Naked to Yourself

Keep your swimsuit on and I’m not implying stripping bare. A walking path I’m on through these words is to stroll a short distance after an ono (delicious) Kona Mountain Coffee. The sojourn “goal” is Kohanaiki Beach Park fifteen minutes or so walking distance from the café. Same one where a ceramic cup can easily be filled with amazing coffee. Wait, what? Again, you didn’t read the prior blog post? Alas, a writer writes and a reader reads and let’s align best as possibly can in progress not perfection.

What I observe in life is how doing nothing is a pivotal time in life to say hello to our core selves, various facets in one life. Might this be soul work? An effort challenging us to be an accomplished someone while at one with slowness, a vacation time for doing nothing, and still feel entirely like your bare self—all cozy, complicated, complex, and curious.

An ideal location is Kohanaiki for getting to know yourself in newish ways since being off screen and off the clock grants permission. The phrase in Hawaiian conveys small barrenness, meaning precise parameters for “small” and barren as in not a tropical rain forest. This rectangular stretch of land from ocean to mountain is an ahupua’a (land division). During pre-contact Hawaiian history (before colonization) indigenous peoples cultivate a thriving ecosystem to live based on nature’s abundance. Those harvesting from the ocean need what mountain farmers have and vice versa, a sustainable reciprocity. Varieties of crops grown are on view at the beach garden today.

Which is one reason why the place reverberates with historical solitude, an ancient wisdom not glamorized simply recognized as felt-sense real, and Kohanaiki today can symbolize barely a small pause to shift gears from wherever you had been racecar driving elsewhere, going somewhere “knowingly” at high speeds and yet what might you know if slowing down? Unusual paths clear while on hiatus from all the modern world busyness. Like Kohanaiki which is a world distant and distinct from mainland 80-hour work weeks or coastal resort hotels nearby on Hawai’i Island.

Discovered is a camping site on an ocean beach. Simply this. And into that stillness infinite detail avails for absorbing nature’s clarity: clear ocean water swimming, a painter’s bright sunrise and sunset viewing, and smelling briny in the ocean salty mists. After a few days feels like all is aligned towards goodness, many inarticulate and intangible sensory moments gathering to keep in memory once you return wherever. Leave any hesitation behind because guaranteed that inside of being peaceful you are not nothing, rather a someone on discovery time: how is your soul-health these days?

You deserve not just a vacation but refuge: quiet, energizing, and peaceful—what qualifies as sanctuary. Yet are we considering the Hawaiian vacation mystique? Imagery sears into our imaginations that far away awaits a sandy beach, warm weather, and idyllic activity. We snorkel, we manta ray, we dolphin, we luau, we all-terrain-vehicle (atv), we cocktail, we poolside, we room service, we horseback, we tourist in busyness that might parallel lives before we got here. Where is the respite?

Perhaps a significant detail some of us might neglect during reverie about ideal Hawai’i is a vacation weight we bring: ourselves. Most would agree that being fair we can say women on a Hawai’i vacation especially have a challenge. Our roles, wherever we live before Hawai’i time starts, will stay with us when we get here: caregiver, helper, partner, employee, entrepreneur, professional, daughter, sister, partner, wife, grandmother, and friend. Women often plan, prepare, and “perfect” vacation details and once the actual vacation “free time” begins, countless more details unfold that need caring for—that is, a woman’s role. Some vacation.

This is why I advocate a revolution in your travel plans: go solo. Every sentient being will be absolutely okay while you sprinkle sand between your toes for seven days continually in a 24-hour search to discover what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls “Soulskin.” Finding yours, that is. Simplicity details are built-in for a trip scheduling idleness, plenty time enough for “just” being yourself on a serenity refuge.

If a moment catches on a hiccup like daunting concern how this traveling might go, catch a breath and a cup of tea. What we have is buy a plane ticket, reserve a camp site, catch a free bus, walk to a beach, and pitch a tent. These are a few details to “take care of” before beach chair is prone at a comfy angle and sitting relaxed begins. Any skillful multitasker will read the prior list and scoff at the heavens. This is all a leisurely sojourn to Hawai’i required all these years? What in the sweet hell have those travel agents been selling me?

Shall we regroup? Your travel agent? She is in a life lane of her own, clearly, and wishing her demise will not advance our own beach leisure. Let her be. True that reserving two campsites is a go because Kohanaiki has a five-day request. The second reservation you can achieve independently and zero travel agents need procuring or being cussed. A brief 30 miles further north along Hawaiian Highway 19 is Spencer’s beach camp site also reachable on a free public bus, or, if you must spend money, ride share or taxi.

At Spencer’s there is a Hawaiian history kiosk and several paths for walking next to a heiau (sacred meeting place). All is possible without once stepping into a car rental fiasco (meaning pricey costs). One full week of relaxing time you invited into your own life. A rushed Hawaiian vacation, that mythology of one, can be ended as a travel itinerary if you decide, one that often costs plenty money and rewards with a sunburn and mild exhaustion from cramming many tourist events into one week.

Instead, now a woman’s familiar nurturer role changes into her wilding nature to experience joyful hours free from a routine schedule. On the itinerary is relaxation, a modus operandi to get bare on soul essentials like recognizing busy life fatigue that calls for rest “in order to revive her sense of self and soul, in order to restore her deep-eyed and oceanic knowing.” Estes describes a woman homing, a journey home to intuition, wisdom, and creative choices to enrich her life. The chapter “Homing: Returning to Oneself” is in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. As we go about our ordinary lives a keystone question is what busyness costs us.

Often enough “what it costs us in time, energy, observation, attention, hovering, prompting, instructing, teaching, training. These motions of psyche are like cash withdrawals from the psychic savings account.” Yet a woman’s camping at Kohanaiki provides considerable deposits of rest, relaxation, insight, wonder, creativity, emotion, nature, and peace to rebalance her accounts. Realize the cost for camping is $20 per evening, a finance accessible Hawai’i refuge where serenity is the schedule, an agenda of simplicity. Vital is bringing the best you can in preparation for quiet even if the practice is feeling new.

This is where Hawai’i Island meets all of us optimally and I am still learning. If arriving from city spaces, a deeper listening is strangely new in an absence of car alarms blaring, sirens screeching, and myriad urban noises intruding on serenity; not hearing them will be a surprise. Like intuiting a noisy cat lost to wandering, the first few evenings you will wonder what is the deal. Where are the screechy, hectic sounds? Yet what a genuine smile each morning when sunrise greets you and noise-wise what you hear is a hush of ocean waves, shifting winds, and palm trees rustling.

A woman’s right to deep solitude is necessary and a privilege she often doesn’t get. Take yourself some time, mi mujer. Estes is honest when she writes that "we traditionally compensate for loss of a more serene habitat by taking a vacation or a holiday, which is supposed to be the giving of pleasure to oneself, except a vacation is anything but." And yet redesigning Hawai'i Island time can provide immersion, a reteaching on stillness with self.

A time and chance for self-awareness windows to open. In other words, “for the soul-psyche, vacation is not the same as refuge. Time out or time off is not the same as returning to home. Calmness is not the same as solitude.” For reliable solitude, Kohanaiki and Spencer beach parks provide environmental support—outdoor showers, soft sand to sleep on, and respectful security—creating refuge to keep your swimsuit on while baring yourself to yourself, listening to how your routine life could have an even better lively, soulful spontaneity when you return to your address home and to an enriched soul home.