Buddhist koans are meant to encourage enlightenment and highlight how illogical humans are. Wherever you go, there you are. One of my faves right now because today is Tuesday and in terms of saving the world we have until the weekend, Sunday at best. Wherever we go on an ordinary weekday Tuesday, like this one, there we are one day before the middle of the week. Wherever we go, there we are. Damn koans.

Inventing my own koans I have been since I turned 61 years old on February 2, Groundhog Day. Remember? You were supposed to make your own damn meaning. I know, I know—you are busy and what time is there to have read blog post “Pink Bubble Power”? A writer can only hope her readers will catch up. Until then let’s go on a mystery walk Hawai’i style.

My life anthem currently is asking a koan-like question: Whenever I go, what will I leave? This is my future-forward anthem that I plan to live on for the rest of my Tuesdays. Works because the phrase is not really a koan but rather a responsibility statement. And I like these, especially the ones that hold true seven generations forward, a life-framework being learned from Native Peoples’ perspective on decades of Tuesdays well-lived, aligned in earth’s nature.

When I write “whenever I go,” clearly I reference my healthy birthday cake in the sky. Celestial party time where I and prior departed souls say hello again and have as many slices of cake as possible because who worries about weight anymore? We are lightly surfing clouds. That is, if I adopt a heavenly model for afterlife, yet given all the miles I’ve registered on my feet walking diverse soils, my guess is my soul will be comfortably snug in a lawn chair on a rural stretch of soil where the ocean coastline is my constant afterlife companion.

Which is where I found myself during May 2018 still very much alive on this side of the veil, breathing in purest circulating air for thousands of Pacific Ocean miles around. I was standing at Kapa’a oceanside campground on Hawai’i Big Island. Before going there let’s be real which is my guessing that you also haven’t read “Travel Dispatch Five: Turtle Symmetry” because if you had then getting to know you would that I have a sensibility for ancients.

Simply knowing I am when these spirits are around. A plant waves inexplicably on a still afternoon. A day grayly overcast has a sunshine ray at my feet, from where is anyone’s conjecture. My wide hat is ceremoniously swept off on a quiet air day that has a surprise wind gust. These moments are always a friendly hello from ancients and my response is permission. May I explore further, I ask of the land’s ancestors. Their response through nature is already clearly, yes. Double checking I be.

Whenever I go, what I wish to leave is friendliness with earthly walks. I feel like my visits are a way to say the living, breathing experience is brief and so I’m reading the land for how ancients lived. Doing so is a way to enrich my own contemporary life. The walks are gratitude in action. Now we can return to Kapa’a campground on Hawai’i Big Island several weeks into a sunshine month of May, during an epoch called year 2018; the time I had was some leisure so I went walking around.

Right away my intuition kicked in, or, rather stepped in as I sauntered around on my own two walking feet. While in motion I kept wondering where my intuition fired from? Travel Dispatch Five has a reveal that Canyon de Chelly in Arizona vibrates with Native Peoples’ culture and history and power. Makes sense why I noticed the ancients sixth-sense vibing. Yet at Kapa’a we have an ordinary ocean coastline, a routine pavilion for inside benches, an outdoor barbecue, restrooms, and, at one time, freestanding showers. A few camping areas and that’s all folks. I’m walking back and forth like a firefly to a porchlight. I can’t get enough and the experience baffles me. Ain’t nothing much of anything here. Except wild energy from the ancients and this always jazzes me.

When mired in mystery a new walking path is the answer. From that May in 2018, until the May that happens in 2026 soon, all kinds of questing random paths have I walked to make a life for myself on island. Every direction has been circuitously wandering like life herself. One dynamic I couldn’t understand was how in the sweet hell the people around me were behaving—edgy and hurtful interactions. Crystal answer received during daily prayer and meditation is to look in another direction. If connecting with real-life people least likely then how about vibing with ancients as an aligned decision? Whenever I go, I require of my one life that I have been at ease on nature’s abundance, wherever I went.

Which is why a random day after my 61st birthday (the one you forgot to read about), I chose a different path. Over the years since May 2018 camping at Kapa’a I have been many times. And exploring on foot the environs there—still curious and baffled. But this one day recently (birthday being February 2, remember?) I stopped the vehicle I drive a mile or so before the official campground. An entrance was there onto the land and I hadn’t lost hope.

Perhaps another angle—a new path—was my guess into the mystery why a common campground was vibrating so. On this journey today I am no longer solo because I am having a dog, my trusty sidekick Bell, and we two departed the car to begin a hike. What I couldn’t see was the campground yet I knew she was somewhere over there in proximity. I’ll find the ancients from further along the ocean coastline was an eccentric tack I took and kept walking.

Alongside the ocean we hiked onto land that is a whirl of smells: old kiawe forest trees float whisps of leaf and bark and residual rain scents from baking in high heat sun; ankle-level drying shrub on reddish brown earth evokes dusty earth, richly aromatic and wary from all the direct Hawai’i sun; and salty air from the ocean so close mists everything. Taking a sharp turn to hike directly towards the ocean, we still had a quarter mile or so to cover before arrival. Bell kept pausing and checking in: is this where the ancients are? I had been talking aloud continually with her that soon our discovery might or possibly or perhaps or maybe could happen. My dog Bell is and continues to be a believer in sauntering walks, having earned her faithful trust over the last two years. She knows my talking aloud is a kind of chanting with nature.

What a sight to see right next to the ocean two distinct relics where ancients had been living at one time. A few gentle prayers I brought to the experience, asking if a friendly visit was opportune for this moment and instantly the kiawe tree limbs moved from side to side. Given an affirmative, I stepped into an ancient dwelling, closed my eyes, and said thanks. Dwelling with history brings on the quiet energy to realize how abundant a life-in-time had once been. Evidence was everywhere.

And when I walked forty or fifty feet further to the ocean waters, I looked around the coastline corner. My joyful surprise was to see so close and so clear Kapa’a campground. Now I knew why the place vibes so strongly with ancients because their residences are simply such a short distance away, energetically resonating just not visibly seen. Moments like these are heartfelt reminders that in my one brief life, I am on the right path. Whenever I go, what I plan to leave are light footprints to spiritual places that gift so much wisdom and gratitude.