Sherwood Forest

Waimanalo Bay, Oahu

Five miles of Hawaii’s finest beaches, including one wooded section that the locals call “Sherwood Forest” for its former reputation as a hangout for various unsavory types.

A glorious day in late March, temps in the low 80s and only a light volcanic haze from the Big Island marring a picture-postcard scene. I walked up from the shore to a woven grass mat laid under the graceful wispy pines and stretched out to nap a bit before the drive back to Honolulu. The arrhythmia of the breaking waves had a narcotic effect, and I started to drift in and out of a quasi-dreamlike state.

After a short time I stirred, sat up and looked down the beach, where a woman wearing a beach robe coming toward me. In a split/ I saw that it was Debby, Debby who died from lymphoma a decade ago. The sunlight that dappled her as she strode toward me had dimmed, as if a solar eclipse was nearing totality; the whispering pines were now silent. She did not speak, but I knew that she had come for me, to guide me into that twilight paradise that she now inhabited. Not yet… not yet… but her call was not without its allure/ second the feeling I had was over. The sun shone brightly, the wind and the waves murmured and sighed. The woman on the beach was, like me, a tourist with only relaxation on her mind.

As I sank back to my ‘bed’ on the beach, I knew that any further sleep would elude me.