Stairway to Heaven
About an illegal hike in Hawaii that the kids do anyway
--
A relentlessly unhappy baby bemoans the pain of a red-eye from Honolulu to Atlanta. Despite my best efforts (three jack and cokes, three Tylenol PMs), the baby’s wails trump Mr. Sandman. My body is jelly, and I would do well to be spread on toast, I think, as I feel the hydrogen ions in my blood render my body to wet cement with every movement. I should be sleeping!
Last night, my teenage cousin guided me to a summit whose leading journey was so continuously upward and life-threatening that it masked the spookiness of us going in the witching hour. Adrenaline and coffee filled, possessed by the want for Mother Earth (or Papa and Honua, the Hawaiian earth gods), to enliven my spirit with her humbling and majestic ways. I paid little attention to the maximized effort my body was making. I felt like jelly.
In 1942, a wooden ladder was spiked to a cliff on the island of O’ahu to enable the installation of antenna cables, which were later used by the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1950s. Upgraded from ladder to stairway, the trail hosted open traffic by many until the state deemed it too treacherous and shut closed it off in 1987. Sixteen years later, the state of Hawaii paid $875,000 to have them repaired and yet they remain restricted. The hike is officially named the Haiku Stairs, or the Stairway to Heaven. It is off-limits to the public and therefore desirable for its forbidden views as well as the unique challenge of climbing 3,922 steps.
Reckless but sober, we ambitiously started the journey around two in the morning. Perhaps a little too early, but rumor had it that the guard stationed himself around three. Cloaked by the dark, I followed my deer-like cousin through a bamboo forest and under a fence, sneaking like hungry raccoons but clumsily cracking nests of broken bamboo. Approaching the entrance to the path, we were startled by a sweaty, curious man meandering by the mouth, so we rather quickly grappled around the final obstructing fence and landed on the first stair.
Moonlight illuminated the ascending path and framing foliage in milky streaks, casting an ominous glow on the looming trail. The stairs crawled at a steady incline like an endless chrome centipede, flanked by a rail on either side and studded with grips. While the slopes were lush with bedded foliage, there was no branch or boulder to break a fall should either of us do so. As I hauled upward through the mist, thoughts of life’s impermanence and constant unpredictability swam along my brain. I was a recent college graduate living in New York, supporting myself with earnings from an industry I have little interest and continuously sideswiped by those I assume are more ambitious, lucky or talented than I.
Silently climbing the stairs, I pondered the concept of “making it” in the big apple, and the significance of it all fell off my shoulders like the sweat off my neck. Perhaps the Hawaiian gods were near, or maybe I was merely experiencing firsthand man versus nature philosophy. Either way, the physical effort combined with the quiet thrill of a prohibited nocturnal hike successfully revived my existential engine. Catching our breath on the second platform, my stoic and positive little cousin weighed the consequences of this exercise on her upcoming track meet. As casual as one choosing a good pineapple or better pineapple, she shrugged off notions of fatigue and glanced upward. We were making good time–it was just shy of 4–and judging the stunted forthcoming stairs, I thought we might have time for a nap at the top before dawn. Nodding to the above incline, I asked “Is that where it ends? Just up there?”
“No, laughed Christine. We have to go through the clouds!”
The force of roaring wind and the splattering rain held my breath outside of my body. We looked like struggling wet butterflies, our bright ponchos clinging to and blowing away from us like dampened and damaged wings.
As night remained ever present, cloaking the surroundings with her inky shroud, our arrival to the top was not rewarded with a panoramic view of southern O’ahu. Rather than linger and take photos, we cautiously peered inside the concrete hut that marked the peak. Layers of graffiti and grime covered the walls, but the musty air was ours alone. A plank of creaky plywood served as our sanctuary where we began the wait for sunrise.
Twenty minutes into the mini-vigil, the first to mark a steady stream of young adventurers stepped into the quarters. One toted a plastic bag filled with wrinkled, blackened hot dogs, and her companion, a bearded fellow, had a pack full of the necessary accoutrements for a sunrise stake-out: a lantern, some blankets, and potato chips. Following them was an exhilarated and garrulous group in complimentary University of Hawaii sweatshirts and on their tail, vagabonderie in the teenage male form. Shaggy-haired and shoeless, the wiry young men bring up the rear, sauntered around like one might in their kitchen before stepping out to surreptitiously smoke a bowl of marijuana. Inside, snacks were timidly passed around, and my cousin’s iPhone soon met a friendly UH student’s portable speakers to serenade all with reggae and island tunes.
On a time-limit (school started in two hours), we waved our newly formed and never-to-be-seen-again comrades goodbye and prematurely began our descent just at the cusp of dawn. When the sun finally raised its glowing head, the shroud of settled mist rose to the heavens and the bushy green life beneath stirred with the dawn. Sweet and pungent odors wafted through the morning breeze, as I discovered God’s cuckoo clock in the chorus of tropical birds.
There was no time to meander around or pause for the view.
Getting down was less like walking down a long flight of stairs and more like controlled falling: lifting, sliding, planting. I tested exactly how durable my gloves were as my arms stepped up to be the one barrier between my body and the slippery steep ground. As the bottom rose to focus, so did the guard. Avoiding a citation was the final worry, but as his blue hair came into focus, my anxiety disappeared. Any guard with a blue Mohawk had to have the Aloha spirit, right? Toddling on wobbly limbs, we awkwardly passed him with a guilty greeting. “Now you,” he alleged, looking at my red face, sweaty head, and mud-splattered body, “you look like you just went to Heaven.”
