My brother and sister are here. After 16 hours on three different planes, across the whole of America that separates us. Across the ocean that symbolically and otherwise separates Hawai'i from the rest of the country. After a two hour trek across the island that I now call home. All to be here, to stand in the same space together.

The least I can do is give them an adventure.

We'll drive north and up and up and up cliffs and then straight down to their base, where water meets black sand. Where a mountain stream meets ocean. Where water falls and wild horses roam. Where the kings used to live.

A guy in a ranger's hut at the top of the road will check our truck for 4-wheel drive. He'll ensure, as best as he's able, that it won't Cinderella-turn-into one of those abandoned ones at the bottom. That we will make it back up the treacherous stretch from sky level to the shallows of the ocean floor. The steepest road its length in all the US.

We're going to Waipi'o Valley today. So they can experience the land before time, after traveling all this way. After a year and a half without seeing each other. After a lifetime of me leaving.

First to New York for college then to San Francisco, where I lived six blocks from the land's end. My dad joked when I moved there that I got as far away from Pennsylvania as I could without leaving the country.

Technically, he was wrong.

And so, here we are in Hawai'i. On the island that roots the rest of them, the anchor of the chain. One of the remotest places on earth. And after traveling to its ends, we will sit in its cradle together.

I'll make sandwiches and fill extra water bottles and pack sunscreen and beach towels and band-aids (just in case). I will show them an adventure. Like the older sister I am.

Unlike the Atlantic grays of our childhood, there's no lifeguard on duty in the rough and tumble Pacific blues. These waters will bob us up and down like balloons against a living room ceiling. Struggling against gravity and any structure that tries to contain them. Tethered to a wrist to prevent them from going too high.

An invisible tether that stretches the span of an entire continent and the adjacent ocean. Wrists attached to far-reaching limbs. Limbs connected to the sturdy straight trunk that anchors and roots. That connects and protects from dangerous drifting. Like a balloon riding trade winds past the continent’s edge, too far out to sea.

Like the older sister I am.

Credits

Accompanying music: Hold On We’re Going Home by Sly5thAve.

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