It’s a sun-spackled morning at Hapuna Beach, like most mornings on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. A turtle the size of our coffee table back home in California surfaces halfway through my swim. It proceeds to stay close by, like an old friend. I laugh, elated — but then a complicated upwelling of emotion follows. Over the past year and a half, I’d almost convinced myself that I was OK with missing cherished faces and places and fully committed to being a hermit to humanity. At the beginning of a weeklong visit for a pandemic-delayed wedding in early July, I was returning to travel in a different world where many people have lost loved ones, jobs, and so much else. Even the familiar things felt strange. Airports. Crowds. My extended, energetic clan of in-laws; the hubbub of a big social gathering; what it’s like to meet someone new—a return to a special place.
The turtle and I swam along together for a while. I observed its calm cruising altitude from above, allowing myself the occasional dive down to side-eye it from a respectful distance as it munched thoughtfully on coral algae. When I reached the end of the beach, I turned around to swim back the other way, but not before bidding my companion a good day. A few minutes later, I came face to face with another smaller turtle.
In Indigenous Hawaiian culture, sea turtles are revered as the earthly form that aumakua, or ancestral spirits, might take to show our care, concern, or comfort. Manta rays and sharks are other examples of these spirit forms and are treasured similarly. I thought of my grandmother, who had gone nearly a year now. After the grinding stress and uncertainty of the last many months, I got to be with a large slice of my family for the first time in a year and a half, taking a forward-looking trip. It was nice to feel hopeful again.
Appreciating the chance to travel in the world again
This summer, many Americans have been traveling with cautious optimism. In the lead-up to our Big Island trip, navigating the complex and ever-changing web of requirements to enter Hawaii was a not-insignificant process and a reminder that things were still fluid. New coronavirus variants were ascendant, and while my husband, Matt, and I had been vaccinated, our children were not yet old enough to be. Regardless of vaccine status, we all had to take tests and receive negative results within 72 hours of flight departure.
We did run into some snags: Matt’s results never actually materialized, which sent him scrambling to track down another Hawaii-approved testing site for a rapid test the day before our flight. He found one at the San Francisco airport for $225 — the travel price in the Covid era. We uploaded our results to the Hawaii Safe Travels website and confirmed our results at the airport before our flight. (Not long after our trip, the rules changed again so vaccinated travelers could bypass testing and avoid quarantine.)
Once we landed in Kona, though, the anxiety dissipated, and it was a relief to feel that everyone had done their part to keep the larger community safe. We rented a house with my husband’s parents near the Fairmont Orchid, where the intimate, 39-person wedding would occur. The rental house included a beach parking pass for the Mauna Lani Beach Club, a small, reef-protected cove with shallow water perfect for young swimmers and snorkelers.
One morning at that friendly little beach, our 8-year-old, Teddy, snorkeled for the first time, delighting in the iridescent blue needlefish and schools of yellow tangs that zipped by. He remembered identifying and pronouncing humuhumunukunukuapua’a, the Hawaii state fish. I noticed a moray eel with its head poking out of the coral, comically frozen in a hopeful pose with its mouth wide open, ready to receive. Later, Teddy scrambled up from the water, excited. “Mama, I saw a girl in the water who looks just like Ishana,” he exclaimed, referring to a speedy little girl on his swim team back home.
What were the chances? Not only were we on the same beach at the same time as Ishana’s family — who were enjoying a long-delayed family reunion — but it turned out that we were all staying in rental homes within walking distance. A random run-in outside the usual orbit, spontaneous conversation, a sense of normalcy — we were renewed by an outsized joy at what can happen when you are out living in the world again.
Hawaii is a place that marked the beginning of my traveling life. The relationship began almost 25 years ago, with visits to a college friend born and raised in Oahu. It grew with that friendship and trips to Kauai, the Big Island, Maui, and Lanai; it deepened when I researched and wrote a book about Chinatowns, including Honolulu’s, cemented when my best childhood friend moved to Kailua. When you do something you haven’t done in a while — like, say, leave your home — the whole enterprise can feel a little weird or tinted with nostalgia. When I saw parrotfish munching on coral and leaving vaporous trails of crumbs, I thought I was indeed back in Hawaii, accompanied by a vast archive of memories. Maybe nibbling fish does for me what Madeleines at teatime did for Marcel Proust.
