I woke early on our first morning on Kaua‘i. Early, because I always have a hard time sleeping my first night in any new bed, and early because my body was two hours ahead, on Portland time. I started a pot of Kona coffee and opened the curtains to the lanai. In Portland, the sun had already risen, but I knew it was still dark, cold, wet — the 45th parallel in February. In the tropics, darkness faded into purple and gray shadows, revealing the outline of swaying palms. The peculiar physics of the condo’s location on C-shaped Keoniloa Bay meant that, somehow, you could see the sun both rise and set, dawn to dusk, beginning then ending then beginning again.
My back and legs hurt from being crammed into an airplane seat the previous day, and my arm and neck from the accident that totaled my car three months earlier...