We ran up the trail, four naked men in our fifties. I was in the lead. We had seen the moon rising over the ridge of the hill between Little and Big Beaches on the island of Maui and were running up to the top to see it in all its majestic splendor over Ahihi Bay and Big Beach.
We were bathed in moonlight. Everything was bathed in moonlight. The beauty of what we saw and felt upon reaching the top was stunning, enveloping, energyzing. Troy and Jean-Pierre, our new Canadian friends, embraced, as did Mark and I. We stood there, arms around each other, and gazed at the scene that lay before us. It was as if we were in a giant planetarium where the sights and sounds above, beneath and around us enveloped us.
The moonlight dappled on the waves, which unfurled themselves as ribbons of silver on the beach. It was, Troy had commented, like watching a beautiful woman wearing a sequined gown glide through a moonlit room.
What made the experience even more magical was that we were the only people, so far as we could tell, in this vast outdoor theatre. Both beaches, unbelievably, appeared deserted. We could stand there, naked, and not feel the least bit self-conscious, enabling us to forget ourselves.
It had been Mark’s idea to have supper on the beach. Jean-Pierre had told him there would be a “super moon” – whatever that was – on Saturday night, so Mark had suggested that the four of us stay on the beach following the sunset and that we have a picnic supper as we waited for the moon to rise. We didn’t learn until the following day that this lunar event was being eagerly anticipated the world over – the one time a year when the moon would pass the closet to earth, resulting in its size appearing 14% larger and its light being 30% greater than normal.
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| Troy and Jean-Pierre |
How serendipitous that we happened to be on Maui for this event, and how delightful that we had no idea beforehand of the significance of this full moon. We were fortunate enough to greet its arrival with no expectations, no preconceived notions; just gleeful wonder.
Earlier in the evening, prior to watching another glorious Little Beach sunset, Troy had set out a dozen or so tealight candles, digging small trenches in the sand, placing a candle in each one. He had also placed several in the rocky ledge, just behind us, that demarcated the north end of the beach. At sunset, he lit the candles. As dusk deepened, the effect of the candles’ glow arising out of the sand and the rocks was magical, creating a sacred space around us.
At sunset and shortly thereafter, those few remaining on Little Beach packed up and headed out, leaving us to ourselves. We brought out fruit and cheese and chatted and laughed as the darkness grew around us. At one point, I laid my head in Mark’s lap and looked up past his face to the stars as they multiplied in the night sky.
It’s a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
‘Neath the cover of early May skies …
You know the night’s magic
Seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight
Seems to shine in your blush …
The moon was rising in the south, beyond the hill that separates Big and Little Beaches. Like a night dawn, the moon’s ethereal glow gradually chased the shadows around us back to their corners.
Suddenly, we saw a figure running towards us on the beach. Then, Marte, a German woman in her early-mid-twenties, appeared in the glow of Troy’s candles. Naked and excited, she had come to make sure we knew about the moon. She animatedly told us about the significance of the day – the 5th day of the 5th month of the “5th” year (2012 = 2+1+2 = 5). It is, she said, before turning and running back into the dark, “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!”
Mark suggested he and I get up and go for a walk on the beach. We walked down to the water’s edge and stood in the moon’s gloaming, arms around each other, soaking in the moment. Then Jean-Pierre came running up to us. “You must come and look at the moon through the trees! Come!” He then took off back toward the south end of the beach and we followed, running like excited school boys.
It was breathtaking. A huge white orb hanging in the sky, casting light like a searchlight down the hill and onto the beach below. This was the point that we ran up the trail to see the view over Big Beach. The slopes of Haleakala were visible in the distance, the vegetation cascading down to the beach, which appeared as a ribbon of pale gold, the ocean waves licking and cascading like ribbons of silver. A sailboat bobbed out in the bay, its dark outline in contrast to the moon-dappled water. It was glorious.
When we somewhat reluctantly came back down the hill to Little Beach, it, too, was aglow. I marveled as I saw my shadow in the sand, a shadow created by moonlight rather than by the sun.
When we somewhat reluctantly came back down the hill to Little Beach, it, too, was aglow. I marveled as I saw my shadow in the sand, a shadow created by moonlight rather than by the sun.
The ocean colors are greens, blues, blacks …
The foam becomes effervescent …
But what is really transformed is the mind.
The experience becomes a meditation
Where nothing negative or unkind can touch it.
Our true essence – love – comes out,
Bathed in the moonlight.
~ Mark
It was then that Mark, Jean-Pierre and Troy headed out into the surf. I had told Mark that I didn’t want to swim. The water seemed strange and menacing to me in the moonlit dark, even though – as Mark pointed out – it was the same water in which I had swam that afternoon. But I’m glad that I stayed on the beach so that I could watch three men in their 50’s frolic in the water under the moonlight.
