Ice in the bird feeders. Frost on the strawberries. Rumors of snow flurries in Daytona.
How cold does it get in Hawaii? Not this damn cold unless you are watching a sunrise on Haleakalau or a sunset on Mauna Kea. Either way, a quick descent in a matter of within the hour you can dip your toes in the warm ocean waters, look back up the mountains and marvel at the change in temperature. Here in Florida we look forward to the seventies by the weekend. It is a long wait.
Meanwhile, I should be working on my taxes. Instead, I’m packing a few boxes. Media mail. Destination. The Big Island. Every box reminds me of shipping stuff from Micronesia and Majuro and later from Hawaii back to the mainland. I should have never left. But then, I'd probably be waitressing at Java Lava coffee shop. Instead, I get to postpone that experience until later.
Dad gave me a calendar of America, a small supplement to Reader’s Digest. Each month splashed with beauty, but it wasn’t the steep forested slopes and brilliant blue waters of the six-mile wide Crater Lake formed by the fiery eruption and collapse of Mazama almost 70,000 years ago, nor the Tahquamenon Falls of Upper Michigan, nor the somber site of Burnside Bridge on the tranquil afternoon where once 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died in a twelve hour battle that grabbed my heart. I turned the pages and saw a sea of red poppies, a cascading water fall in West Virginia, the stubby coast of Maine’s shoreline, and golden rays of sunlight beneath thickening clouds of Mt. Katahdin.
Then my eyes landed on June. I felt what I saw. A valley of mist touched by a rainbow. It is Hawaii. And I feel to be there.
Facebook Terror
Valerie Perez's Blog
Posts
Comments
Informative Links
About Me
- Valerie Perez
- Born and raised near Saratoga Springs, New York, Valerie Perez first joined the US Army and spent three years in Alaska as a photo lab technician. She earned her undergraduate degree in business from Georgia State University in Atlanta and an MBA from the University of Michigan and was a managing partner with Design Management Alliance until she got a bug up her butt and decided to be a writer. Good luck with that!! Shortly before her fiftieth birthday, she joined the Peace Corps fulfilling a lifelong dream. She was sent to the Federated States of Micronesia where she worked with disadvantaged youth. The author has traveled and hiked through South America, Nepal and Thailand and now lives in Hawaii.
5 comments:
It was a crisp 3 below zero this a.m. when I walked the dogs. My dalmation had two coats on for the lower temps. So, it could be worse. Hope the strawberries survive, though! Congratulations on your move. You could find me some mid-winter day at your door, bathing suit, big hat, sunscreen and some frozen salmon in hand, a refugee from AK....
Show up bearing salmon and the door will always be wide open.
okay, it was -2 degrees here in worcester (its warmed up considerably since thankfully) but you mean its no colder in alaska?
It has been colder this winter in AK (it was about 15 below last week when I got up and flashed the flashlight through the pre-dawn gloom onto the big thermometer on the tree near the kitchen window). But we have little snow....the global warming thing. They have had to hold the Iditarod Dog Sled Race start north of here for the last few years -- just not enough snow in our town, the official starting point. They cancelled a major Nordic ski race in Anchorage two weeks ago, first time ever it's been cancelled. Not enough snow. There's almost no snow across the Interior, either. We need the snow. I saw a flake drift down just now but I am not cheered--it's not worth much yet. That's the news from the Great Land. Like living in NM during the drought, I still believe it will snow (in NM, I still believed it would rain...and it did).
gosh, we just about broke snowfall records here in MA (for dec)- and then yesterday we broke the high temp record with 62 degrees.
go figure!
Post a Comment