Mauna Kea (Lessons)

Below, is an excerpt from my debut novel, “Lucid Sacred Dreams” which recaps my trip on New Year’s Eve 2018 to Mauna Kea. As fate would have it, this pre-dates the current protests taking place which has become the formative spiritual, cultural and indigenous issue currently in the heart of Pacific paradise.

Often, it isn’t until one leaves Oahu to island hop that they see the state for what it mostly is. There’s no real mystery as to why. One million people reside on the tiny island of Oahu, along with all the vacationing tourists and military who don’t claim Hawaii as their home state on taxes. The place is packed. To find quiet places requires effort. On the other islands, it’s the complete opposite.

A desire built up where I was seeking quiet and serenity and a unique experience. As a result, I decided I would go to the top of Mauna Kea for New Year’s Eve. Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano that doubles as the highest point within the state, some 13,000 feet in the air. It also triples as the home to some of the world’s most important space observatories.

Always one to desire a unique experience I wanted to watch the last sunset of 2018 from near solitude, far away from most people. Also, The Milky Way has never been something I’ve seen in all its true glory as a city-dweller. To get a glimpse of the heavens and experience them in their true form was an enticing proposition.

Fate had cast my dice, and I booked the trip. The flight was quick with the plane never going above 10,000 feet. This became apparent when arriving into the Big Island’s air space. We flew alongside Mauna Kea, and I could look up to where I was destined to ascend the next day.

Near the airport was a hotel up against the coast I stayed at in the sleepy city of Hilo. Mauna Kea wasn’t until the next day, so I decided to hang at the hotel bar.

This local watering hole had the feeling of an everyone knows everyone sort of deal, and this theory was validated when it seemed like I was the only person who didn’t dive into a friendly conversation immediately after sitting on their seat.

Fortunately, people began introducing themselves to me. They wanted to know what part of the state I was from since they had never seen me on the island before.

It isn’t uncommon for locals to assume I’m from their region of the world. When deployed to the Middle East, during a port visit to Dubai, locals began speaking to me in Arabic. When I went on mission trips to Ecuador and Guatemala in my teenage years, locals spoke to me in Spanish, assuming it was my native tongue. Growing up in an Italian part of Syracuse with the last name Guardipee, people always assumed I was Italian. My tan skin has always helped me blend in.

Of course, it’s had an opposite effect, too. For example, there was an incident during my year of training at Great Lakes where a friend and I went out to this small town called Libertyville for a quick night of drinking.

It was there, at a wine bar of all places, that a racist and bald white dude in his mid forties began to tell me I could never really be in the military because I “looked like the enemy.” He was a nice guy, for sure, especially when he attempted to assault me. It was a shame when the whole town’s police force pulled up and dragged him away.

Here, I quickly learned that Hilo was a safe place for me. Immediately, the locals felt comfortable with me and began to speak in their local pigeon talk, which is nothing more than a unique brand of English. It’s hard to follow if you don’t know the key slang phrases.

When they realized I wasn’t one of them, they were curious about my nationality. It’s been the same scenario my entire life.

I let the locals know I was half-Native American and half-French Canadian but born and grew up in the state of New York, which obviously meant I was simply an American. They resonated and connected with the native side of me, wanting to know what tribe I was from.

On this night, the locals told me the state’s real history with America. For example, history generally states that Queen Liliuokalani agreed to sign a treaty with America, which was the genesis for the islands’ eventually becoming the state of Hawaii.

What history conveniently leaves out, however, is that she was placed under house arrest and essentially had a gun pointed to her head, forcing her to sign it.

Manifest Destiny called for control and influence in the Pacific Ocean, and the Hawaiian islands are forever located in the perfect spot to make this a reality. True Hawaiians — the kind who have been here ever since these islands were first discovered — view reality through this lens alone. They don’t consider themselves Americans.

At best, they begrudgingly agree to this idea, still desiring to secede and form their own nation. In many ways, they already have. In this way, they have a shared history with indigenous people within North America.

To make a long story short, being indigenous made them like me. While they shared the whole tale of their people’s history, I learned a lot more along the way. It was a unique night to experience at a bar, of all places. I flew here to experience something new and learn, so this was a great start.

