Paradise, Protected

The Niaulani Forest, owned and operated by the Volcano Arts Center, may be the closest thing to original paradise that remains on the Big Island. Because Volcano Village is situated above the active lava vent, the town has been spared from hundreds of years of flows. Tim Tunnison, former Land Manager of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, estimates the age of the oldest o’hia here to be upwards of 400 years old – ancient, especially by the standards of active Hawaiian vulcanism. Stepping into the forest from the manicured lawn of the Arts Center’s backyard is to enter a primordial realm. Gone is the sun, filtered and fragmented now, the hairy, arching arms of hapu’u, the tree-fern, subjecting interlocutors to dampened light. Trunks of o’hia extend through the canopy, marble columns supporting the green ceiling of fern – columns more perfect than the Parthenon’s. Here and there a stray koa leaf, its crescent, sickle shape carved out against the otherwise bare ground. Glancing skywards, the source is plenty visible, the leaf’s siblings shift and sway in a breeze that simply cannot pierce the umbrage of branch and bramble that insulate the understory. But the top of the koa, the pinnacle of the forest, where is it? Hidden behind and above tiers of canopies, the top must be beyond our visual reach, somewhere in the heavens, connecting us with the gods. Here, in the original paradise, not a single alien or invasive specie can be found. It is, of course, an entirely human construction.