Traveling in a time when we still need to maintain distance from strangers is strange. We could usually be outside: on a beach, ocean, or trail. Inside a restaurant, shop, or grocery store — or, say, an urgent care clinic, where we had to stop when Teddy gashed his foot open on some lava rock — the masks went on, and we adhered carefully to posted restrictions. We repaired our spirits at One Aloha Shave Ice, where Nakoa and Leilani Nelson-Riley’s housemade organic ginger syrup was so fresh that I could see specks of ginger root in my order, a gorgeously melting snow mountain complete with ice cream and azuki beans.
As travel numbers increase to Hawaii and other places, there has been local concern and pushback against over-tourism, especially on the island of Maui, where the once-quiet Hana Highway has lately become a traffic jam. Our time on the Big Island felt relatively calm compared with the prepandemic era (our trip came before a devastating brush fire broke out at Parker Ranch in Waimea). We tried to do as we felt we always should: spend at Hawaiian- and other local-owned businesses, go lightly in the environment, and behave with respect.
On a break from wedding preparations one afternoon, Matt and I went for a slow drive to have a leisurely lunch at the original Merriman’s in the upcountry town of Waimea. As the road climbed higher in elevation from the western coast, the car’s dashboard thermometer ticked its way down. The rainy mist thickened to fog, drifting over us to blanket the observatories atop Mauna Kea off in the distance. There was Maui, floating on a cloud just offshore.
Over crisp martinis and savory saimin with slow-roasted Kalua pork, we remembered the year a snowstorm canceled a planned stargazing trip to the volcano’s summit. We talked about what it meant to make new memories with our big blended family, beginning with the wedding of my brother-in-law, Mike, and Diana, his bride. And we recalled other adventures on the Big Island: surfing with locals at Kahalu’u Beach, exploring an abalone farm and a tropical fruit test garden, learning about coffee at the Hilo Coffee Mill, hiking Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, tasting jaboticaba berry wine at the southernmost winery in the United States.
The warm, late afternoon light cut low across the Pacific at the resort the next day, setting the tall coconut palms that lined the small sandy beach aglow. The couple were married in front of three dozen close family and friends; the young bridesmaids and groomsmen were their four children. There were tears as we reflected on and appreciated all that had happened. Then cocktail hour began, the shoes came off, and everyone danced into the night, illuminated by glittering strings of lantern lights.
Connecting to the past by making new memories
The following afternoon, a group of us convened at the Mauna Kea visitor station, located at 9,200 feet (from there to the summit, at 13,800 feet, a four-wheel drive is required). We phoned ahead to inquire about the weather forecast for stargazing — no snowstorms or cloud cover. The man who answered the phone had a smile in his voice. “It’s perfect,” he said.
We arrived at the visitor station and immediately set out for a high place on the western-facing ridge, just in time to watch a splendid, cloud-wisped sunset over a reddish-hued landscape reminiscent of Mars. From a 90-degree day at sea level, we drove toward a fully arcing rainbow, the car filled with enough layers and blankets to protect against an evening with a forecast of 35 degrees. After about 45 minutes, the road took us above the cloud cover to reveal a blue sky almost blinding in its clarity.
Then, we hiked back down the trail to the visitor station parking lot and opened our beach chairs to wait for the stars. They made their appearance one by one, with the rosy smear of the Milky Way as a backdrop. We watched the tiny dots of satellites whiz by in their prescribed paths, and the shooting stars flame their brief, bright life across the dark. Our 10-year-old son, Felix, used an app on his iPad to observe the luminosity of multiple celebrities, including Sirius A — the brightest star in the night sky. Someone pointed out Ursa Minor, and everyone in our party chattered excitedly. I thought about how we try to be big all the time. To look into the galaxy’s center is to know that we are small in a visceral way.
The conversation turned to constellations and how they never looked like they should. Peering into the sky, we tried hard to see what our ancestors saw: Was it the tail of Scorpius or the demigod Maui throwing a fishhook? Or at least I thought I was alone until a manta ray swooped under me, its wings gracefully waving. I tried to race it and lost, giddy and full of awe at the sighting. My mind drifted to earlier that day when I’d sneaked away to bike down to the beach alone for a long swim.
Manta rays in the morning, the Milky Way in the evening. We were making new memories but also connecting to the deep past and a profoundly old idea—a reminder to marvel at the world, not to mess it up. Bonnie Tsui is “Why We Swim” and the new children’s book “Sarah and the Big Wave.” Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter, inspiration for your next vacation, and dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling. Check out our 52 Places list for 2021.
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