I spent two days on the southwest coast of Finland in late August 2025. My trip took me to Kimitoon, technically an island, in the region called Varsinais-Suomi, whose biggest city is the historic former capital Turku. It’s mostly rural with lots cottages and farms on the island. I then crossed over to the region Uusimaa, which includes the coastal cities of Tammisaari (also a “cottage hub” area) and Hanko. I visited both of those cities, and ended the day spending a lovely evening in Tammisaari. On my route, I stopped by the bridge connecting Kimitoon to the “mainland” by the small community of Strömma. It was raining. The fishermen were out. It was lovely.
Even shopping malls look mighty under clouds that hang over South Ostrobothnia, Finland. (Shot taken in Seinäjoki, Finland, August 2025)
I will be posting a large update later to my Finnish photo gallery on Flickr and some batches here. It’s been a very busy time with historic events unfold in the United States that are having me prioritize issues relating the safeguarding of U.S. democracy, in its now battered form, and the U.S. Constitution.
I also maintain a larger collections of stories, videos, podcasts, and photos on my website section dedicated to my connection to this great country, a land of some of my biological ancestors.
Today I learned, to my utter dismay, the historic Grand Canyon Lodge inside Grand Canyon National Park, on its North Rim, was destroyed by a wildfire.
There are few details outside of the initial announcement made the National Park Service the morning of July 13, 2025.
The lodge opened in 1937, and it has been run for years by the rapacious and problem-plagued Aramark concessionaire company, which for decades has poorly managed many national park public assets under government contract at parks like Grand Canyon.
A historic photo at the the the North Rim Lodge, taken in the late 1930s. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service, for Creative Commons use only.)
The lodge had one of the finest viewpoints I’ve ever had at any United States National Park, which serve as cultural and natural institutions that remain national treasures of all the American people. Long before white settlers stepped foot on the North American continent, all the lands in what is now Grand Canyon Park were the domain of indigenous tribes, who continue to call the area home.
As of midday July 13, 2025, two wildfires are burning on the North Rim, having burned more than 45,000 acres. The White Sage fire has burned 40,126 acres (16,200 hectares) near the North Rim, and the Dragon Bravo fire, burning to the south within Grand Canyon national park, has scorched 5,000 acres, according to the InciWeb website.
The moment I read the story about the blaze and destruction of the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, my mind raced back to the one night I spent there in September 2005.
I had flown down to Arizona from my then home in Anchorage, Alaska, to visit my old grad school roommate from our years together at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991 and after. He and his family had settled in beautiful Flagstaff. The trip allowed us to catch up and do an adventure–running across the Grand Canyon, one of the most famous and world-class trail runs in North America.
My friend and host, Jeff, was very ambitious.
Jeff plotted a run from the South Rim, to the North Rim, and then back (called “Rim to Rim to Rim,” in trail parlance). I would meet him at the Grand Canyon Lodge for the night and do the simpler and shorter “Rim to Rim run” (about 24 miles) from the North Rim to the South Rim only. My run is the classic run. Jeff’s run is for the truly hardcore trail runner, which he was at the time.
We got incredibly lucky, scoring a room in a cabin by the lodge that had a vacancy open up before I arrived. We had been prepared to camp out in the elements on the North Rim, but I am not sure how that would have worked. Even in late summer, it can be freezing at night. But fate was good to us.
Everything worked out perfectly. Jeff ran across solo safely to get our cabin room. I took the shuttle bus to the Grand Canyon Lodge, arriving after a five hour drive, near sunset, after spending the first half the day on the South Rim doing a canyon rim hike. We both got about four to five hours of sleep, awaking around 4 a.m. I ate a terrible pizza at the lodge’s subpar cafeteria to load up on carbohydrates.
We awoke in near freezing weather and darkness under the stars. We grabbed a photo in the dark at the North Rim Trailhead, just where the 6,000 foot descent to the Colorado begins.
I had a nasty spill that day, cutting open my hand on some sharp rocks, but otherwise the day was pure magic. We made excellent time, stopping at Phantom Ranch, by the Colorado River, to refill our Camelback water pouches and buy some food, and we got to the top of the South Rim by mid-afternoon.
I continued to do trail runs for many years after this epic outing, but this adventure, with a good friend, Jeff, remains my most memorable trail run.
I’ll always have that memory of standing on the edge of the canyon, at sunset, gazing at 2-billion-year-old metamorphic rocks turning purple and dark orange hues as the sun slowly slipped over the horizon.
Nothing ever truly lasts, but this news still fills me with sorrow. The country lost something special today that we will never have back.
