April 09, 2008

Spring mornings are languid now that the kids have gone off to college. I tend to sleep in and enjoy a slower start to the day. Yesterday I lay in the cool of my bedroom and I seemed to hear the buzz of traffic. I roused from my muffled, sleepy mind to wonder what it was that my primitive brain was hearing. After a few moments I realized what it was. Fire! Fire crackling far away, but getting louder.

Sure enough, the cane fires are early this year. Usually cane fires herald summer. But the fields near my house are going up in flame on these becalmed spring mornings. I leaned over my pillows and watched out my bedroom window as the roar and crackle grew, and sure enough a huge, grey plume of smoke tumbled up into the clear blue morning like a vengeful fist.  I’ve seen this before but I am always drawn to watch, so I took my tea up on the roof. I glanced down to wave at a neighbor who was also pulled out to her front porch to watch the crackle of fire on the beginning of the still day. The rising cloud, thrusting through the blue landscape, was setting the tone for the smoky day that would follow. 

Most often the plume of smoke rises and is swept gently over to Kihei before I really feel it. This time it pushed up and lingered, the air around it so still as to seem unconcerned. About a half an hour later the ash began to fall. Long curly bits of incinerated cane fell like twirling seedpods, landing on everything.

Black sooty ash fell like conversation on lawn chairs and bright green ferns. It fell on the asphalt shingles of my neighbor’s roof and lay there, rocking gently in the still air. Black soot lay weightless on the dewy grass, evaporating even as I watched. Long black curls hung in spider webs and as the day progressed I swept them from trees with a crooked stick.

The air smelled like a shirt I might have worn to a barbeque, smoky, yet pleasant. Like an evening shared with friends beside an outdoor fire. I meandered around the perimeter of my property with a hose, washing away ash so that I might not track it into the house. As the day warmed it continued to twirl down on the growing breeze.

Tonight I passed the field where they are harvesting the cane. Giant claws gulp hairy handfuls of smoldering sugarcane to drop onto the chain-link decks of the Tourna-haulers. The chains creek and the motors whine. The night, filled with the sound of slow progress. Because they choose to do this work when it is still and cool, the noise carries across the rural landscape. Still, it is a thrill to live near agricultural fields. To witness the effort that is put into a crop before it is processed and shrink-wrapped and set out for consumption.

As I drive by the fields in the coming weeks, my view to the sea will be vastly improved. I’ll look out and see the Keiki cane rising up like a promising future.

Every two years the tall, edgy grass is brought down like an unruly empire and the chocolate earth exposed for a short while. Then, like a scripted dance, the grass regenerates and I don’t seem to notice while it carries on through its life cycle until I hear the brilliant crackle of transformation.
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Ginger Johnson