With two million visitors a year, you'd expect this Hawaiian isle to have been thoroughly combed over. But just 25 percent of the land is inhabited or developed . . . so surely a surprise or two yet lurks.
"They've ruined the place. It's gone," the man says. He's sitting at the next booth; he has crisply parted black hair and is speaking with authority to a woman whose nose is deep into a cup of coffee. I'm in my local coffee shop in midtown Manhattan, partaking in a favorite New York City pastimeeavesdropping. Apparently the man has just returned from Maui and found it overdeveloped and overpackaged. It's a common lament, not just about Maui, but about so many of the world's favorite playgrounds. Still, I take this one personally. Maui is a place I know a little about. Or knew a little about.
I first landed on the "Valley Isle" in the mid-1980s, and heard more than one person then say, "Too many tourists; Maui is losing its soul." Luckily I paid no attention and kept a home there for ten years.
Eventually life led me elsewhere, but I like to think I have kept a little Maui with me. When I hear someone bad-mouth my island, it goes deep. So just like thatover my eggs and baconI decide to return. To see if the place I hold so close is in fact "gone," or if, as I hope, there is still something left for me to discover on Maui.
I begin by looking in the clouds. If you think that Maui is all surf and sand, just head "upcountry." Four thousand feet above sea level sits the Thompson Ranch, a 1,400-acre spread on the western slope of Haleakala, the volcano that created much of this island. Haleakala's rugged, rolling hills are more reminiscent of the west of Ireland than a Pacific paradise. The ranch is a mom-and-pop cattle operation that has been in Jerry Thompson's family since 1908. Jerry, his wife, Toni, and their teenage daughter, Andrea, care for the land, a hundred head of cattle, 22 horses, a dozen or so turkeys, three dogs, and an orphan pig. They also offer trail rides for those travelers who find their way here. It's a hard life, but one that Toni, with brown hair and soulful eyes, loves. "This is not where I would have thought of myself 25 years ago, but I can't imagine myself anywhere else now."
Toni leads me on horseback up the steep slope of Haleakala. We pass koa and blossoming lehua trees on our way to 6,000 feet, where we roam through cloud-shrouded eucalyptus groves. As we amble past a stand of sandalwood trees, my horse stumbles, and a wild pheasant is flushed from its nest.
http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/feature/maui-text
