The Story of THAT TREE at Honu'Apo
The Bodhi Tree at Honu'Apo
On April 19, I published a channeling, Welcome to the Light, that spontaneously arose as I walked under this magnificent tree at Honu’apo on the Big Island of Hawaii. I tried my hardest to identify the type of tree, but finally had to settle for “THAT TREE” and get the video out. I referenced that this place, Honu’apo, had been introduced to me by my dear friend. I knew that she would see this channeling and would enjoy seeing the beautiful site, which she had worked so hard to restore, but I did not realize that she had such a connection with the tree itself! When she saw the video, she reached out to me with the most beautiful letter. I asked if I could share her stories, and a little about her, with anyone who connected with this spot, and THAT TREE.
On another day, I will share more about how Lehua and I met, and how she came to be my teacher and my beloved friend. For now, I will let her stories and accomplishments speak for themselves. I will only say that through her stories I feel the true depth and meaning of sacred land. Sacred land is not “abstract” or disconnected from daily life. It is a bridge to the earth, to each other, and to the divine.
About Lehua:
Lehua Lopez, a 72-year-old native Hawaiian cultural anthropologist, is a former Executive Director for Ka `Ohana O Honu`apo (The Family of Honu`apo), a nonprofit, Friend-of-the-Park organization that serves the cultural and historical preservation needs of Honu`apo Beach Park, located in the Ka`u District along the southern coastline of Hawai`i Island (a.k.a., ‘Big Island’). ‘Honu`apo’ is translated as ‘caught turtle,’ as this beach front area was a prime site for highly-prized sea turtles in ancient Hawaiian times. Honu`apo has a centuries-long history of settlement and fishing/gathering activities for local Ka`u communities and was a favored site for visiting ali`i (royalty). The remains of a large ancient fishpond (constructed to hold and protect growing fish spawn and other marine species) that larded fresh, marine animals for the local population to eat, is located just behind the tree. She responded to my Honu`apo video with narrative memories from her time living in Ka`u (2008 to 2017).
Here are her stories:
Aloha Sheila,
When I saw your Honu`apo video I just about fell apart with tears and memories! The locals call that tree, 'The Bodhi Tree,' and thousands of kids (over the last hundred years) have spent countless hours of timeless delight and wonder climbing, sitting in, hanging from, falling out of, and running around that tree. Not to mention the thousands of campfires and bar-b-que grills set up under every part of the tree for the last century--the burn scars are just 'tattoos' left over from the many food feasts that locals still continue to serve there at Honu`apo.
The Bodhi Tree got its name decades ago because one of the old local Japanese farmers said it looked like a ficus tree, like the one the Buddha sat under, but no one in Ka`u knows what it really is, so while I was the E.D. for Ka `Ohana O Honu`apo, I called in botanists from the University of Hawai`i at Hilo. They were fascinated by it! It turns out the tree really is a ficus, but a very rare ficus species, very old, probably the largest one of its kind in all the Islands, and utterly remarkable because while there is fresh water beneath the tree, the roots must be in contact with salt water so near the ocean!
There are pictures in the state archives of paniolo (cowboys) on horseback in the ocean wrangling cows swimming onto the shore (just behind and to the left of you) from ships anchored just off shore. Ranching and sugar-growing/processing in Ka`u were the largest economic activities at that time. That was about 140+ years ago when the shoreline you saw was covered in black sand.
Earthquakes, tidal waves, and storms have stripped that shoreline of the black sand and ocean rise is slowly flooding the fishpond and surrounding areas. There are many stories about that (culturally important!) ancient fishpond (probably more than 800 years old by now), but my favorite is the story about the alligator that survived the swamping of a passing ship loaded with zoo animals that foundered in the ocean offshore there and swam to the pond to set up housekeeping (back in the early 1930’s). In fact, Ka `Ohana O Honu`apo still has a copy of the photo of the local Asian sugar worker and farmer posed next to a dead alligator, hung head-up, that he caught in the fishpond to the relief of all of Ka`u!!
I must have taught more than 50 classes, with elementary and middle school students, about the history and culture associated with Honu`apo under that Bodhi Tree during the years I lived in Ka`u. In one of the classes (3rd graders from Ka `Umeke Ka`eo, a Hawaiian language immersion school from Keaukaha), I noticed that their young Hawaiian teacher sat in the middle of her students quietly whispering to them from time to time. After the class was over, I asked her if there were any problems and she told me that she needed to translate some of the English words I was using into Hawaiian for the students to understand what I was saying, like whispering the word 'konohiki' for the English term 'land manager' when I talked about the sugar industry's huge impact on Honu`apo Beach Park. I was stunned! It never occurred to me that these young keiki (children) did not know enough English to understand what I was saying, but knew (and only spoke) Hawaiian much more.
The entire area where you sat was an industrial staging area for the local C. Brewer (sugar-growing and processing) Co. with warehouses, storage facilities, 3 giant 20-foot by 30-foot gasoline/diesel silos, repair/mechanical/truck garages, etc., as well as the remains of the sugar train that ran along the shoreline (you can still find evidence of wooden rail ties and rusted iron spikes). All of which were utterly destroyed in the last great tsunami event of 1975, and never rebuilt because it would have been too expensive and there is no way to stop future tsunamis. That's why there are those large concrete pads everywhere down there--they were not initially built for parking lots!
I always ended my classes by having students practice running up the hill on the other side of those concrete pads next to the bathrooms so they would know exactly what to do when they heard the tidal wave sirens.
Oh my, this is much more than I intended to write, but your video was just so memorable.
Kealoha pumehana, Lehua