You Have Landed on Boardwalk---in Hawaii

The boardwalk at Kealia Ponds NWR, which was a place I definitely had to visit while in Maui.

If there is an unsung hero of the system of federal public land facilities, I suggest it is surely the national wildlife refuges. I have visited many of them over the years, especially during my nomadic travels driving around the country. Which ones exactly? Sadly I never kept a list.  There are almost 600 at last count n Wikipedia. 

Visiting an NWR has almost always been a spontaneous thing, something I see while driving, which I make a split second decision to put my turn signal on and pull into the parking lot. I have strange fantastical "game" I play while traveling this way, assigning points for and against myself, as if in a video adventure game, according to arbitrary rules I make up as go along. It is purely for momentary fun. I never keep score for real. Missing a critical turn on a highway that forces me to retrace is a ten point deduction. An NWR is typially a big bonus score. There is always a shiver of anticipation that I am about to enjoy something delightful the next hour or so. It feels like fate to have found it, that it was just meant to be, on that particular day..  

I was just now perusing a map of national wildlife refuges around the country, trying to remember some of them that I surely visited. One that comes vividly to mind is one in southern Nevada near Las Vegas, where, on a lonely highway on my up to visit my Uncle Dick in Reno after the 2020 election, and in a very unsettled state of mind over it all, I saw a sign for the NWR and, like a sailor coming into a smooth port, I pulled my rental car into the parking lot for a break. It was a moment of great serenity and beauty in a turbulent time.

I don't recall the name of that place. Probably I could, if I went through the list. I recall there was a lake, and mountains behind it. It was on the flight paths for migratory birds, as many such facilities are.

These facilities are gems. They are typically free. Some but not all have a small visitors center, where stepping inside, one might find a bulletin board of notices for local youth programs for wildlife identification and stargazing. Some even have a small gift shop where one can buy mugs and t-shirts (sadly postcards have been relegated to history). The buildings are typically well constructed but they are  also under-visited, often only by local sportsmen. Because of this, one can find peace amid sparse crowds. 

But above all, when I think of a national wildlife refuge, I think of the glorious and wonderful boardwalks.

The boardwalk architecture found in national wildlife refuges make for some of the best idle strolling and walking mediation on the face of the earth. One ambulates at one's speed among the habitats that are meant to be protected, but one is elevated from the earth, floating almost godlike amidst the forest floor or the marsh, so as to let life proceed below one's feet without human interaction. The feel of one's feet on the elevated wooden boards provides an special sensation of being in contact with the roughness of nature, and one can hear one's presence on earth by the contact with the wood. One can easily lose track of time, in the best of ways, amidst a full encompassment of beauty.

All of these things I described, I got to feel in Maui, after we left the headquarters of the marine sanctuary in Kihei and drove a couple miles along the south coast of central Maui (where the land is very lat) to the visitor's center of the Kealia Ponds NWR, which I had noticed and called out at the beginning of the week as I place I wanted to visit. Finally we were there, using our ultimate hours of free time at the end of the trip. We found the gravel parking lot and went inside the visitor's center. The exhibits were small and sparse, which was fine by me, as I was eager to get outside. There was indeed small gift stop staffed by a friendly woman at the cash register at the entrance. She gave us a small lesson on the history of the "ponds" outside the building, which constitute the bulk of the reserve. They were once used for raising fish and other critters, but were given over to migratory fowl with the establishement of the reserve. One can walk among them on the berms. They stretch for a couple acres on the flat ground there along the south coast, crossing another highway and reaching almost to the ocean.

"And do you want to get to the boardwalk?" she asked us. 

Of course we do. She then gave us directions on how we had to leave the parking lot, make a turn onto a another road to the reach the highway closer to the beach. But the entrance to the parking lot there is tricky, she said. One was supposed to drive past it on the highway and then turn around in the gravel near the electrical plant.  No ten point deductions for that, because it was on purpose.

The directions were intricate but, in the end, easy to follow. No ten point deductions for the turn around, because it was on purpose, following directions. We found a waiting parking spot for us and stepped outside into the most perfect of breezes on a sunny winter Hawaiian day. A few other cars  were parked there, some possibly for the beach access. 

We could see the elevated boardwalk stretching along the edge of the trees by the beach, like a wooden wall between the ponds and the beach.

In fact, I had noticed the wildlife refuge sign, and the boardwalk, on our second day in Maui when we had driven out to Lahaina from Kihei. My heart had broken at the beauty of it. I had to visit it, to walk that boardwalk, or else our visit to Maui would be incomplete.

We climbed the small set of wooden steps up to the pavilion that marked the start of the boardwalk,  then proceeded along it, towards the distant West Maui mountains. One felt caressed by the wind and the sweet sunlight. At various spots along the boardwalk, small rivulets passed under the walkway, which became a bridge for that section, and the stream entered the beach where the surf was breaking.

Having noticed it earlier in the week, and yearned to be there, and now walking in it, I felt as if I had entered my own dream. Sometimes such moments do happen, every now and again.