Stairway to Heaven

Today I climbed Diamond Head. Diamond Head is the crater and peak of an old volcano on Oahu that blew up a long time ago and now shows zero signs of aggression. It’s one of those rounded bumps on the coastline covered in a fur of vegetation and hundreds of tiny doves. I thought the doves were dirt until I noticed movement and the movement is the constant nodding of their little heads as they peck their way through the groundcover. They don’t even look up to say hi. And apparently they have no fear of awakening the beast. I have been gunning to hike Diamondhead because Diamondhead is one of the few words here I’ve been able to pronounce with confidence since touching down four days ago. It is truly a gem among words stuffed with too many K’s and double A’s randomly punctuated with apostrophes. This giant crater has returned the inner socialite in me. Now that I’ve been to the top and back, it’s opened up a whole new world of conversation with any person within earshot no matter what their native tongue – Hawai’ian citizens, Japanese dignitaries, surfer dudes. It makes no difference. As soon as I rattle off a few “Diamondheads” in my crazy Boston plus Midwestern English, heads turn and start nodding. “Oh, she has been to Diamond Head!” And immediately after, “Did you go all the way to the top?” Which is a silly question, really. I don’t know anyone who would have the balls to say, “No, I turned back.” Old Hawai’ian couples climb this thing in flip flops. I saw a toddler in crocs. Mothers routinely summit wearing twins. Granted, it’s a mile hike that involves several steep staircases (which led me to ponder if staircases are indigenous to the volcanic landscape) that are comprised of 272 steps in total (yes, I counted. I am a nerd. But I was not the only genius on the mountain that day. A father and young son passed me going up as I came down and I overheard the dad say to his befuddled son, “And that’s why they call it the Dewey Decimal system.” The boy said nothing. I suspect he was just trying to put one foot in front of the other, plotting to push his father over the edge at the next lookout point.) The staircases are preceded by a steady upward climb on a narrow rocky path that takes about 20 minutes (longer if your Dad is describing a library). Once you hit the first set of stairs, you are no longer looking up. You don’t really care about looking at anything other than the next step in front of you. The first 100 steps are followed by a very dark, very long narrow tunnel that punches you through the wall of the crater and guess what? When you finally see daylight, more stairs! Immediately! Up up up! When will this nazi stairmaster nightmare end?! Even at elevation 755.566 feet, there were still two more dark spiral staircases to master (are we going inside a rocket ship??) and a rickety metal staircase of roughly 53 steps that led everyone to the point surrounded by endless blue at which they could finally exhale, “We made it!!!” Hours later, over cocktails, one of my trail mates would remark, “Can you believe we went up 755,566 feet today?!” It was hard to correct her, considering the journey certainly felt like that. She looked at me funny when I told her planes typically fly around 35,000 feet so it’s a wonder we didn’t slam into Diamond Head on the way in. Now I think she’s nervous about getting out of here. But, I digress. I should tell you about the payoff. You exit the last spiral staircase into a small cave where a guy in a Hawai’ian shirt or a Hawai’ian guy in a shirt sits behind a 6’ table with pamphlets on it. He gives you a minute to collect yourself, assuming the position of those around you: grabbing your knees, gasping for air, mumbling Mahalo God it’s over. Then he politely suggests you make a donation. I would have, except I saw this sliver of blue up ahead and I was drawn to it. Two steps up and you literally crawl under an overhanging rock and voila! You are at last on top of old non-smokey. Almost. Around another bend there’s the final staircase and that takes you to the best view of all. Miles of ocean so clean and clear you can see the reef underneath. It churns and foams into whitecaps that stretch in every direction. Surely that’s a whale! Surely those are dolphins! But maybe they’re just rocks. It doesn’t matter. Turn left and there’s the big city. Buildings crowd the coastline. Palm trees line the streets. It’s spectacular. The breeze is soothing. The air is like a cold beer. And all you have to do now is look. And appreciate. The trek down after that was easy.