On throwback Thursday, I’m going back to Kauai. Back to the long and curving Highway 550, the one that leads past all the lookouts on the edge of Waimea Canyon, around and around, higher and higher, until it reaches a great height on the side of Mount Waialeale.
Almost in the center of the island, this mountain is considered one of the wettest places on earth, beaten only by a small village in the northeast of India, and possibly a seaside jungle in Columbia.
You’d think such a lush place would be covered in vegetation, but it actually it rains too much to sustain much life. This is especially true of the summit of Mount Waialeale, but we saw some evidence of that here as well, just on the steep sides of the mountain.
The edge where we stood looks down onto a deep valley that runs to the sea. Today, it was covered in fog, but I am lucky enough to have been here before, so I know what it looks like when the air is clear.
On the other side there are more valleys, and the mist rises from the moisture and heat that percolates among the vines and trees and flowers. But around the outlook is bare red dirt and rock, with only a few straggling flowers poking through.
Rain is a beautiful, life giving thing, as evidenced by the valleys below us, by the rivers that run themselves to the sea, doing the constant work of keeping it filled up. But instead here, on the top of the mountain, the need for occasional rain was a constant thing. Instead of being surprising and delightful, it became a constant pouring of too much water.
And there we were, in the second (maybe third?) wettest place in earth, as the valley’s mists rose and fell, with our boys, who seemed determined to fall off the outlook or trip on the rocks or get lost in the fog. They strained and struggled to climb up the rock walls that separated them from sheer cliffs, and did their best to get entangled in the railings.
They immediately headed down dubious paths towards who knows what.
And I think parenting, these first few difficult years, can be compared a lot to the top of Mount Waialeale. Family, togetherness, and need for each other is as beautiful as a refreshing and life-giving rain. But these early years just have SO MUCH rain, that it’s hard to sustain things; it’s hard to do anything else other than just cope with the constant deluge of water, and for us at least, there is very little thriving going on.
But some day, when the constant raining down of needs and constant bailing of the excess water starts to wane, we believe our lives will be a little more like these valleys that surround the mountain. More beautiful for all that they have been through, more full of life because of all that rain.
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