Waipi'o Valley and the End of the World

In the drive north of the island from Kona, heading towards Waipi'o Valley, there is at a certain point a plethora of Jackaranda trees along the side of the road, in full bloom, glowing a neon purple that is out of this world. Radiant and electric, surely pyschedelic. Under an overcast sky, like the period before one begins to cry, there is a softness, and a feeling that there is something coming, which will eventually pass (the rains).
In Waipi’o Valley itself, at the bottom (You have to hike down a steep hill to get to its base -- about a mile maybe) there is a waterfall that tumbles over itself down the cliff to meet the ocean. The boulders of the cliffside that it runs down are bare, and I imagine that many Hawaiians of the past have bathed naked at its base, in bliss. It looks like a towering, ancient stone wall. On either side of it, the contours of the rocks are hidden by vegetation. There is a mist that flies from the rushing water. Standing beside it, as it gushes down boulders that lead to the ocean, you are slowly saturated by the spray. While I was there, a gusty wind was present, and it almost seemed to be emanating from the wall of water itself. It was like something you’d feel in a storm, with a fine rain falling sideways.
I faced the cliffside, (which was a sharp drop from the top, maybe 10-12 stories high) and watched the water fall. There was a part of it gushing over the cliff’s edge especially fast, with no rocks in its way to punctuate its fall. Like it dould not wait to meet the ocean, it was as if the waterfall was crying gutterally, in joy of reuinion, with a million monks clapping ecstatically in the background. I looked behind me, at the waves that rolled in horizontally, thier own cry a deep resonant roar , coming to meet the waterfall at a point of convergence. Where I stood was a the boulder blown shore, an interface between a river making its final yet never ending return to the sea.
The other day I went cliff jumping off “The End of the World” which is at the end of Ali’i Drive in North Kona. Being there reminded me a little of a scene from the Japanese movie “Dreams,” which I saw as a child. In it there is a scene of a people that have survived after the world has ended, wandering across desolate land for miles in bewildered abandon, only to eventually encounter the wide expanse of the sea,. There, an old man tells the lost ones that the rest of their culture/civilation has fallen into it, knowing no where else to go or what to do. Down into a mysterious and dark abyss, into the next world. That film made me feel a lonely emptiness that moved me to cling to my mother as if I would never see her again. At the End of the World here in Kona, the only sounds we heard were those of our feet dragging across the gravel as we approached the cliff’s edge, with the hiss of waves in the background. To get to the jump-off point, we had to climb down the jagged, textured wall lined with shelves, without scraping our legs. One shelf was about thirty feet high. Probably the highest point I have ever considered jumping off of in my life. People had done it many times before, so I wasn’t worried. Just instinctually hesistant. I jumped, with my fingers holding my nose plugged, into the water. It took my breathe away. The same way it feels when you fall in dreams, it was almost unbearable. The sound it made going under, like a distant drum roll, thousands at once, was almost celebratory.
Because of the force of impact, my hand couldn’t stay attached to my closed nostrils, so I had to blow out my nose as I was underwater, making my way to the top. Eyes open ever so slightly, I glimpsed the bubbles from exhalation rising to the surface and the sunlight beaming through the water. The water was like a cushion that had caught my fall, and through the laws of physics, was handing me back up to the land. When my head broke the surface of the water, I was met with my companions faces looking down from where they stood/sat on the shelves, their expressions congratulatory.