I recently spent time on the island of Maui and, I’d presume, we all know the “benefits” of travel—seeing new cultures, ways of life, getting out of your comfort zone and all that—but seeing new nature can be just as marvellous and expansive.

I really can’t get over the fact that Earth not only has life, but so much of it. Like, we’re surrounded by vast nothingness! As far as we’ve looked into space—and we have looked far—we’ve yet to spot any definite sign of life. But Earth? By golly, it’s downright teeming!

In the same way we get familiar with our home culture and way of life, our home nature becomes just a background. While the return of certain birds in Spring may tickle our eardrums, we quickly become accustomed to the sound and relegate it to simply another noise, like traffic or lawnmowers or construction.

Traveling to a different ecosystem or a different continent—or some tiny island in the vast Pacific—you become inundated with newness. New plants, new smells, new birds, new mammals and insects and lizards and giant snails and turtles—fricken turtles!

By no effort of my own, I ended up swimming next to a rather large Honu (green sea turtle) twice! Wtf! And its little head came up for air right near me! I fell in love immediately. I bought a sun hoody with Honu art on it. I considered getting a Honu tattoo. I started developing a whole philosophy based on Honu. I can picture his little, possibly fifty year old, face right now.

And the birds! How different! How peculiar compared to the birds I’ve grown accustom to. Like the gregarious Myna. How gregarious it is! Noisy, in your face, and hardly moving out the way of cars. Or the Francolin, which is sorta like a pigeon and a chicken and can just belt out a tune that awakens the neighbourhood. Or the peach-faced lovebird—ha, just the name alone!

The "indoor" plants that are thriving outdoors. The numerous geckos and lizards. The colourful fish. The rains! Whew. The Pacific Northwest may be rainy, but this was something else. Our trip had been booked for a while and it ended up being right after some serious storms—Kona Lows—which caused damage and risk to life.

We went ahead with the trip and caught the tail end of some heavy rains, one day getting caught in a flash flood. While mindful of the anxiety more heavy rains could be bringing to locals, I couldn’t help just be agog at the experience. Within minutes the road was covered in an inch of water. The dirt trail I was on became a stream as water broke out of its usual carved paths. My clothing was fully saturated in just as little time. And it was warm—the heck?

It was magnificent in a humbling way. Earth is incomprehensible to me. All this life, all this weather. All this diversity! I mean, I recently learned about a lake that has lightning strikes nearly every single day! What madness is this?! The earth is madness! Beautiful, humbling madness.

And, this isn’t just an ode to Maui—though it could be—but really an ode to the whole Earth. Everywhere has its own ecosystem and flavour! There is so much diversity of life on this planet standing in stark contrast to the vast emptiness surrounding us. If I just remember to look, I can fall in love over and over again, everyday, with nature, with the Earth.

❤️🌴

Also: I visited Maui ten years ago, if you want to check out some sorta meh photos from back then.