(I published most of these photos 11 years earlier, and wanted to share them again with this memory of what is now gone forever: Grand Canyon Lodge.)
This is my friend, Lars, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in 1998 in Sisimiut, Greenland. He took me seal hunting with his family, at a fjord just north of the coastal city. I did this trip with his brother and father.
This past week, from March 23 to 28, 2025, the world again saw Greenland and Greenlanders at the center of a global security debate if the United States could assert control of Greenland, beyond longstanding and existing security arrangements that have seen U.S. military on the island continuously since World War II.
After the snow settled, one outcome was clear: Greenlanders are nobody’s fools.
The mostly ethnical Inuit population have called the more than 830,000-square-mile arctic island, the world’s largest, their home for nearly 5,000 years. Today, Greenlanders number about 57,000 residents, of which nearly 90 percent claim ethnic Inuit identity.
They are smart, resilient, and fiercely grounded in their identity as descendants for nearly five millennia of their homeland, what they call Kalaallit Nunaat in their Greenlandic language.
They are not pawns, patsies, or stupid.
I can say this based on my own experience, having befriended many residents there during my visits in 1998, 1999, and 2000. During my trips now more than a quarter century ago, I had lively discussions with Greenlanders who shared divergent views of becoming independent or staying aligned under semiautonomous status with Denmark.
What is clear is that Greenlanders made abundantly clear to the world they are opposed to coming under greater military and political control of the United States, as announced by the Trump administration.
(See my full story on the significance of Trump administration’s plan to take full control of Greenland on my website.)
Finland’s Independence Day, itsenäisyyspäivä, is celebrated each year on December 6. It commemorates the day the Finnish Parliament declared independence from Russia in 1917, as Europe was being torn apart by World War I and as Russia was convulsing in its own violent revolution. Finland would soon have its own bloody civil war soon after, in 1918, with the German-backed “whites” defeating the USSR-supported Finnish communist forces, the “reds,” with a decisive and destructive battle in Tampere led by Finnish war hero Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.
For the Finnish people, it marked the first time ever that the country was finally free of foreign domination after more than 700 years of colonization, Christianization, and conquest and rule by Sweden, from the mid-12th century to 1809. It then endured 108 years of Russian domination and rule. It finally became a nation amid the chaos of World War I.
After the Tsar’s rule was toppled, the Parliament of Finland made its Declaration of Finnish Independence on December 6, 1917. The new Nordic nation sent requests to be recognized as a sovereign country to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The Bosheviks in what became the USSR formally acknowledged Finnish independence on December 31, 1917.
Many Finnish citizens in most communities commemorate their independence with formal and solemn events, often involving war memorials than can be found in every city and every community, no matter how small, throughout the Nordic country, like this event planned for December 6, 2024 in Kuopio, at a memorial, or at churches, like this event the same day in Helsinki.
My Finnish relatives, who I only met for the first time in September 2023, told me the day for most Finns has special significance as a remembrance of the war dead, who died in Finland’s three conflicts during World War II: The Winter War, against the USSR (1939-40); the Continuation War (1941-44), against the USSR; the Lapland War against Nazi Germany (former ally, 1944-45). Some of the pictures I’m seeing posted as day awakens in Finland on December 6, 2024, are of people reading the great Finnish war novel, Väinö Linna’s The Unknown Soldier/Tuntematon Sotilas.
It was a brutal time, when Finland, a much smaller nation, faced an adversary with vastly superior resources and weaponry and withstood an unprovoked attack at great cost. Finland ultimately lost more than 10 percent of its land, but was never brutally occupied by the USSR like Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, or like other Nordic countries, Denmark and Norway, by Nazi Germany. However, the Nazis fought a scorched earth campaign in late 1944 and early 1945 against Finland when Finland turned on them to reclaim their nation and make peace with the USSR. The Germans left a trail of ruin as they were driven from Lapland, where they once were stationed as allies. The harsh peace signed with the USSR ultimately saw Finland retain its territorial integrity and maintain its independence against heavy odds.
During my three trips to Finland since August 2023, I have been documenting the way the country and its people remember the trauma of these wars, taking photographs of its war memorials and markers for the dead. Nothing has shaped modern Finnish identity more than these conflicts that took 95,000 lives of its soldiers between 1939 and 1945. Finland’s remembrance of these traumatic experiences are found in nearly every Finnish community, no matter the size or location.
Every city and village I visited had memorials. All of them. So I would stop my rental car, get out, and document what I found. Flowers were always fresh. Always. Every memorial I saw everywhere had fresh flowers. Everyone I went to had visitors. The past was always remembered. If you look for Finnish news of itsenäisyyspäivä, inevitably there will a photo at a memorial.
