Maui Hale Symposium Photos

Quick selection of some photos from the past few days at the symposium are here. I haven't had time to properly process and organize. Scenes from the preparation and competition, some local sights, views along the Hana Road, and more.

Maui Hale Symposium Completion

The hale building symposium completed today with five teams building on five sites over three days. The photo at right shows what a completed hale looks like, made of wood, stone, and leaves, lashed together with nylon cord (a modern change obviously).

The judges have scored the competition with the results to be announced tomorrow at the Hana Taro Festival. My role in this was to observe and score each day's work (a different team each day). The principles of competition are:

• Laulima: everyone contributing effectively
• Lokahi: harmony, cooperation and teamwork
• Uʻi, Nani: aesthetics, beauty
• Maikaʻi, Pono: correctness
• Kawikiwiki: timeliness

I observed three different teams over three days and saw first hand their various ways of working and responding to challenges. Throughout the work was without exception remarkably amicable and focused on helping everyone grow their skills and learn both the construction details as well as the cultural aspects. 

One story from the symposium may convent a bit of the real meaning of this event. Going into the final day, the team I was observing still had none of the palm leaves used to thatch the roof, and was busy building with all hands and had no time to go foraging leaves. Finally mid-morning they sent two guys out to collect leaves and soon after they left a truck pulled up loaded with leaves - another team had finished early and brought their spare material, knowing the leaves were needed. And once they got there they all pitched in and helped prepare the leaves and pass them up to the team who were thatching in parallel to quickly wrap up the job to completion. They took the principles of Laulima and Lokahi to not just one team, but to all participants.

Houlani Hale

Awakening pre-dawn I opened my eyes to something akin to being in a large alien spaceship, very dim blinking lights intermittently revealed a high ceiling that looked organic. The sound of crashing waves confirmed where I was - inside a huge hale (Hawaiian style building) - the palm-leaf-thatched ceiling was organic, eerily lit by the glow of the blinking of a bank of charging cell phones. Permit the dramatic description: this place is really something, almost other-worldly.

This is Houlani Hale, a short distance south of Hana on the island of Maui, home to our host Palani, where most of the hale symposium participants are staying for the event. A few acres tucked in next to the cattle ranching fields right on the coast, with a series of buildings laid out around a big lawn area turned into a small scale golf course for practice. (Once a year our host deploys his riding lawn mower into the cattle pastures to create a cross-country style golf course for a local invitation-only tournament.)

The 100 foot hale dominates the buildings, a barn essentially, serves as the symposium meeting room and dorm. From there working toward the ocean: a bar hale, a pizza oven, wash basins, shower, and head. The photo is the kitchen/dining area where some great grinds have come from, a full spread at every meal.

The lawn ends abruptly at a rocky cliff perhaps 10 meters above the ocean. There's no beach but one of the guys is quite a diver and he gets down there and brings up fresh fish and shellfish.

It's almost 5:30 and biscuits just went into the pizza oven to bake. Here's the recipe: mix one box Bisquik with two cans coconut milk; bake.

Maui Hale Symposium preparation

First day on Maui, beautiful hot weather all day.
After breakfast kumu (the master hale builder leading the event) held a review session for participants brushing up on details of construction Hawaiian style. At right here we are inside the largest hale on the planet: 100 feet long, the size of a good sized barn.

In the morning we collected and distributed materials in preparation. Then after lunch kumu and I drove to Kuhului harbor to pick up the truck we shipped from Kaua'i loaded with wood for this event. I followed him back tailing him all the way down the Hana Road - some thirty miles of winding road through gorgeous tropical terrain leading south, abundant with waterfalls and view points overlooking the ocean to the east.

By dinner all the participants gathered and the event starts tomorrow 7AM. People are here from all the major islands, along with friends about forty people or more. Dinner featured fresh fish and shellfish caught right off the coast here and expertly prepared, and steamed ulu (breadfruit) which I had for the first time. Dessert was banana bread (several varieties including mac-nut & pineapple-coconut).

To Maui

Not a big change of plans, I am flying to Maui for a hale building symposium and the Taro Festival, back early next week to Kauai. Both events are located around Hana, where I will be staying -- but not at the fabled Hana Hotel -- in a hale fittingly enough.

The symposium (invitation only) starts Tuesday with organization and practice, then five teams will have two and a half days to construct their 8 by 10 foot hale. Teams are provided with materials consisting only of wood, stone, leaves, and nylon cord or sennit for lashings. Tools are provided (this is the first event I have been invited to that specified, "no need to bring knives").

This will be my first trip to Maui since a visit long ago. A friend of my mother's had a condo at Kaʻanapali that we visited for spring break of my sophomore year I think. I recall the drive on the Road to Hana as an amazing display of tropical lushness the likes of which I had never seen: blue ocean on one side, green jungle to the other, and a waterfall at every winding turn.

Maui has a reputation of being heaving developed that has kept me away, but I have no doubt that Hana is far enough away from the resorts that it won't disappoint. Visiting Hanapepe last week, my friend from Maui remarked that Hana was like that but smaller. Of course the road has become a major tourist attraction, in volumes now unlike anything way back when, but I will have locals shuttling me through all that and get to sit back and watch it all.