Tour de Plants

One of my favorite parts of working at Kona Kai is giving tours to our guests.  Since guests must request to join the tour (we won't force you), there must be some initial interest, but as the tour progresses I observe a noticeable increase in guests' enthusiasm and interest.  They want to know more about each plant and find it fascinating how useful and potentially useful plants have been and continue to be.  Guests have been very responsive not only to ethnobotanical information but also purely botanical observations, which is great to see.  For example, I might point out that in some species, there are male and female plants, whereas in others, both male and female reproductive parts are on the same plant.  Sometimes our guests have simply not looked thoroughly enough and I can show them interesting things in unusual places, such as elegant Zamia (coontie) cones, which are often hidden underneath their foliage.  After a recent tour, one of the participants told me that during the time he had already spent at Kona Kai, he had walked the property looking at the plants but had not really "seen" at all.  He thanked me for the experience the tour gave him, which he said added much deeper levels to his experience of our property and changed the way he perceived plants and the natural world as a whole.  Kona Kai is an excellent place for realizations and revelations like this to occur because many guests are able to distance themselves from much of the "noise" of the outside world and, whether they know it or not, become more in-tune with the nature that surrounds them here.  It feels as though your body, mind and soul are all resonating in perfect harmony with your surroundings at the end of a week of deep relaxation and decompression here.  You find yourself noticing things you hadn't noticed before about our natural world, such as the fact that each breath we take is made possible by plants.  The more you experience nature in this way, the more you are impacted profoundly and feel that deep, resonant connection with something much bigger than yourself, something that you realize lives and dies to support and sustain us in so many ways.

Rick Hederstrom

Associate Director

Rise and Shine

Before posting another more “botanical” entry, I felt compelled to share an experience I had this morning.  I personally think that transferring contents from one container to another should, in general, be a rather simple, relatively quiet process if done correctly (unless glass is involved).  I learned this morning that the transfer of garbage from dumpster to truck is not always one of those processes.  Granted, this may be well known by many people, but it is new to me because I have never lived this close to a dumpster before.  Not that I am living in a lean-to against a dumpster, but my just-moved-into apartment is above the parking garage where it is located.  At about 6:00am, I heard a very loud beeping noise (truck backing into position) followed by a startlingly loud hydraulic hum (the truck's "arms" lowering).  The garbage truck’s arms fumble clumsily for their point of attachment, as I am thinking one of my neighbors on the second floor is forcefully introducing a collection of old appliances to the ground level parking surface.  Still in a dream-like state, I hear another loud hydraulic hum (undoubtedly the raising of the dumpster); sounding much like one of the cars downstairs is turning into a Transformer.  In a few seconds, it seems as though the Transformer is smashing all the other cars in the parking garage to smithereens, but as I further gain consciousness, I realize this may actually be the garbage truck operator smashing the dumpster against the truck to ensure that every last napkin falls out, which although noisy, is certainly admirably thorough.  Another hum precedes the grand finale as it sounds like the dumpster falls off the dump truck’s hooks at about ten feet above the concrete…

I can confidently say I’ve never experienced a more effective early-morning alarm.

Rick Hederstrom

Associate Director