I’m getting to be an old fart. As such, I actually want to do another Baltic Sea crossing between Sweden and Finland on these cruise ships. They are fun. On my trip from Turku to Stockholm on the Viking line, I met a fabulous German couple who even guided me nicely to downloading the right local transport app and picking the right bus and subways to the central station from the ferry terminal in beautiful Stockholm. How about that! Also, you get to behold old farts like me disco dancing in the discos, the mad rush to buy duty-free booze by huge crowds of Nordic travelers stocking up for months, and the wonderful upper deck views of this lovely part of the world.
(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate gallery picture page)
Freshly back from my glorious 11-day trip in Finland in September 2023, I have begun seeing a surprising number of articles on Finnish saunas.
On November 24, 2023, the BBC ran a multimedia spread under the banner “Saunas: The essence of Finland’s heartbeat,” featuring a refreshingly accurate video by Maria Teresa Alvarado, aided by producer by Natalia Guerrero. The video began showing a scene of a typical Finnish sauna, with a Finnish voice saying, “A Finn without a sauna is like a polar bear without ice and snow.”
A traditional outdoor sauna, located next to Lake Saimaa, north of Savonlinna
A month earlier, on October 24, 2023, the famed British news service ran another glowing piece called “The 10,000-year-old origins of the sauna – and why it’s still going strong,” on this ancient Finnish tradition of taking hot air baths in wooden sheds that stimulate excessive sweating, often followed by immersion in cold water, snow, or cold weather.
Finland’s Baltic neighbor Estonia shares an equally old sauna tradition, and its sauna traditions this year are getting buzz thanks to the film “Smoked Sauna Sisterhood” (“Savusanna Sõsarad” in Estonian), a 2023 documentary on that country’s ancient sauna tradition and the women who partake in it. It just won the best documentary film award on December 9, 2023 at the European Film Awards.
Saunas: hot, hot, hot everywhere!
Yes, saunas are clearly the sweaty, hot ticket in many spaces.
Even in the U.S. medical establishment, which has never embraced practices that can’t be tied to for-profit enterprises that prioritize profit over health, some medical researchers are suddenly acknowledging the extensive and documented health benefits of saunas.
The modern Finnish sauna is but one of many “sweat lodges” and saunas that emerged globally, but none more famously than the Finnish sauna.
The BBC’s October 24, 2023 story by Clare Dowdy explored the history of the sauna in Finland and the Baltic region and its cultural significance to Finland, from the past to present: “In Finland, the sauna is ‘one of the key national symbols’, says [Dalva] Lamminmäki, precisely because it’s very much an everyday ritual for Finns, with 3.3 million saunas in a country of 5.5 million inhabitants. ‘Everyday practices are relevant to national identity also because over time they form a widely shared understanding of the culture and what it is like to be a citizen of a country,’ she adds, ‘It’s said that sauna creates a basis for understanding what Finnishness is.’”
This week, I stumbled on still another glowing article, published in The Guardian on December 6, 2023 , on the foundational importance of sauna’s to Finland’s enviable status as the “happiest country in the world” six years in a row.
Writer Miranda Bryant visited Tampere, “sauna capital of Finland,” and explored its well-known public saunas—the city boast almost five dozen of them. Bryant praised the tradition and suggested they are a foundation to Finland’s success creating national wellbeing.
“Unlike in other countries, where saunas are usually marketed as an expensive activity for the few, in Finland they have a far more everyday role,” writes Bryant. “Many people have saunas in their homes; lots of older Finnish people were even born in saunas. But they are also considered a sacred space and a place to find community as well as peace.”
The difference between real and fake sauna experiences
It could be that I’m more aware of saunas because I used them and sought out traditional and public sauna experiences during my trip in Finland.
Rudy Owens experiencing the pleasure of a traditional wood-burning sauna next to Lake Saimaa.
I also think saunas are now trending as the latest “it” thing in wellness or boutique healthcare that really is a mask for old-fashioned narcissism.
This week, I saw a mobile sauna being advertised for a price of $45 for an hour at a Portland event. The branding of this new fad in “Instagram poseur” imagery typically leans heavily into maximum cleavage and/or a hot yoga bod, with the sumptuous sauna user looking sumptuously fulfilled.
From what I can tell, that is how many sauna services and products are marketed to U.S. consumers—something for “special” people, meaning those who are sexier, more charismatic, and definitely healthier than you. They definitely have a hotter bod than you too!