That night is and will forever be one of the most magical evenings of my life. It was an experience, it seemed to me, that happened to other people, but never to me. It was difficult for me to write about it because it was so exotic (for me).
For you see, I'm not accustomed to exotic. I'm not used to adventure. Even after all the changes I've made in my life over the course of the last 18 months, I am fundamentally unfamiliar with the exotic and with the feelings, emotions and thoughts associated with such an experience. I'm not familiar with the vocabulary. It's like learning to speak a foreign language in middle-age: communication seems stilted, limited, even artificial. Or like trying to use crayons to paint a sunset.
Mark suggested that, instead of trying to describe everything about the experience, that I focus instead on how I felt that evening. As I pondered this advice, I had a realization: as I was experiencing Saturday evening, I was contemplating how I would describe it. Irony of ironies, once I tried to describe it afterwards, words failed me. This realization led to another: I couldn't have been totally mindful while I was having the experience because I was at the same time thinking about how I would write about it, the effect of which was to detach me to a certain degree from what I was experiencing.
As I contemplated this realization, another one came to me, i.e., how much of my life has been spent as an observer as opposed to a participant. Which leads me to the comment I made to Mark as we were leaving the beach that night to head back to the condo: Most people in their 50's wouldn't even contemplate having an experience like we just had, let alone have such an experience.
As we discussed this thought, Mark commented that most people seem to begin a process early in their life of telling themselves "no." No, they can't do this. No, they shouldn't do that. Slowly, they box themselves into a "cropped" lifestyle. Against the panorama of a huge, vibrant, beautiful life with vast possibilities, they crop their life in order to define it, to give it meaning, to make it manageable.
I should know. I did this with my own life, starting when I was a child. And there is no possible way, as late as even a year ago, that I could have ever conceived of me having the type of experience I had last Saturday night.
Which brings me back to how I felt. Given what I've just written about "cropping" my life, I felt joy, freedom, a sense of adventure, playfulness, romance, contentment, peace, and magic.
I felt wonder-ful.
For you see, I'm not accustomed to exotic. I'm not used to adventure. Even after all the changes I've made in my life over the course of the last 18 months, I am fundamentally unfamiliar with the exotic and with the feelings, emotions and thoughts associated with such an experience. I'm not familiar with the vocabulary. It's like learning to speak a foreign language in middle-age: communication seems stilted, limited, even artificial. Or like trying to use crayons to paint a sunset.
Mark suggested that, instead of trying to describe everything about the experience, that I focus instead on how I felt that evening. As I pondered this advice, I had a realization: as I was experiencing Saturday evening, I was contemplating how I would describe it. Irony of ironies, once I tried to describe it afterwards, words failed me. This realization led to another: I couldn't have been totally mindful while I was having the experience because I was at the same time thinking about how I would write about it, the effect of which was to detach me to a certain degree from what I was experiencing.
As I contemplated this realization, another one came to me, i.e., how much of my life has been spent as an observer as opposed to a participant. Which leads me to the comment I made to Mark as we were leaving the beach that night to head back to the condo: Most people in their 50's wouldn't even contemplate having an experience like we just had, let alone have such an experience.
As we discussed this thought, Mark commented that most people seem to begin a process early in their life of telling themselves "no." No, they can't do this. No, they shouldn't do that. Slowly, they box themselves into a "cropped" lifestyle. Against the panorama of a huge, vibrant, beautiful life with vast possibilities, they crop their life in order to define it, to give it meaning, to make it manageable.
I should know. I did this with my own life, starting when I was a child. And there is no possible way, as late as even a year ago, that I could have ever conceived of me having the type of experience I had last Saturday night.
Which brings me back to how I felt. Given what I've just written about "cropping" my life, I felt joy, freedom, a sense of adventure, playfulness, romance, contentment, peace, and magic.
I felt wonder-ful.
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Postscript 2/23/17: This experience of dancing in the moonlight was the first of many exotic, wonderful experiences I would have with Mark over the course of the next several years. Mark, more than any other person in my life, taught me how to feel joy, freedom and adventure; and I'd like to think that I taught him a few things about playfulness, romance and magic.
Troy and Jean-Pierre, our friends who danced with us that exotic night, would later marry us on the same beach and in nearly the same spot where we had had our candlelit supper. (Troy had a license from the State of Hawaii to perform marriages.) They remain my dear friends with whom Mark and I shared many more wonderful times on and in the enchanted sand and waters of Little Beach.
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