, if the moon was full—and even if it wasn’t—I often made the same walk to the bluff and gazed out over the ocean, whose foaming froth in silvery light looked like fresh snow. Above me palm fronds clattered in the breeze and owls screeched as they hunted rats..

That was my routine, which I knew to be The Good Life. I lived it for a dozen years, until the owner of the estate I managed in laid-back Magnum, P.I. style decided that her idea of The Good Life, for the few weeks each year she visited Kaua‘i, was some­thing different—bigger and de­cidedly more imposing. So she sliced away the top of the knoll to create a larger building pad for the mansion that would soon be constructed. The muddy runoff from the grading fouled the stream, the cove and then the ocean. I wept over her carelessness, though I later learned she had won an ocean steward award for her work with dolphins in the Bahamas. (There were a few spirits on that hill, too, which once re­port­edly held a heiau, a place sacred to Hawai‘i’s in­dig­e­nous people, until cattle ranchers bulldozed it over the cliff and into the ocean. Night marchers—fallen warriors —were said to travel along the stream. But that’s the stuff of another story.)

The grading and house building, with load after load of Brazilian rainforest lumber, was followed by extensive land­scaping, which introduced fire ants to nursery stock from the Big Island. Even though state agricultural officials claim they wiped them all out, I’ve always won­dered if they really did, or if the pests are still lurking.

The two gardeners were fired and re­placed with a maintenance crew, which trimmed and mowed with the meth­odical efficiency of a blitzkreig but neglected the garden and disrupted the Sunday morning silence with the high-pitched whine of leaf blowers. My days were spent scheduling and managing a steady stream of maintenance men and cleaners who moved through unceasingly, providing the kind of nonstop care required of any structure in such close proximity to the Pacific: tending the reflecting pools, appliances and light fixtures; washing windows; scrubbing mold from sidewalks; and tidying vast rooms full of de­signer furnishings but devoid of living occupants.

As my time and energy were slowly consumed by the demands of perpetuating the owner’s Good Life, even in her lengthy absences I came to feel that I’d begun living a Not-So-Good Life. I moved off the estate, my education complete. The Good Life, I’d learn­ed, has nothing to do with human gran­deur, luxury or possessions. It’s about having—or taking —the time to be conscious of the living world present in one’s existence.

Now my walk in the morning takes me through a much different neighborhood: one with regular-sized houses, pastures grazed by cattle and horses that are ridden. I have no chickens to feed, although wild hens and chicks cluck and cheep continuously all around me and roosters crow loudly day and night.

I live in a sort of bowl, surrounded by mountains frequently draped in mist—mighty Wai‘ale‘ale among them—and each time I look at them, they’re different: sometimes crystal clear, sometimes cloud-hidden, depending upon the va­gar­ies of inland East Kaua‘i weather. In the afternoon, light streams God-like from pukalani—heavenly hollows in the clouds—and the jagged peaks turn a deeper shade of green. After a good rain, which is fairly often, waterfalls streak their faces.

I’m miles from the sea, but if I walk from my house along a lovely fern-lined trail to a clearing, which offers a 180-degree view of the eastern horizon, I can still watch the sun and moon rise from the ocean. Below me, a stream gurgles, making its eventual way to the ocean through a deep, lush valley landscaped by nature, with no fire ants and most­ly native trees. The only other sounds are bird songs, buzzing bumble bees, flies and my little dog panting as she amuses herself with an impromptu game of solitary soccer, the ball a bit of dried horse manure.

My garden is small, with a thriving patch of taro, and I do all the tending, except when I can cajole a friend with a strong back to do a big of digging. I supplement my modest harvest with seasonal fruit and vegetables purchased from two self-serve stands just down the street and a husband-wife team of or­ganic farmers who live minutes from my favorite beach.

That’s my destination when I want to go swimming, which I do almost every day unless it’s raining heavily or work is too pressing—neither of which, hap­pily, are common occasions.

It’s an idyllic little beach, with azure water and rough white sand, where endangered monk seals occasionally haul themselves out of the water and snooze, soaking up the sun and enjoying, as I do, the privacy and near-absence of people. Boobies fly north in the evening and south in the morning and giant frigate birds glide on air currents overhead, covering great distances, barely moving their broad wings.

Sometimes I head seaside in the morn­ing so I can swim in the shimmering path the rising sun paves with its rays on the still water; or midday, when the sea is sparkling; or late afternoon, when the light is slipping behind the mountains and the black rocks retain sufficient heat to warm me de­spite cool trade winds.

As I’m walking back to my car from the beach, I often encounter small flocks of nene (Hawaiian geese), our endangered state birds, which announce their arrival with nasal honking before landing on manicured lawns to indulge their passion for grazing.

At night, I slip outside my cozy house and sit beneath a vast canopy black enough to showcase the Milky Way and a million brilliant stars; or I lie back, dog beside me, to watch clouds fly across the moon as planets and constellations march across the sky and disappear into the mountains. All the while the wind moves, sighing, through huge, old camphor trees, the brittle limbs of java plum creaking.

That’s my new routine. While it’s simple and modest, I know it to be The Good Life. Because, at last, once again, I’m authentically living my own life.

JOAN CONROW, who lives on Kaua‘i, is a frequent contributor to SPIRIT OF ALOHA.

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