Public sauna, Helsinki, and not a hot body in sight
I eventually hit a breaking point on the corruption and meaning of saunas, to human health and to their egalitarian and cultural roots in Finland, but also Estonia, other Baltic countries, and also Russia through hot baths called banya.
I especially appreciated the photos of saunas that Bryant profiled in her Guardian feature story, and also on the City of Tampere’s tourism website promoting the city’s many facilities. That webpage, showing people of all different body types—not one a smoking beauty—notes: “Did you know there are over 55 public saunas in Tampere region for anyone to relax in, throughout the year? Finnish sauna culture is also a part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list.”
I decided to borrow some images I found on websites that showcase differences between U.S. and Finnish sauna imagery for editorial commentary.
These honest pictures matter, because they show a sauna is not the domain of Instagram narcissists. They show guys half naked drinking beer outside or people of all body types wandering outdoors in the cold after plunging into a frozen lake. That’s how they do it. And they are really wonderful.
After hitting my sauna boiling point, practically steaming, I kvetched to some of my Finnish relatives who live in Tampere (I know, isn’t that a cool coincidence!) on how American “entrepreneurs” are trying to turn saunas into snobby, high-end, upper middle-class, white, health salvation spas for the “right kind of people,” promoted by scantily clad sexpots showing beaucoup de cleavage and draped in towels. I shared it was driving me nuts. They all responded with funny emojis, and one of them suggested I needed to join them at Tampere’s Rauhaniemi folk spa, which has a nice, icy-lake, winter swimming option.
I’m glad we are seeing the far more realistic image of what saunas are like.
They are very democratic and plebeian, especially in countries like Estonia and Finland. Naked typical bodies are not oozing with steam like yoga skankiness. There, the sweaty bodies are rather normal looking. And in a sauna, you show the flesh in all its perfectly imperfect glory.
(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
Consistent with my “all things that are cool are Finnish” approach to thinking now, I found wonderful nuggets of new insights from books I have been reading about one of my ancestral homelands, Finland.
For those who may never check out books from a library, this summary is for the lay person who doesn’t want to wade through data summaries on health, education, longevity, maternal care, and income inequality, which Finland continues to excel at relative to nearly every developed country.
One area where Finland shines is the country’s national character. That character is defined by an important concept and word called “sisu.” I connect deeply to this idea too, and I could see it during my trip there in September 2023.
This is what Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, authors of the wonderful book published in 2020 on Finland’s successes as a nation, called Finntopia, wrote in describing what sisu means. It is, my view, one reason why Finland to stands out among all developed nations. I see their national successes tied to their cultural identity.
According to Dorling and Koljonen: “The clue is the word, ‘sisus,’ which [in Finnish] is literally the interior, or inside of a thing or a being. Then it hit me that sisu is like the somatic embodiment of mental toughness. What we attribute to the mind–our strength and ability to keep going no matter what–is also reflected in our bodies, in our physical being.”
For me, the power of sisu is very personal. It resonates with everything I do in life and the things that have meant the most to me in helping me a better person.
As I’ve long said, I connected to this part of myself, the part I had to find through hard times, which in the end, led to things that I cherish now. Maybe there is something genetic that connects me to my Finnish ancestors in how I ended up.
Yes, I believe that to be true. Ask a Finnish person what makes them Finnish, and you may hear them explain sisu.
Rare calm waves visited the north coast of Oregon on March 18, 2023, bringing out dozens of surfers from miles around.
As my work day closed on the first day of spring, when those in the Northern Hemisphere recognize the vernal equinox, I also learned it was another important day.
Since July 2012, the United Nations has recognized March 20 as “the International Day of Happiness, recognizing the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives.”
The promise of a day surfing brings out my best, always.
The first day honoring happiness was observed on March 20, 2013. And I have been ignorant of the event for more than 10 years, it appears. Shame on me.
In its naming of a day dedicated to happiness, the body also “recognized the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples.”
I have a lot more work to do to address issues that promote the happiness and well-being of all peoples. I come up far, far short.
From time to time I also need to care for my spirit. I long ago realized I could do little for others if I did not tend to myself. When the weather and free time allow it, I practice self-care in the Pacific Ocean, with a surfboard, to disconnect from things that weigh on me. Surfing for just a couple of hours allows me to just live in the moment to recalibrate my priorities.
By doing this I can better focus on what really matters in my life and what I do for others.
I hope everyone had a great day and will work the rest of the year with the well-being of others in their own, special way.
I normally try to avoid popular tourist dens when I travel.
