Do you wish you could return to a moment in your past?

 I wish I could tell you about Hawaii, the way Hawaii actually was. It was bumpy hills, rocks chiseled by years of weather, beaches sloping towards the ocean at impossible angles, and the soft whisper of leaf on leaf as the ocean breeze circumnavigated the island. On top of mountains, nothing but sea for thousands of miles in any direction you looked. At the risk of sounding like an overly enthusiastic tourist romanticizing a place he had visited for a cumulative two weeks, I wish I could go back to Hawaii every time I think about it. I’d like to tell you about the last true moment of calm I had in my life — before the world shut down.

My mother, father, younger brother, and I had left the hotel room that morning in fair spirits, despite an early departure time. As we drove from our hotel across the seat of Maui’s saddle-like form towards the island’s larger volcano, Haleakala, I was mesmerized by the round, pink, and almost fuzzy balls that were soon to become mature pineapples. Everything about Hawaii seemed, as cliche as this may sound, exotic. I suppose to a Hawaiian, this transit would strike them the same way my morning drive to school past cornfields strikes me. But I was so entranced that I didn’t notice the slow increase in angle of ascent until we were already thousands of feet in the air, with the ocean below us for miles on either side. 

As we climbed, pineapple country gave way to citrus country, which requires sturdier trees that are able to cope with the slope, then fewer trees as the lack of oxygen grew more evident. It was around this point that my younger brother threw up.

My younger brother vomits all the time. Cars, planes, boats, trains, you name it, he’s puked while on it. So it made sense that the high altitude and tortuous car ride up the slopes of Haleakala, Maui’s largest volcano, caused him to get more than a little nauseous. He did a great job aiming for the opened window, but our rental car was not spared from the eruption. We pulled over so that he could move to the front (hopefully to alleviate his motion sickness), and in the game of musical car-seats that followed, I was relegated to the barf seat for the ensuing climb. Perhaps I should have been more concerned about my brother’s illness at the time, but I was too eager to continue on with our journey.

We twisted and turned our way up the mountain, pausing only to let some local duck-inspired creatures (the endangered “Nene” birds) pass across the road. Green had long since passed our windows and the only scenery other than the blue of the ocean was the dusty tan of the volcano and the occasional puffy, white silversword plant. We soon reached the summit of Haleakala, and I hastily clambered to get out of the car. Not three steps from the parking lot I had already reached a cliff’s edge, and I looked down. None of the usual tropes (“It looked like a toy set, people and cars became ants and bugs, I could see for miles in any direction, etc.) do justice to the sheer scale of standing on top of a mountain and seeing an entire island underneath you. I felt separated from reality, only a spectator. 

Reality always catches up with you. My family soon had to descend the volcano (excuses about my younger brother’s “health” and “well-being”), and life caught up soon after. While the next few months were not filled with sadness or depression, to be sure, they felt like a melancholic crescendo with no end as worry mounted about an event whose name I refuse to invoke here. Being on top of Haleakala was the last moment I felt fully at peace before things went “downhill”. 

- William King