“Kauai Stories 2,” edited by Pamela Varma Brown (Bathrobe Press, $19.95): Fifty Kauai residents contributed personal stories to this heartwarming, eclectic collection organized by subject, such as hula, lei, love of the ocean and family businesses, including Kaneshiro Hog Farms.
“The ocean washes away anything negative,” says lifeguard Norman Hunter.
“You can’t just go swimming down the Napali like I used to, naked, with my mask, snorkel and fins, period,” says Suzanne “Bobo” Bollin, 67, who still swims that wild coast.
Keaoopuaokalani NeSmith, who learned from his grandmother to speak Hawaiian without an American accent, notes that Kauai has the most native speakers in the islands. The reader gets a sense of the values and legacy that unite the community of Hawaii’s historically independent, northernmost isle.
As Mamo Kaneshiro taught his offspring, who passed it along, “You help people before they realize they need help.”
“Dream It. See It. Be It,” by Heather Howells (self-published, $24.95): Heather Howells’ cheery self-help book, subtitled “Believe in yourself, go for your dreams, do whatever it takes,” follows the grueling steps the unflappable, 40-something Oahu resident took to attain her dream: completing the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail hike from Mexico to Canada. She did it in five months, mostly solo, stopping in towns from Idyllwild, Calif., to Portland, Ore., for pizzas or Indian food.
After moving to Honolulu from her native South Africa, Howells participated in the Great Aloha Run and progressed to marathons and hiking Kauai’s Kalalau trail, where, after “scooching down the switchbacks on my behind,” she is rewarded by stargazing with “very little light pollution.”
On the pristine reaches of the Pacific Crest Trail, where she stays positive despite wildfires, wildlife and “wild men,” her journal entries and photographs reward the reader.
“The Wonder of It All: 100 Stories From the National Park Service,” with a preface by Jon Jarvis, NPS director, and a foreword by filmmaker Dayton Duncan (Yosemite Conservancy, $18.95): Fans of America’s national parks will appreciate these insider perspectives. In 1970, when kumu hula ‘Iolani Luahini emerged from a storm into the Kilauea Visitor Center and chanted to Pele, young ranger Jim Martin was moved to help preserve this culture.
Drawing a parallel between indigenous peoples and wilderness itself, “You might never go there and might never see it, but you are lifted by the knowledge that it still exists,” Martin writes.
Another ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park gets encircled by a rainbow on the rim of Napau Crater. Other ranger reflections, from Manzanar to Yellowstone, will make you want to explore the natural places that, as one Yosemite ranger reminds us, are our backyards as well as theirs.
“Hula Sister: A Guide to the Native Dance of Hawaii,” by Nanette Kilohana Kaihawanawana Orman (Island Heritage, $19.95): Although the target readers for “Hula Sister” are mainlanders and others with little experience of hula, Orman’s personal memoir/cultural history/instructional guide is a good resource for Hawaii residents who wish they knew more. Readers will also learn from the cultural hoku like kumu hula Ma‘iki Aiu Lake and Winona Beamer, whom Orman quotes, along with Mary Kawena Pukui: “When one wants to dance the hula, bashfulness should be left at home.”
“Hula Sister” includes charming line drawings (showing, for example, “correct” versus “incorrect” umauma), basic hula movements and vocabulary, with background on flowers, adornment and musical instruments. Included are handy tips on how to choose a teacher — “the older the wiser” — and sew a skirt. A psychiatrist as well as a student of hula for more than five decades, Orman’s chapter on the health benefits of hula is particularly well informed.