I prefer to learn about new places and not expose myself to the corporate, global tourism culture that makes holidays to Bali, Cancun, and Paris all blur into bland rituals to relax those wealthy enough to fly around the world for temporary pleasure.
In late October 2022, when I took a long overdue short holiday, I had little time to plan for a true learning adventure. I found myself suddenly between two jobs and a small window to organize. That meant I needed to find a place that aligned with my interests and could be reached quickly.
My plot emerged overnight—to surf in warm, tropical waters. I had nursed this scheme for years. This also meant breaking my self-imposed travel rules.
After six years of surfing in the cold Pacific waters off Oregon’s shores, I craved warmth. By the time I booked this trip the last week of October 2022, I had been irregularly surfing the cold, feisty waters of the Oregon Coast since 2016. That also made me an almost entirely cold-water surfer. (I don’t count my few past efforts in Hawaii in 2009 or Australia in 2007 as real surfing outings.)
I booked a three-night, four-day trip to one of the most famous of tourist destinations in the Pacific, on the Island of Oahu. Traveling to Waikiki meant I was embracing its long-documented excesses symbolizing global tourism, especially for Americans and Japanese travelers.
The least I could do on the trip was learn more about the place.
I soon discovered after booking my trip that Waikiki was once a sacred site, rich in aquaculture and sea harvesting for native Hawaiians. The last century saw it paved, developed, and transformed into a tourist haven, attracting millions of annual visitors the world over.
That transformation damaged the local environment and displaced its original inhabitants, all through the historic systems of colonialism and global capitalism. My self-described adventure would reward this victorious new reality. My consolation would be honoring the sport Hawaii generously gave to the modern world—surfing.
I found a surprisingly affordable hotel, the Pearl Waikiki. It catered to budget travellers like me, by Hawaiian tourist standards. It also put me a short walking distance from Queens, a gentle surf spot, where I surfed for three days. I needed a place that allowed me to rent a board and put in the ocean without driving. I literally could pick up my board from the surf shop, walk two blocks to the famous Waikiki Beach, and paddle out.
Offshore adventures
As surfing goes, I am not that great. I rented mediocre boards, not a performance board. That was a mistake. The shop owners seemed reluctant to let me rent a nicer board, or maybe we had a simple misunderstanding. It may not have mattered, really.
Waikiki’s surfer sculpture was created by sculptor Robert Pashby and erected in June 2003.
Still I was able to catch my requisite number of rides, most on my final day. I will never forget my final ride and the sounds of the board slapping on the wave face as I rode a beautiful break to the shoreline.
The waves were at most four feet high, and the swells came in irregularly. Most of the time I spent in the water with other surfers consisted of gazing at the sea, bobbing in the small swells, and waiting.
In short, I did what surfers mostly do.
The water sparkled a rich, aqua-marine blue. Best of all, the water measured a very warm 79-81 degrees Fahrenheit. For an Oregon surfer, who has always worn a 5-4 wetsuit for cold water, this represented a radical change. I could wear board shorts and a rash guard surfing shirt and not once shiver.
For some of my hours floating in the water, rainy clouds painted rainbows above the nearby Diamond Head crater and the skyline filled with bland, tall Waikiki hotels. The surf reports I followed predicted larger swells. They never rolled in.
Out in the water, I found some nice moments of surf fellowship with some older local men. They rode old, beat-up long boards. They were as hungry for nice waves as I was. Like me, they came out in the early morning, just after 6 a.m., enjoying surf time, but taking it seriously too. Surfing is serious business, even if its spirit lies in finding moments of peace.
Finding a wave also requires a mixture of patience and positioning. One waits, while constantly reading the ocean for signals where to paddle one’s board for just the right ride. When they come, everyone moves into position.
Over the three days I surfed, I saw about a dozen male surfers who could be called hot shots. Some were haoles, or white guys, who to me looked like corporate lawyers in surfing gear. They didn’t smile much as they confidently popped up and cut their lines effortlessly in front of beginners to remind them who the alphas were, even at a mostly tourist surf break. Most of the surfers at Queens were visitors, like me.
I also could not believe how fit and beautiful some of the local women surfers looked. They resembled advertisements for women’s sport fashion brands, with perfectly sculpted bodies that came straight from a Patagonia women’s swimwear photo shoot. I had not seen such fit and good-looking people like this in a long time, at least in the water. They reminded me how much this sport attracts the beautiful, the confident, and the strong.
There were other locals who did not look like statuesque surf pros I see on YouTube channels dedicated to global surfing. But one could tell they lived here. They had the moves, knew the waves at this break, and mastered the take offs at always the right second. I loved their style.
