How are you doing (or did you do”) with your Reach into the Weekend?
Yesterday morning I indulged in an Artist Date, the exercise Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way recommends”
“Now to the second tool, the sticky one. [The first tool is her morning pages.] The second primary tool of a creative recovery involves play. Oh this tool is hard to master. Dubbed an ‘Artist Date,’ this second, essential tool involves a once-weekly, solitary, festive expedition targeted at enticing our inner artist into exploring new realms.”
My chosen “realm” to explore yesterday was my passion for, and fascination with, the endangered Hawaiian Wiliwili tree. This view is of a tree I have driven by for the past eighteen years, but had to hike into the scrub to see — and to appreciate up close.
We are surrounded by dryland ‘lava land scrub’ where we live on the west side of the Big Island, on the slopes of the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two of the five shield volcanoes the Big Island is made of. One visitor to my Flickr photostream had commented, “it looks so remote” and it is and isn’t” it could more accurately be described as in adolescence with land development that may unfortunately be inevitable.
Meanwhile, it is an easy thing for me to set off on foot, and be within wilderness (that truthfully, someone somewhere may consider to be trespassing) within two walking miles. It would also be very easy to get hopelessly lost in the scrub, and you must be careful that you keep the roadway in some relative direction by sight or sound as you hike; the terrain takes you on 180’s in shift constantly, and the rolling hilliness obstructs your view with every few steps (and you do venture in because these old 4-wheel roads are not where it is most interesting):
Yesterday’s morning hike was more ambitious than usual, for it took me a good four hours (very sunny, hot hours) but it was so rewarding. My goal was to populate my Flickr photo set for the endangered Hawaiian Wiliwili tree, and there was one in particular I think of as the Warrior Sentinel. It grows in its natural habitat and is one which has been pruned of its lower branches by the land developer, but has never been transplanted, in fact, the road was rerouted to be built around it.
One look at the trunk near its base, and you can understand why transplanting it would be a monumental endeavor”
Plus the wiliwili is now considered an endangered tree, so it may be that the developer had little choice” law or no law, it is likely that messing with this one would have created an uproar. I wasn’t here at the time the road was built, but if they ever try to mess with it now, I’ll be one of those making the most noise.
If you would like to learn more about the Hawaiian Wiliwili you can start with my Flickr photo set, now 62 photos full as of this writing, and then do some Google searches.
The wiliwili is starting to be a more frequent illustration for me now that I have a digital camera, and I have had a few people ask me (and I paraphrase to sum them all up succinctly) “Rosa, what is it with you and this tree?” for to many it is interesting yes, but it is gnarled and less than totally beautiful when compared to some others; in the late summer and early fall it loses its leaves completely, and the older ones I most reverently take my photos of barely leaf at all when they do.
The answer is that the Hawaiian Wiliwili represents significant kaona (hidden storied meaning) for me, so much so that if I ever had to pick one image for all of Managing with Aloha it would not be my book jacket; it would be one of the wiliwili. I will tell the full story one day soon (there is some of it within the Flickr photo set descriptions). For now, I hope you enjoy more pictures.
One of my rewards yesterday was to find another tree with yellow blossoms I had not seen before. Its blooming was farther along than the Warrior Sentinel, and so I could get photos of the wiliwili seed pods:
So tell me, how did you Reach into your weekend?
What are your current triggers with what is interesting to you? My timing for this particular Artist Date had to do with a couple of different things, like having my camera now, and learning to love Flickr photo-journaling, but mostly because the Warrior Sentinel is in full summer bloom right now (there are other ‘before’ pictures from May in the same set). The wiliwili blooming was my reason for a hike into the scrub versus taking another kind of Artist Date, and there are a bunch of other things you can do that are not solo propositions.
I am interested in your stories: There is nothing like the weekend for talking story where we all get to know each other better. Especially for humans, but trees can count too… then there is the very worthwhile goal of learning to be interesting too.
Did you get rewarded with any surprises, as I did with the yellow wiliwili tree I found?
