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Friday, Oct 7th, 6-9pm
At the SE neighborhood bar called NORTH 5008 SE Division
$2 New Belgium beer (Heck yeah!)
BONUS: Since it's wood chopping season our buddy Yohhei of Sato Sharpening will be on hand to grind your axe. So bring you axe to the bar!
Other parties are coming to Vancouver B.C. and New York... Stay Tuned!
We stood together holding hands in the dark. Looking into the red-hot glowing center of a volcano. We were far from home, but we had never been closer together.
When an opportunity for family fun arises, take it. Don’t weigh the pros and cons, just say yes and go. Take your seven-year-old out of school, tell the office you’re going on vacation, get a pet sitter, don’t worry about the money, and allow your family to become the adventure.
Our family recently said yes to Hawai’i. Not for the postcard-perfect landscape, the warm clear water, the shaded sandy beaches, the poolside refreshments, or the genuine locals and captivating culture, but yes to the hot, dusty, unpredictable, high-altitude, majestic, and unforgiving volcanoes.
The Hawaiian island chain is all volcano. Not the exploding, red-lava volcano that might come to mind, but the geological consequence of the hottest part of our planet’s core deciding to pay a visit to the surface, creating a series of land masses that slowly become mountains, valleys, shores, and homes.
The national parks of Hawai’i are a lot like mainland parks. They’re big, weird landscapes full of tourists trying to get that photo that sums up the whole thing. No photo can capture the layers of cultural and geological history in any national park. Our family kept this in mind and went forward hoping to personally connect with places that are much bigger than our tiny lives.
If the Hawaiian Islands are all one family, the Big Island of Hawai’i is the youngest sibling. This one is still forming, still growing, and has the most recent volcanic activity.
The Big Island is really big. So big that you need to see it from a helicopter to understand its volcanic landscape. Seen from the ground, volcanoes gently roll across the skyline. Viewed from above, that landscape comes to life. Red-hot lava flows into rain forests that have never experienced fire before. There’s smoke and destruction that you can’t see from ground level because of obstacles like dangerous terrain and poisonous gas. From the air, you can safely witness the continuous chaos and creation of land below. Trees topple over because of the lava flowing under and around their trunks. The forest becomes a sea of dark, hardened lava. The lava meets the ocean and continues to form an underwater landscape of reefs, caves, and future islands. Our son Camper’s great-grandchildren won’t even see this island finish growing.
To get more up close and personal, we headed to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. While we were at the ranger station checking out maps, Camper became a junior ranger. “I got a badge. I did all this stuff. It was pretty fun. It was like homework, but a tiny bit funner.”
It’s worth checking out all the designated stops in the park. With each one you learn a bit more about where you are, and up your chances of finding a personal connection with the place. For us that was at the steam vents.
From a distance, the steam looks like little clouds clinging to the ground. The vents are surrounded by hardy native shrubs like the ‘Ohi’a Lehua and its red bottlebrush flowers. Buses unload large groups of international tourists who lean on the railings around the vents with selfie sticks and camera phones. This might sound sad to some, but the easy access helped us feel the invigoratingly hot, damp, and slightly stinky clouds soften our skin.
Standing in the wafting hot clouds of steam coming from Earth’s core, we were cleansed by the sacred breath of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess. Camper wasn’t that impressed, though. “It burned my eyes. It was cool. It felt like air.” Either way, during that moment in the steam, your glasses fog over, you drop out of sight, and all you see and feel is steam. You get lost in the wonder of it all. You’re not thinking about plane tickets, sunscreen, unanswered emails, or homework. Or maybe you are. Maybe in the same moment your adventure connects you to something deeper, something bigger, the adventure offers you a moment to accept it all.
The park has much more than current volcanic activity—it’s also overflowing with volcanic history. As our first grader ran through a large, dark cave, he pointed out, “A lava tunnel is like a tunnel underground that goes to the volcano. Imagine lava in it. That must have been a lot of lava in this giant tube flowing through it. That would be like 60 hundred gallons. Now, like 60 hundred people walk through it.”
Like most national parks, this one gets crowded, but it’s easy to get away and do your own thing. We walked to the rim of the Halema’uma’u Crater of the Kílauea volcano and looked into it. The ashy gray apocalyptic landscape was kind of bland and voggy (volcano smoggy). Camper read a sign out loud for us. “Warning: Hairyous Hot Lava Deep Cliffs Roughen Suckers Flash After Dark.” (Give him a break, he’s just learning to read.) On our way out of the park, a ranger strongly urged us to come back after dark.
Had we not come back after dinner to stumble to the crater’s rim with the help of our tiny phone flashlights, we would have missed the family experience we came for. We have never seen anything more awesome than the mountain-sized red glow of the volcano rising out of a crackling bubbly crater and up into the dark sky toward the stars and universe above. We stared into the planet’s core and, together, saw way beyond ourselves.
National parks were established to preserve natural wonders, but they also do the same for cultural heritage sites like this moody little tiki park on the big island of Hawai’i. The Pu’uhonua protected kapu (law) breakers, defeated warriors, and anyone else seeking sanctuary during wartime. No physical harm could come to those who reached the boundaries of the Pu’uhonua. Camper explains, “It was a place that was really sacred. Real Hawaiians lived there. If you do something bad you have to go there, and then you’re done with the curse. Then you can go back to your family.” We sat at the black rock shore, silently sharing a passion fruit soda and watching the sun dance on the water’s surface. We were not seeking refuge, but we found it.
Maui kicks some serious beach ass. You’ll find white, black, red, and green sand beaches. Beaches with rocky tide pools, waves, no waves, sun, no sun, or even rain if that’s your thing. Just plop under a kiawe tree and listen to the sound of ocean meeting land all day. Turn away from the beach, and Haleakalã demands your attention.