Mostly, I appreciated the laid-back vibe. Even when the irregular good wave came, with a dozen riders paddling at once to catch it, no one barked at newcomers for violating the unwritten but clearly known surf etiquette. Those globally recognized norms, which create order when there could be chaos and real conflict, were egregiously violated by nearly everyone.
Even then, no one yelled or gave the “stink eye” glare of surfing displeasure. After one wave, I quickly apologized to a surfer my age, who I thought I had cut off, and he waved it off saying, “No worries, man. This is Waikiki.”
Onshore adventures
When I wasn’t surfing, I explored the area just east of the Waikiki strip that includes the state monument site called Diamond Head. The caldera can be seen nearly every post card ever taken at Waikiki and looking east on the shore. Geologist suggest the crater was formed about 300,000 years ago, during a single and explosive eruption.
Today most of the site is protected, but accessible to hikers for a small entrance fee to hike to the crater’s rim, with its surrounding slopes off-limits to all. The state estimates more than 1 million visitors a year visit the crater, trudging up to the crater overlook that points to Waikiki’s hotel skyline.
From my hotel door out and back, going around this extinct volcano, I estimated the distance at six miles, with change. It was a perfect runner’s outing too. The air temperatures both mornings were a bit warm, at 85 degrees Fahrenheit. I came back a sweaty mess, the way a good run should leave one. My foot-only adventures turned into my unexpected trip surprises, taking me to a famous local spot, but one rich in beauty and natural wonder.
My running route, and also one used by perhaps tens of thousands of runners before me, passed on a bike path and multi-use trail surrounding the crater. Even as a natural monument, it also is fully surrounded by developments and high-end homes on its southern face looking onto the Pacific Ocean.
My run hugged Kapiʻolani Regional Park, past the Waikiki Shell performance stage and Honolulu Zoo, up Monsarrat Avenue, and the around the crater’s outer walls. In addition to the expensive homes with ocean views on the south side of the crater, I passed Kapiʻolani Community College and the State of Hawaii Department of Defense headquarters.
I took this selfie of me and and Diamond Head at Kapiʻolani Regional Park, which was once a sacred area to native Hawaiian people.
Best of all, my route gave me a perfect overlook of two amazing surf spots called Cliffs and Lighthouse. From this overlook I could see the local “heavies” riding beautiful waves in the mid-morning when I did my runs.
At the overlook, I talked to a local man in his late 50s, who likely had Chinese ancestry, or maybe mixed heritage, as do so many in the state. He was smiling and still dripping wet. He had just wrapped up his morning set with a short board. He let me know both spots would welcome newcomers.
He said he didn’t have a good outing, but his face was beaming that glow a surfer wears when they come out of the water. I felt a bond with him as only surfers can feel discussing the waves and surf locations. Unfortunately, my trip did not involve renting a car or getting to know the local surf spots.
A short trip into Hawaii’s past
My second unexpected highlight happened during my day-trip to historic sites in downtown Honolulu. I reached them using the island’s reliable and renown local public transit system called “TheBus.”
Downtown Honolulu seemed like a ghost town when I went there my second day on the island. The downtown historic, government, and cultural area surrounds the modernist State Capitol building and colonial style state judiciary and pre-statehood administrative buildings. The area is walkable and well worth a half-day visit.
These were residences of white missionaries from the newly formed United States. One of the earliest missionaries, famed Vermont-born Congregationalist minister and colonialist Hiram Bingham, arrived to the islands in 1820 with other devout Protestants.
Like many of his stern Protestant peers, Bingham was uncomfortable with the culture and indiginous residents he observed. His goal was to replace local culture in the name of Western progress.
In his accounts written 27 years after his “first encounter” with the still unknown culture, Bingham wrote: “As we proceeded to the shore, the multitudinous, shouting and almost naked natives, of every age, sex, and rank, swimming, floating on surfboards, sailing in canoes, sitting, lounging, standing running like sheep, dancing…attracted our earnest attention, and exhibited the appalling darkness of the land, which we had come to enlighten.”
Today, the sights of Hawaiians expressing their indigenous culture that so worried Bingham is the same media-conjured image and Hawaii brand drawing visitors the world over to the state.
A tribute by Bingham’s relatives to the New England preacher is still inscribed in stone on the front wall of the historic Kawaiahaʻo Church that Bingham founded, found next to the mission homes. The engraved homage celebrates his and his New England peers’ colonizing efforts and reads like a painful artifact of white, American expansionism.
