Editor’s note: This story originally ran in May 2023 before a series of wild fires broke out a few months later in August in the state of Hawaii, predominantly causing devastation in Maui. It has been edited to reflect, among other things, that one of the best restaurants on the island, Lahaina Grill, on Front Street in Lahaina, burned to the ground. Tourism is a huge part of the local economy and the reasons to make the journey to Hawaii still ring true.
I signed up for a sunrise canoe trip. It turned out to be so much more.
We paddled across crystalline waters, and I broke a sweat as the beaming sun rose over Mauna Kea on the Big Island. But the 12 of us – the others strangers to me before we met at the surf shack at Auberge Resorts Mauna Lani – who boarded the double-hulled canoe in the blue hour had no idea of the spiritual embrace we were about to experience. Our leader for this adventure called himself Uncle George, and he stood at the front of the boat and spoke to me in a way few people ever have.
“Everybody thought this was a boat ride, right?” he said even before we made our first stroke. “Never think that you were going to really get in touch with yourself. We’re going to help you folks get in touch with yourself, listening not with this ear but with the inner ear that touches the heart that makes you feel like you’re in the belly.
“We’re going out in the ocean and we’re at the mercy of the ocean. We ask the ocean to invite us in, and now we can take these cuffs and shed them off and work on that word, vulnerability, and be open to everything that we’re exposed to – the moon, the sun, the sky, the water. What a wonderful way to start the day, guys. We didn’t even go in the ocean yet. Everybody put a hand on the canoe. Let’s see where she takes us.”