Pushing forward with friendly conversation, I told the locals at the bar about my plan to experience Mauna Kea the next night, which ignited a whole new conversation. I learned that the top of this mountain, the highest point of all the islands, was one of their most sacred spots of land.

For ages, locals would take the journey to the top for various spiritual reasons. It was holy land invaded by scientific observatories. Mauna Kea, I learned, was one of those hot button issue locations.

Land preservation is a constant battle in Hawaii and this made me think back to Ka’ena Point. It was at this spiritual location that I had my personal revelation about the desire to help a people I had never known, indigenous people. It’s also the last time, if I were to be honest, I truly entertained the thought or made actual plans to push forward with it.

Life offers everyone luck at times and this was a time where I found myself being the lucky one, having randomly picked New Year’s Eve at a location that was an important spiritual place for Hawaiians. I had planned this getaway to refocus and finally push forward, and Mauna Kea was perfect.

The night ended with me being quite tipsy, so I went to bed and slept through most of the day. Before I knew it, it was time to take the journey to Mauna Kea as sunset approached. Don’t get me wrong — this wasn’t a hike. It was a van ride, albeit bumpy at times.

Along the way, you see different lava flows from different centuries that built up over time. The Big Island is quite rainy and, about halfway through the trip, you’ll wonder if you made a mistake by paying to see the stars in such a cloudy place.

Worries soon disappear when you head into the clouds, eventually rising over them as you approach the mountain’s base camp. At about 9,000 feet, you have to stop here so your body can adjust to the elevation change. Here, I certainly began to feel light-headed.

After about forty-five minutes at the camp, we continued our journey in a van full of eight people to the top of the mountain. There, I witnessed the last sunset of 2018 from one of the highest viewpoints in the world. Breathing was laborious, and my lightheadedness had me feeling a bit loopy. Plus, it was cold as hell. Snow was at the top. It was all worth it, though.

I have a theory that people have alway enjoyed mountaintop views because we have something inside of us that isn’t wholly defined but calls us to understand something deeper and greater than the sum of who we are.

When you reach a mountaintop, you see the world from a different point of view. In doing so, you may be able to tap into a different pattern of thought to help you reach deeper within yourself, to learn some sort of hidden truth. Or, maybe, it’s just cool to see really far. You can be the judge.

At the end of 2018, at 13,000 feet I watched the sun go past the horizon. It was slowly but surely followed by the heavens as they woke up to reveal their full glory as the darkness of night came into full bloom.

After sunset, you have to leave the observatory area to head back down to the base camp. Before leaving, though, I noticed that the highest point of the mountain held an altar that Hawaiians made to honor their belief system.

My mind’s gears began to turn. I thought back to the conversations I had the night before with the locals and how they worried construction was going to fully overtake their sacred part of the island, permanently damaging their spiritual traditions.

Base camp is still above the clouds, which meant I had a perfect view of the Milky Way. My van received a special star tour from the knowledgeable driver. While he spoke, my mind wandered to the glory of the heavens. I began to think about how many ancient cultures from all over the world share similar narratives, such as a flood story.

Additionally, I thought about the basic flow of information and its purpose. Grandparents and parents, for example, teach their children and grandchildren things they’ve learned, often deriving from their own personal experience or, even better, from their grandparents’ and parents’ experiences. This is so the young can gain knowledge through time and history.

In the same way, cultures pass down memory through their stories and tales. When cultures from completely different points of the world with no connection whatsoever, that we know of, give similar interpretations of events or shared stories that seem to register a same incident in history, one is left to wonder about the true nature of past events. But I digress.

For me, more importantly, I remembered some of my original thoughts from my eye-opening experience months earlier. I was compelled by the idea that there was this whole continent’s worth of stories from the past mixed with ideas, morals, and a certain way of life that had endured for thousands of years. This way of life was shunned from the global conversation.

It’s an irresponsible action in my opinion. Even more irresponsible was my choice to recognize this, make a decision to act on it, then completely bury this thought for the past few months. I chose instead to waste months chasing after personal and selfish indulgence with the gift that had opened my eyes in the first place.

In short, Mauna Kea sobered my mind up and led to an increased level of focus, just like any spiritual significant place could do to a person who entered with a willing heart and mind. I was refocused and reenergized, to say the least.

Click Here to purchase my debut novel, “Lucid Sacred Dreams.”

Click Here to listen to the first chapter audio version.