Before the Telescopes

He lei keakea noho maila i ka mauna
Ka mauna ki’eki’e i luna kū kilakila
Kilakila ‘o luna
‘O luna i ke ao

- Nona Beamer

There are days when the mountain is adorned in a lei of clouds. The old time cowboys would talk about watching this lei form riding their horses around, “Big Mama,” as they affectionately call her. They would say, “kakahiaka nō,” greeting the morning, as the dew on the grass glistened in the first light and as the mist rolled in over the rolling hills.

These are the same cowboys that saw Mauna Kea before the telescopes, before the access roads were paved, before too many people came to our peaks searching for answers to questions that weren’t theirs to ask. These are the same cowboys that saw the snow cover the mountain in ways that we do not see now. They knew the pathways of the water after the snow melted, the river ways that would be fed, and where the water would meet the ocean.

The more this world changes and the more land bases we need to stand to protect for the next generations, the more I long to see what the generations before us saw. I close my eyes and listen to their stories and for a moment I’m there with them in their memories, greeting the day as the clouds became lei.

📸: @brit.tini.kuwahara