The missionaries’ played an important role in creating a dominant, white colonialist culture—amid the arrival of many other immigrants from Asia and Portugal—that influenced the island’s development in the 1800s. One researcher on the impact of the first missionaries, Anatole Brown, noted the missionaries’ impact expanded far beyond the missionary period that formally ended a few decades after their arrival: “By the time the U.S. Navy took interest in the Islands by mid-nineteenth century, the American colonial process was in full swing, as Bibles moved onto guns.”
The colonial process launched by the white settlers ultimately paved the way for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in January 1893 by the American government and business interests, in what can be consider an act of war. That cultural and political assimilation almost crushed local Hawaiian culture and cultural traditions in the process, like surfing and hula, which are now the living symbols of Hawaii in the minds of the world.
I next stopped to pay my homage to the statue of the legendary Hawaiian King Kamehameha, the monarch from the Big Island of Hawaii, who invaded at Waikiki in 1795, defeating the island’s local ruler, Chief Kalanikupule. He then unified all of the islands in 1810, when King Kaumualii of Kaui island surrendered peacefully. His statue stands proudly in front the Al’iolani Hale Justice Building. Within a century of Kamehameha’s triumph, the islands would succumb to outside conquerors and far more deadly diseases.
Across from the statue’s outstretched arms is the last home of Hawaii’s monarchs, called the Iolanai Palace. The palace was built by Hawaii’s final king, Kalakaua, in 1882. It remained the house of Hawaii’s royalty until Queen Lili’uokalani, the king’s sister and successor, was overthrown in the January 1893 coup, engineered by a business cabal called the Committee of Safety and led by the U.S. military.
I did not go in, but walked around the expansive palace grounds. Just north of that one finds the State Capitol, completed in 1969. The modernist, square-shaped building has an open-air courtyard, where the midday sun shone down. The building was designed to be unlike most state capitols that mimic classical Roman architectural style. It’s considered one of the most accessible state capitols, where legislative and executive offices are open to the public.
Hanging on its front entrance, by the bronze statue of the overthrown monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani, hangs the 15-foot wide, massive bronze state seal. The emblem shows the state’s royal coat of arms, the seal of the former Hawaiian Kingdom and the 50th state since 1959.
I next walked west across the street from the Iolani Palace, to visit the Hawaii State Art Museum. The museum is free and found on the second floor of the Capitol District Building, a Spanish Mission revival style building built in 1928.
During my visit, the Turnaround Gallery of the facility was hosting a collection of black and white photos taken by photographer Ed Greevy. The collection of remarkable black and white photos document his decades-long collaboration with Hawaiian activist Haunani-Kay Trask. They show different chapters of the state’s environmental and social justice movements. The photos are found in the book “Kūʻē: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawaiʻi.”
The images show resistance protests for Hawaiian sovereignty, starting in the 1970s, and scenes of civil protests against forced evictions, loss of affordable housing for local residents, and the building of the interstate highway across the backbone of Oahu’s mountain range separating the north and south shores.
The gallery exhibit also revealed the clashes on the Islands that began far before the protest period. They continue to this day. Throughout the decades of conflict and change, Hawaiian culture thrived. That can be seen most clearly through the sport of surfing and the first global ambassador of the sport, who grew up in nearby Waikiki.
Waikiki’s legend
If it wasn’t for the legendary exploits of famed Oahu and Waikiki native Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the forced cultural assimilation by outsiders might have succeeded. His life both reflects and embodies how his Waikiki childhood home turned into its meta-mythical destination for visitors like me.
Kahanamoku was born into Hawaiian royalty in 1890. By that year, Hawaii’s native population had dramatically dropped due to imported diseases brought by missionaries, explorers, and whalers. The imported epidemics of infections, including measles, smallpox, and whooping cough, wiped out Hawaii’s population. It fell precipitously from approximately 300,000 at the time of Captain Cook’s first arrival in 1778 to 135,000 in 1820, and 53,900 in 1876. Kahanamoku grew up in the aftermath of this radical change that nearly destroyed his people.
During his 73 years, until his passing in 1968, Kahanamoku achieved global fame in multiple fields and became a living embodiment of his people. Kahanamoku was the first person to be inducted in the Surfing and Swimming halls of fame, a testament to his life in and around water on Oahu.
Kahanamoku rose to stardom first as an Olympics swimmer and Hawaii tourism promoter.
The island’s business elite paid for his participation in events like the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, in San Francisco in 1915, to promote the Islands’ emerging nascent tourism industry. There he performed the hula, played the ukulele, and posed for photographs in traditional Hawaiian clothes. He also competed for the U.S. team in three Olympics: 1912 in Stockholm, 1920 in Antwerp, and 1924 in Paris, last competing at the age of 34. All told he won three gold and two silver medals for a country to which Hawaii was still relegated to territorial status, and only recently occupied militarily.
