Iao has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. You cannot go there for the first time and not be moved. You cannot go there for the hundredth or thousandth or ten-thousandth time and not feel lucky that such a place still exists and that you are alive to witness it.
Yet there is something about that valley up the road from Wailuku. Its beauty is not benign. There is always a presence, a sense of power. It is a place that reminds you how small you are.
When the images of Iao Valley after the Sept. 13 flood started to circulate, the reaction was shock and sorrow. Iao Valley is not gone, but it will be different, remade by its own design.
The thing was, you could always go there.
Well, not always. Years ago, the county started locking the gate at Kepaniwai Park to curb after-hours malfeasance and monkeyshines, but during the day, there was no fee to enter, no parking meters to feed, no arduous trek — just a short swoop from the Wailuku McDonald’s to the verdant malachite and celadon greens of the mountains. There, one could escape the heat of Kahului.
Iao Valley was always loud, the water roaring against the rocks, the wind bending leaves and limbs as it funneled through the mountains. Somehow, though, there’s the impression of quiet, even when crazy tourists are whooping it up for cellphone videos or young men are blasting brassy reggae from their truck speakers.
Generations of kids unconcerned with the latest beach fashions went sloshing into the cold water in T-shirts and shorts. Church groups passed out rubber-banded bento boxes at Saturday socials under the Kepaniwai pavilions, the rafters of which held the remnants of thousands of birthday balloons and streamers. Senior portraits, wedding pictures, scary stories about the ghostly white lady …
All that, but Iao Valley didn’t feel trampled yet. It wasn’t packed with people moving like ants, all squished together four-across on the same little trail like the Manoa Falls hike or the walk up Diamond Head. Sure, the parking lot was expanded and people started hooking their silly “locks of love” onto the chain link fence over the bridge, but so much of it belonged to itself.
It was cultivated and paved, but still wild. The flood was a reminder.
That reverence, that hush over the valley no matter how loud the river or how rowdy the waders, is in part because of the history of the area. It was the sacred burial place of ancient chiefs. It was where Kamehameha defeated the warriors of Maui and left so many dead and dying that the stream ran red. In the folds and crevices of those great mountains, old secrets were kept, secrets that no one would ever want to know.
The area is now closed except to residents. The state and county are assessing the damage, determining what is safe, what isn’t, and what can be done.
Hopefully we can return after a time. Hopefully many more Maui kids can practice their ukulele in the chilly mist of the highest outlook while gazing out to Kahului harbor and beyond. Hopefully we’ll be allowed back.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
