at the collision of heavens and earth

i woke up this morning hoping to go on an adventure of some sort today.  now the day is still quite young, but it seems my adventures will be hemmed in by another bout of rain.  this should be the last of them.  its been raining off and on everyday since christmas.  it's still wonderful beautiful but everything has been wet for almost a week now.  i'd hoped to go up and stay a night or two in the crater this past weekend but it looked like it would rain and did, almost four inches, so it was a wise decision not to.  i'm hoping in the next day or two to get to do some backpacking on some trails that are kind of right in between the farm and the crater, if my map-reading skills and speculations serve correct.  it'll be about a 7 mile hitch to the switchback road that winds 7 more miles up to the Poli Poli Springs trails.  a very nice campground lies nestled back in these trails probably about 5 miles.  looks like there are two loops that branch of to the north, up the mountain, going up near the rim to about 7,000 feet.  the longer of these loops is ten miles and probably not in the plans for this trip unless the skies look really clear.  seems like a safe bet to suppose that whatever the weather is doing at the farm, it's several notches worse as you head up the mountain.  

last night we witnessed the greatest sunset yet.  granted i've said this for nearly every sunset, but it continues to be true.  we didn't see the sun all day yesterday, worked outside in a drizzle all morning, the porch chairs stayed wet all day.  we cooked up a storm yesterday afternoon (this phrase confused shiz), rolling out and frying up a quadruple (also new for shiz) batch of tortillas.  i made hummus for the first time, we cooked up some green papaya (which acts about like squash) and some yacon too.  we spent close to three hours cooking dinner last night and now have the reward of leftovers, but last night i was positively starving and a bit grumpy by the time we got done fixin' and were ready to eat.  but then the sky show started.  i watched it while eating some hummus, rice and greens rolled up in a warm tortilla.  perhaps it doesn't even need to be said that it's impossible to stay grumpy at times like that.  

so more clouds make better sunsets.  of course too many spoils the whole show but the most you can pack in without filling up the entire sky, the better.  last night the entire sky was full of clouds, puffy-fat angry ones, except for a splendid gap right above the water.  as the sun descended towards the gap, the light started bouncing golden off the water.   glowing.  when we sat down to eat, i thought that we had missed the sunset, because the sky had the subtle light it gets when the sun has just sunk below the horizon.  but the glow grew as we ate and i was feeling quite fuzzy and warm by the time we split a final tortilla, realizing that the sun was about to break below the cloud.  at this point the clouds swirling around the peak of the West Maui Mountains began to light up in most fantastic pinks and blues.  the wispy fluff that floated off the mountain, right to left from the view of our porch, and towards the sun, very rapidly lit up bright orange-yellow on their sunward side, their backs a cotton-candy pink.  the sun, now fully descended into the gap, shines all the way across onto the thick wet clouds on the other side of our heavenly half globe.  standing facing the master of the ceremony, i turn my back to the sun to see a full rainbow, a complete half circle of split light set against a sky of deep orange, its right side jumping out of the crater, its left landing on a cloud floating just above the green surface of the mountain about eye-level with my view.  

ha, there's another rainbow outside right now.  

so its been wet since christmas but we've seen rainbows every day.