Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [51]
Over time, a few palms eventually sprouted again, but to speed the process, mature palm trees were imported from Tahiti. These trees, however, turned out to be diseased, and they not only died, but ended up killing most of the remaining palms on the island. Now, there are only a few spots where they still remain.
The first statue we saw was fascinating. So were the second and third. By the time we viewed the fourth and fifth statues, the novelty began to wear off. Though the local archaeologists assured us that each was different, to my untrained eye they all looked pretty much the same: eye sockets, long ears, nose, and mouth, all carved from lava rock.
From there, we headed to the volcano quarry, where they’d been carved. To reach it, you had to cross the island, and the distance these statues had been transported fascinated me more than the statues themselves. As we drove, I tried to imagine how many people it had taken to move a single statue, let alone hundreds.
As we drove toward the quarry where the Moai had been carved, lush, open pastures unfolded on either side of us. Beyond the pastures, we could see herds of wild-looking horses loping along.
Horses were a symbol of prosperity on Easter Island. They had been imported in the late 1800s, but because the island was so isolated, feed was prohibitively expensive to import. The owners allowed the horses to run free so they could forage on the island grass. Their muscles were lithe and their coats gleamed in the sunlight, inspiring Micah to take a photograph of them.
The volcano rose 1,400 feet, and everywhere along the base you could see abandoned statues. Some lay on their side, others were half buried along a trail that progressed to the far side of the island. At the quarry itself, others stood in various stages of completion. Again, there was no answer as to the reason; there was speculation about the wars, but as with so many of the places we went, nothing was certain. For all intents and purposes, it looked as if the workers had left for the day, with the full intention of returning on the next.
A winding trail leads to the peak of the volcano, and about a third of our group eventually made their way to the summit. From the top, it’s possible to see the curvature of the earth, and Micah and I were the first to reach it. Under blue, cloudless skies and with temperatures in the seventies, the hike was refreshing. Surrounding the island was nothing but an endless expanse of water, and I wondered how the first Polynesians had ever survived in the open Pacific long enough to discover the island.
At the top, we took pictures before sitting near the edge of a sheer drop-off. As we relaxed, Micah pulled up the picture he’d taken of the horses. He stared at it.
“Mom would love this,” Micah said. “She would have wanted to frame it.”
“Yes, she would,” I said. “Dana, too.”
“Do you remember when we took those horseback riding lessons?”
“Actually, I don’t. You and Dana did that, remember?”
“Yeah, why didn’t you ride with us?”
“Because,” I said, “there wasn’t enough money and you two were more excited about it than I was.”
He put his arm around me. “The poor middle son. Always feeling left out.”
“I didn’t feel left out. I was left out.”
“No you weren’t. Mom and dad were always proud of you. They used to tell me that I should do better in