Holy Bull

Fear and loathing rains on Moloka`i. Ranch shut down, 120 people losing jobs. Just like wiser people told me, that land trust ain't gonna happen. so neither is the subdivision. Read into that what you wish, for I'm only half-smart, a haole, and not even living Hawai`i nei anymore. I suppose you could count this as a victory for conservation, except that we have no guarantee that the next thing won't be far worse than 200 houses.

Far from there, this week I journeyed back east of the mountains for the first time since my Columbian descent in January. And when I got there, a guy who goes by my middle name took me site-seeing and surveying through a landscape that was Hawaiian-ish. Think Kaluako`i, Moloka`i, but sagebrush instead of kiawe and lantana, and sometimes the red silt is sand. But the same outcrops.

The first photo is also the first site I found in Washington. One of the 10 guys helping us survey cameup with the name "Lone Juniper," and you can see 1/3 from the left, halfway up, the lone juniper. The site is just to the right, and consisted of a couple hammerstones and some lithic debris.

And it's not just the basaltic landscape and lithic scatters that seem familiar. Ahu happen here as well. One like a cupboard re-done to make a fowl-sniping blind, with old branches on top adding a height and cover. Another, closer to the river, has an amazing overview of what may have been the richest salmon river; it also has a nice split boulder, just like them Moloka`i shrines. Maybe us humans is all alike.

Anyhow, perched on one of the ahu was a basalt core (pictured). Fresh, as if some Hawaiian were still worshipping the adze god there. There is a certain clue to this un-altered photo that should tell you whether this is me in the frame.

The day before, we checked out some old farm sites on either side of a road through the plain. Then went up a soil-mantled talus to a little pali with four tiny c-shapes. Each big enough for a sniper, but nothing to stop the enemy from going around behind. not tall enough to be visible from far, or massive enough to support anything. each using outcrop for foundation, on brow above slope. Seen them on moloka`i, too.

So far from Moloka`i, but still doing Molokine archaeology.