In the 1920s, he lived in southern California during the early years of Hollywood. He found bit parts as a minor screen actor in more than 25 films. Unfortunately, he was cast in “ethnic” roles because of deep racial biases in the studios and wider culture. But his legend as a surf promoter took root.
Kahanamoku also had achieved renown as a surfer and surf ambassador. In 1915, he traveled to Australia, to Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, introducing the Hawaiian sporting tradition to the continent that is now synonymous with surfing.
According to one account of this trip, “Duke and Australian surfers sealed an eternal alliance.” His most legendary ride took place in 1917, when he reportedly rode the largest wave ever, towering some 30 feet, at Waikiki on his 16-foot wooden long board. Kahanamoku reportedly caught the monster at a surf spot called Castle’s, off Waikiki, and took it all the way to another surf break called Publics, by Kapiolani Park, then into Cunha’s.
In California, during his Hollywood years, he popularized the nascent sport, taking out his long wooden board and visiting now-famous surfing spots, such as San Diego, Newport Beach, Santa Monica and Malibu.
In the 1930s, Hawaii’s so-called “waterman” returned to his native home. Kahanamoku was elected sheriff of the City and County of Honolulu in 1935, and then held that role for 13 terms, including the entirety of World War II. For his final life act, he was appointed and served as the official “Ambassador of Aloha” after statehood was granted in 1959—a position that embodied how he lived his life, according to many from Hawaii.
“The Duke,” as he is forever and famously known to surfers and the wider public, died in 1968, just at the global sport of surfing was taking off with surf movies, global tourism, and surf-themed rock and popular music. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean at Waikiki.
Even before his death, his legacy was questioned because of his Christian faith (his mother was a devout Christian) and his perceived deference in the early 20th century to Hawaii’s self-named Committee of Safety—the powerful business group that two decades earlier had ousted Hawaii’s last ruling royal monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani. The group had employed him and bought him a home in his beloved Waikiki.
Despite Kahanamoku’s controversial ties from his early life, in an era of rampant prejudice, his fame has grown, just like the global sport and lifestyle he helped to pioneer. In fact, his name and legend continue to grow in value.
In recent years, Kahanamoku’s surviving kin and the super-rich elite of Hawaii have locked legal horns over ownership of his lucrative global name and brand. “More significant, though, is the anger that the war has aroused among native Hawaiians, who perceive it as an appalling exploitation of a revered cultural icon,” noted a Nov. 16, 2003, Los Angeles Times story on the legal dispute over his name and legacy. “The conflict brings into focus a growing tension in Hawaii, unseen by most tourists, but a bitter, daily reality to island natives—a stinging reminder of a culture lost to commercialism.”
Final aloha
Like many visiting Waikiki, my trip would not have been complete without watching a traditional Hawaiian music and dance show on Waikiki beach. It seemed to embody the clash of Hawaii’s surviving culture and the tourist-driven capitalism visible in the international hotels that overlooked this famous stretch of sand and water.
They paved paradise and put in a tourist spot.
Several times a week the shows take place at sunset at the Kuhio Beach stage, near the water’s edge, for visiting tourists. The Hawaiian performers, with dancers, singers, and instrumentalists, share traditional Hawaiian performances and songs after the sun sets and the last surfers pull out their boards from the water. I could effortlessly watch and listen to Hawaiian music and dance every day, and the performance I saw genuinely shared the aloha spirit.
Close to this spot, next to Waikiki beach, stands the popular bronze statue of “The Duke,” with has both arms outstretched and a his signature long, wooden Hawaiian wooden surfboard planted in the ground and towering above him.
During my short stay in Waikiki, the statue was constantly mobbed with visitors, who posed in front of it. Many smiled while mimicking Kahanamoku’s pose. Each time I passed by, I saw a line of visitors from Japan who must have known of his legend, judging by their eagerness to pose next to the bronze replica, adorned daily with fresh flower necklaces called leis.
Like them, and countless tens of thousands of tourists before me, I also snapped my obligatory selfie with my cell phone. As a passable surfer, I smiled in appreciation of the gift “the Duke” and the Hawaiian people freely gave to the world. It felt like a respectable thing to do, even when the world now claimed Duke’s ancestral home and the lands of the first Hawaiian people as a manufactured “paradise” for an escape from our realities back home, wherever home might be.
What Beautiful Light 