After a spectacularly beautiful morning walk, over the middle of the Big Island to much greener, lusher vegetation, and many noisy tree frogs. Here's the view from our balcony, in a very early C20th plantation style house (I feel as though I'm in a Conrad novel, or maybe Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas).
The way down the stairs into the gardens.
Hilo (13 miles down the road) is just as grey and stormy as I remember it;
but with much more street art; and with conspicuously many more unhoused people. I knew the problem was big in Honolulu; hadn't realized how serious it is here - and indeed, Hawai'i is the state with the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the nation (exacerbated locally by the volcanic eruption 10 months or so ago, which destroyed over 700 homes - and that added to an already existing shortage of available housing). Not that this tells one anything about contemporary America that one doesn't already know, but it's sobering.
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