The lessons are learned long after the class is over.

I recently walked 130 miles around the perimeter of Oahu for four days and didn’t know what I was doing.

I only wanted to fulfill a dream I had long ago, to embrace the land that I love one step at a time. I had seen the many Ahupuaa signs while blazing past on my way to various golf courses but never realized that there was a pig’s head on top of those brown signs that depict a pile of rocks.

You have seen them, they are pretty much everywhere you drive along the coast. They loosely depict the waypoints for ancient Hawaiian travelers to mark the start of Makahiki. Those athletes collected taxes, in whatever form, and I did as well. I supplanted my meager diet of wild sugarcane with some bananas near Waimea and collected a bounty from the Kaaawa Arnetts.

That’s where I learned why I was doing such a thing. After a long day of walking the North Shore I stopped by to see my friend Tamara Arnett. I got many reactions from people on my journey, including a twinkle in the eyes of the same pretty local girls on successive days after helping them fix their overheated jalopy, but none like what Tamara provided.

I could see the admiration in both girls’ eyes immediately, even a small yearning of trying to do the same someday. Given the state of my feet, I advised against it.

Tamara’s initial reaction was quite different. When Paul Arnett told her that I walked around the point from Makakilo, her reply was ‘No, he didn’t. Why would he? His truck is outside.’

She went to sleep still not believing it despite my feet soaking in a pail that she uses to feed her cows, and when it looked like rain I decided to crash on the couch.

That was good for about an hour until it clicked for her, and for me. I settled into a deep sleep in no time until she yelled an inch from my ear — she has no neighbors to bother, and everyone loves her anyway — “JERRY!”

I woke with a start and my KA-BAR knife far away on the porch or I might have hurt myself. I nearly fell off the couch, but she scolded me with a stern ‘Go to sleep! You have a big day tomorrow!’ My meager reply was that I was sleeping, and she countered with a question.

“Do you know Makahiki?”

I mumbled something about Captain Cook and she was delighted, chirping “Time for a bedtime story! Go to sleep!”

I conked out sometime before the night marchers arrived from Kaaawa Valley but remember tales of the ancient Hawaiians making their annual trek around the island and an alleged sundial on the grounds to the ranch that might hold the key to the universe. The last thing I remember was her whispering ‘They did their thing for a reason, and you are doing yours.”

It took some time in dreamland, but Tamara understood completely.

I woke as the sun was coming up and regaled Tamara with the best and worst parts of my trip so far, the high point being the stars above Kaena Point and the low back-tracking through Waialua because a bridge was out. I still made it to Pipeline.

I actually did that part twice, as my loving wife picked me up near Pipe after I’d walked for 20 straight hours and I enjoyed a sleep in my own bed after my hands swelled to twice their size due to what I guess was overhydration. I never knew that was even possible.

My wife was more of a trooper than I will ever be, though, shaking off a pending diagnosis of a 5mm kidney stone and broken valve in the bathtub to drop me off in Haleiwa the next morning.

It was hard to stop after that, and I plowed all the way around Waimanalo and enjoyed watching the 1995 Mariners beat the Yankees in Hawaii Kai while soaking my feet yet again. More walking, with a Thai massage to break up the urban blight of Honolulu, and I was home.

It really didn’t take my feet much time to recover, and I have since talked to plenty of people about my journey. They all seem to get it, especially the Hawaiian director of Mauka Lani Park across the street. Imagine my surprise when he told me that, though admirable, my idea of tracing the footsteps of his ancestors was faulty.

It seems that during the old days my entire route was under water.

But it’s the thought that counts.