Eventually we passed through the towns of Kapa’a, Lihue, and Poipu before I realized we were going quite far off the beaten track.
“Where are we going?” I yelled at him.
“You’ll see,” he said. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
I wasn’t. But being afraid of a stranger pushing you off from a great height was a different story.
Soon we passed the ramshackle town of Hanapepe and started zooming up toward the mountains, heading inland. There was only one place for us to go, and I knew where we were going: Waimea Canyon.
It was one of the places I hadn’t been before, thanks to its location at the south end of the island. Also, when you’re traveling alone, you don’t really feel like being a sightseeing tourist.
Eucalyptus trees flew past us as we ascended the mountain road, the foliage becoming greener, the earth redder, the air filling with ethereal mist.
When we zoomed past the most popular lookout over the canyon, I started to get a little nervous.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
“That view is, how you say, overrated.”
We accelerated as we rounded a corner, the colder air snapping against me. I went back to holding on to him for dear life as we passed more and more viewpoints filled with tourists. I started to wonder if this was such a good idea after all. It seemed he was taking me to the end of the road, the end of the line.
That idea hadn’t scared me before; it was curious that it was scaring me now.
But eventually when the road did end, it did so at a parking lot with a couple of cars parked and some sightseers milling about. I breathed out a sigh of relief as the bike came to a stop and I was able to get off.
I slipped off the helmet, knowing my hair was probably sticking flat to my head, and Esteban stared at me curiously.
“You seemed a bit scared at the end,” he noted.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “Well, I’ve never been good on bikes.”
“It’s a good sign to be scared, hey,” he said. “When you stop feeling fear, that’s when it becomes dangerous. That’s when you die.”
I resisted the urge to say something, to tell him he didn’t know shit. He acted like he knew all this stuff about me, just because he rescued me and saw my “shadows,” something we hadn’t even touched on yet.
“This is the Puu o Kila Lookout,” he said as he lightly touched my elbow and guided me toward an unpaved trail that sloped away from the parking lot. “Not many people know about it. They stop at the one before and never venture on. But this is better.”
“And how do you know so much about this island?” I asked him.
“I like to do my research,” he said in a low voice, and I followed him as we went down the smooth red banks until suddenly . . . I was breathless.
There, sprawled out in front of us, was a view like nothing I’d see before. The red dirt sloped off sharply with no guardrail to keep us back, and when the drop ended thousands of yards below, the valley begun. It ran green and wide toward the ocean, the cliffs rising up from it on either side, gouged out by millions of years of rainfall and weather. Though the sun was out, clouds passed through the valley, quickly scooting over our heads, so close at times that I wanted to reach out and touch them.
“Careful.” His voice whispered at my neck as he gently put his hand around my waist and pulled me back a step. I looked down at my feet and recoiled with horror when I realized how close I had gotten to the edge. It was almost like I had really been going for the clouds.
“It’s okay,” he said, leading me away from the edge.
I was shaking; I couldn’t help it. Jesus, I had been so close to going over.
“Come on, we can get the same view from up here.” He took me to where the path sloped up. We were farther back, but the surreal view was the same. Too bad my heart was still beating so fast, my blood pumping loudly in my ears.
Esteban took his hand off me and I felt a strange chill in its absence. “Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said, licking my lips that were suddenly dry. “I’m fine.”
“When women say they’re fine, they’re usually seconds from throwing their shoe at you.”
I cracked a smile, my gaze flitting over to him. “Is this from personal experience?”
He shrugged and tucked his wavy hair behind his ear, the highlights catching the gleam of the sun. “I’ve pissed off my fair share of women. But it’s not my fault they all fall so madly in love.”
I laughed. “I think you’re full of shit.”
“Oh, I am,” he said, facing me. “Perhaps that’s why they throw the shoes.”
We lapsed into silence, our attention turned back to the view. Now that I was calming down and we were farther away from the edge, I was able to take in the view as much as I could. It was like watching a moving painting. There was something so . . . unbelievable, unnatural about finding such beauty in real life. I felt like I had stepped into my own art.
And that was when it hit me like a kick to the shin.
I was inspired.
The feeling, the itch to paint, to capture the crazy, otherworldly beauty of this place, the rich, thriving greens and the opulent blues and the vista that seemed carved out of time.
“I told you so,” Esteban said.
“Told me what?”
“That you were looking in the wrong place.”
Thoughtfully, I rubbed the back of my hand across my lips, not sure what to
