Armine von tempski born in paradise

Perhaps the writing of a memoir is the most important writing that we can do because it delivers history directly from the perspective of the one who lived it. Just imagine how much more accurate our knowledge of history would be if everyone that had lived had written a memoir. At the very least it would relieve readers from the bias inflicted by the narrow perspective of a single history writer. Certainly, it would help us to understand one another much better.

Reading a memoir such as this underscores for us how ephemeral our life actually is, that we are mere organisms flourishing for a short time amidst an ecosystem that continues on and on beyond us. The Maui that I saw during my visit there is drastically different from the one painted by this narrator and the current Maui is similarly destined for inexorable and unceasing change. My experience hiking in the volcanic craters was much different than that of the narrator. She describes the mystic isolation of the place while I find myself part of a seemingly endless line of tourists streaming through the crater single file, like a path of ants across the ground.


Me hiking across desolate Hawaiian crater

Interestingly though, one of the ants was my guide, an environmentalist specializing in invasive species, who kept pointing out the plants that were indigenous versus those that were invasive. As we descended into the vast crater, I quickly grew tired of this guide’s denigration of certain plant species, as many of them appeared very beautiful to me and certainly not eyesores on the landscape.


Beautiful and tough shrub arising despite the largely impervious lava

At one point I drew the guide into a discussion concerning the origination of the Hawaiian Islands and the fact that each island arose from the sea floor and was initially barren when it first emerged above the sea. The guide agreed that the very first of flora and fauna made it to the islands by way of e