Photograph of the tall bamboo forest on Maui

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The stalks of tall bamboo lean up toward the beautiful canopy of the Bamboo forest on the island of Maui. A hike that I did on the previous visit to Maui and was determined to go back. The drive to Hana isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes an entire day to drive, even if you didn’t stop. This time we went the back way, the ‘Do Not Go This Way In A Rental Vehicle’ way, but it was fine. Way faster if you just go to the Haleakala National Park where the 7 Sacred Pools are. The only crazy part was towards the end when navigating around the steep cliffs on a single lane road. The guard rails had been rusted apart from the insane surf. I was just hoping no one was coming the other direction. I am pretty sure we would have just looked at each other until someone reluctantly decided to reverse to a nearest pull out. Luckily no one came.

The hike was the same as I remembered. The only difference was that we couldn’t walk all the way to waterfall due to the heavy rains we had this Summer. I love the bamboo. There is nothing like it. The hike is fairly long and uneventful and you almost want to turn back, thinking it won’t change. Then you cross a bridge and enter into the first part of the forest and your breath is taken from you. All you want to do from that point is venture deeper into it and engross your entire self into the forest. When the wind blows there is a quiet and soothing knocking from the hollow stalks that almost stops you in your tracks. Although the wind isn’t what I wanted for photographing the bamboo because of movement, I thoroughly enjoyed and welcomed it.

The remaining trip back to Lahaina was fun. We ended up going back on the ‘Road To Hana’, which took forever, but was beautiful. It was amazing to see the damage from the Hurricane Darby that I heard so much about on the news. Funny that months later I was having dinner with a mother and daughter that lived in Hana. The mother told me a story of how she came to a van full of tourists that nearly went over the cliff on one of the windy turns. The van had been pinned by a tree and was luckily not going anywhere. While waiting for the tow truck the mother asked the tourists if they wanted their pictures taken while in the van, which they excitedly said ‘yes’. After the picture they all left the van to discover how close they were to falling over the cliff. The funny thing was the tourist driving had a “I Survived The Road To Hana” shirt on.

© Christopher Johnson

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