Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [98]
Determined to hike across at least part of this wondrous landscape, we drove up past Waimea Canyon one cloudy summer morning, parked our rented car in the last lot, and set out on our hike. It quickly became clear that when it came to describing the actual conditions and terrain, all the guidebooks woefully understated the actual conditions. Most Hawaiian hikes do not involve repeatedly sinking, sometimes up to one’s waist, in a thick, gooey sludge of organic mulch. Nevertheless we made it to our destination, a lookout on the pali (a steep cliffside) high above the little town of Hana.
Meanwhile the cloud cover had thickened dramatically. Wind and rain had been intensifying for hours. I decided to hunker down for the night with our emergency tarp and let the weather blow through. My younger companion, however, declared tersely that “I’m not going to freeze to death up here!” and started back. As he was my responsibility, I felt I had no choice but to accompany him. By the time we reached our car, barely before darkness settled in, it was the only one left in the parking lot. Being well-prepared for the hike, it had never occurred to us to check the weather forecast.
As it happened, Kauai was in the process of catching the trailing southern edge of a passing tropical storm.
Back in our hotel, I spent two hours in the shower. Ten minutes to wash the gunk off myself, and the remaining time attempting to get it out of my sneakers. The latter task proved impossible, so ingrained had the organic matter become. Regretfully I had no choice but to throw away the unsalvageable shoes. Had I planted them, I have no doubt they would have sprouted a fantastic variety of flora.
Some small literary controversy attended the publication of “The Last Akialoa” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. There are those who think it does not qualify as either a fantasy or science fiction.
A nice leisurely afternoon stroll in the Alakai would, I think, change that perception…
The first thing Loftgren noticed was the rain, coalescing out of the air as mist, then sifting gently to the already sodden earth. He smiled to himself. They could hardly have expected otherwise considering they were about to enter the wettest place on Earth.
He didn’t mind bringing up the rear. Fanole, their guide, was out in front, probing the feeble excuse for a trail, occasionally calling back to his two companions warnings and advice in equal measure. Behind him and just ahead of Loftgren was young Sanchez, the graduate student who had worked so long and hard to be included in the expedition. At the moment he resembled a runaway candy bar, enshrouded as he was in the transparent plastic sheets that shielded both him and his gear from the all-pervading damp.
Back down the road they had just left and four thousand feet below them lay the Kauai coast, with its warm tropical sunshine and chattering tourists and full-service hotels. Ahead lay thirty square miles of the most improbable and impenetrable terrain in the United States, if not the world. Equally remarkable, much of it was still unexplored.
The Alakai Swamp occupied the bowl of a gigantic caldera that formed the top of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Trade winds slamming into the flanks of its highest peak, Mount Waialeale, were shoved upward into colder air where they were forced to drop their load of moisture day after day, month after month, year after year, with a benumbing, saturating regularity. Four hundred and eighty inches of rain a year. Six hundred and twenty-four inches in the record year of 1948. Cherrapunji in India occasionally had more during the monsoon, but Cherrapunji also enjoyed a dry season.
In the depths of the Alakai, the swamp in the sky, the dry season was measured in hours.
By late morning they were making their way down one of the knife-edged ridges that slice up the Alakai like razor blades planted in a pie. The Forest Service had hacked notches out