The smooth, winding drive up to Haleakalã takes you through upcountry farms and fields with stunning views of the island.
Rising above the trees, the birds, and the clouds, the top of Haleakalã National Park feels very close to the sun. Which is one of the reasons its Hawaiian name translates to “House of the Sun.” You can’t always feel the sun’s warmth. It’s pretty cold and windy up there. You can feel the thin air in your lungs and the pressure in your ears. The clouds move fast and reveal pocket-sized views of the crater.
Camper described the clouds: “The mist comes at you, then disappears. It’s really weird and all going in different directions. It’s always changing.” Always changing is right, and you never know what you’re going to get. Pack like you’re going to the rainforest, the mountains, and the desert. You’re likely to get rained on and baked by the sun on the same trip. Conditions are constantly and drastically changing.
The super accessible Sliding Sands Trail can take you as far as you want to go into the crater. Walk just a few feet and you’re eye level with the crater rim. Walk a few more and the quietness of the crater’s landscape pulls you in. The stomping sound of Camper’s feet running down the steep trail left a cloud of red dust in the air behind him. We speculated how far we’d be carrying him on our way back up. For us, the adventure wasn’t hiking all the way into the crater, but heading in, picking a spot to sit, and experiencing the changing show of clouds swirling within.
Haleakalã’s crater has been dormant for centuries, and its central landscape is dotted with smaller craters, cinder cones, eroding outcrops of rock, and loose red gravel as far as you can see. Few plants or animals call this place home. The most eye-catching plants are the glowing silverswords. Native to this mountain, silverswords easily steal the show, like stars in a red gravel sky. Despite their metallic glow, Camper points out: “Silverswords are cool because if you touch one it’s really fluffy. If you tried to cut someone’s face it would just be furry.” We’re pretty sure he just imagined touching them, because these plants are endangered, and were well beyond his reach.
Farther down the volcano, we wandered through the Hosmer’s Grove of black peppermint eucalyptus and Japanese cedar. We had gone from Mars to rainforest within two miles. Bird songs stopped us in our tracks, and we noticed the tiny red berries on the native ‘Õhelo ‘ai (Hawaiian blueberry). We saw flashes of red feathers and the long curling beak of the ‘i‘iwi (Hawaiian honeycreeper) rushing from bush to bush looking for berries.
The ‘i‘iwi’s red feathers reminded Camper of a story our Hawaiian friend Anu Yagi told him. “They’re super rare. They’re not endangered because there’s still 160 out there. [We have no idea why he picked this number.] The people [specialized Hawaiian bird-catchers] that get that bird don’t want to kill it. They just want to take, like, one feather. There’s a nut [breadfruit]. Inside there’s, like, this glue stuff. They break the nut and put the glue stuff on a tree branch and then when a bird sits down on it they get stuck. Then they [the bird-catchers] climb up and take a little feather off it. And then, ummm… they make those feather cloaks for King Kamehameha. Those birds eat the Hawaiian blueberry.
The feather cloaks, or ‘ahu‘ula, were made for Hawaiian chiefs, or ali‘i. These cloaks took thousands of feathers to make, and since each feather was harvested one bird at a time, the cloaks took forever to complete. Aunty Anu said Kamehameha’s feather cloak was worked on for nine generations before it was draped over his shoulders. The cloak that Chief Kalani’Õpu’u gifted to Captain Cook in 1779 was returned earlier this year to Hawai’i from New Zealand. The cloak is made of more than 20,000 feathers and is currently on display at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
Haleakalã is huge and could be difficult to connect with on a personal level, but seeing how the park preserves habitat for the berry that feeds the birds that grow the feathers that pre-contact Hawaiians wove into cloaks, we got to witness how this national park also preserves a story deeply connecting people to this place.
Lululemon Athletica’s ambassadors are locally picked at the peak of freshness, and Orange Theory head coach AJ Riley is as Portland as they come. “I was actually born and raised right here. I’ve been in the community a very long time,” he says, taking a moment to catch up with Stay Wild at the grand opening of Lululemon’s new location at Washington Square. After a beaming round of new ambassador introductions, it’s time for AJ get down to the business of representing the sweat life. “To me it’s what it is that you’re doing on a daily basis to stay regular. To stay true to the things that you want to do for you. Part of that is fitness, something as simple as making sure that you’re working out and that you’re sweating. But at the same time I see it as something bigger. A lifestyle.”
At Orange Theory, AJ’s workouts combine running, rowing, and strength training along with plenty of motivating beats and encouragement. It was through his work there that he hooked up with Lululemon. “I worked my way into a head trainer position and I love every single bit of it. I get to see 200–300 people in there a day that I’m teaching … I can inspire and motivate a lot of people in a one-on-one and group setting basis. I like to be able to give back to the community and to the people who helped turn me into the person that I am,” he says. “That sparked me joining the Lulu family. I really could not say no to some amazing, special individuals.”
Shannon McClintock: Barre3 instructor
Alli Breen: owner of Pilates Royalty
Matt Gonzalez: strong man competitor and photographer
Meghan Atkinson: Runner & Yoga Instructor at Sculpt Yoga
AJ Riley: Orange Theory Head Coach
Learn more at their Facebook page >>>
Burton makes some of the funnest camping goods around. We know this because we've been playing with a bunch of goods they sent us and we've got to give them away before we destroy them!
In the next couple of months we'll be giving away things from Burton's Camping Collection for free on our Instagram feed. To win you'll just have to follow @Burton and tag a friend you want to share the winnings with.
Here's a list of the goodies:
-6 Person mushroom patterned tent (it wants to party with you!).
-Polka Dot Hammock.
-Polk Dot Folding Chairs.
-Some other goods we are waiting to come back from an adventure like this one >>>
