17 Nov The sweet spot

We’ve picked up rumblings and rumors about Kauai in the past few months. The Garden Island is one of the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands (500 million years) which is the reason it has the most beaches, and the only island with rivers. The big island of Hawaii, by contrast, is only 450,000 years old!

With that type of geological history it’s not surprising that “the energy” or “the spirit” is often referenced whenever we mentioned Kauai. What would we find when we got here? I’ll tell you we did not put much thought, nor stress into that question.

I’ve travelled enough places to be familiar with the thrill of stepping off the plane, out of an airport into an entirely unknown environment. For this trip, the arrival experience was emotionally very unique. After 6 long hours crossing nothing but vast clouds and vaster ocean, we caught a distant and fleeting glimpse of Oahu and my excitement perked up. But when Kauai finally took shape out our window, first a low flat coast immediately followed by the drama of the Ka’upu Ridge just south of Lihue, it was a calmness that surged through me. And through the next hour of nerves about getting through the health screening and finally meeting our host, seeing where we’d be living for 3+ months was ramped up.. the island greeted us with muggy warmth and friendly faces.

Kauai is of course, literally new to us lifelong, land-locked midwesterners. But it’s exactly what we expected in the very best way. It doesn’t feel like we’ve arrived in a foreign land, thousands of miles in the middle of the biggest ocean on earth. It feels calming and oddly familiar— like we’ve been welcomed back home.