NOWRAMP
2002
Departure (9/8/02)
Day
of Departure
by
Carlos Eyles
Prior
to our leaving, at ten in the morning ten Hawaiians honor
us with an Awa ceremony. Ten Hawaiian men dressed in traditional
cloting give us their blessing for the expedition. All hands
participated and in the still air of morning we wait while
they prepare a sacred ground for the ceremony on the spacious
Coast Guard lawn. As the ceremony begins a stiff breeze
comes up, blowing to the northwest, the compass heading
of our destination. Despite boat whistles, cruise ship horns,
thundering jets taking off and landing, and deafening whines
of helicopters that drowned out some of the dialogue the
moment did not break. Our small group prevailed over the
best civilization could offer, much as these small islands
we are about to explore prevailed for millennium. Perhaps
that is all we intend to do on this mission; prevail, to
sustain the beauty, wilderness and cultural integrity of
the Hawaiian people and their land and surrounding seas
for generations to come.
After
years of planning, months of preparations, meetings, emails
galore, endless phone calls and a collective will of iron,
the expedition, finally, mercifully is underway. The Rapture,
its brass props cutting clean Hawaiian water on a northwest
heading, steams out of Honolulu harbor and into the open
waters of the Pacific. We are bound for the farther reaches
of the northwestern Hawaiian chain some twelve hundred miles
of it scattered along that self-same heading . This expedition
was mounted under the auspices of NOAA's National Ocean
Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the US
Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State Department of Land
and Natural Resources. On board the Rapture some fifty souls
bringing a breadth of disciplines to seek out and determine
what, exactly, lies beneath and within these pristine islands
to the northwest, so removed from the civilized world as
to be nearly forgotten. The single unifying thread that
links these varied and diverse groups on board is their
deep and abiding passion for the sea and a determination
to find a way to care for and sustain these pristine waters
for generations to come. There is excitement in the air,
a relief almost that we are underway. To assemble such an
expedition is Heruclean, and though an enormous amount of
work awaits each assembled team, there is anticipation,
for now, the real work, the work of passion is at hand.
I
stand at the railing and watch the island of Oahu float
above the shadowed sea and think of Capt. Cook and the others
that followed this way and stumbled upon paradise and the
shambles that have been made of it since. And now, again,
we seek out paradise, not to exploit it but to cradle it
lovingly in our arms, and though these collective arms are,
in a way encumbered with the debris of past destruction
of our ancestors, they come with the clear understanding
of the past and the understanding that we are running out
of time and thus the opportunities to nurture and hold dear
what little is left of the legacy bequeathed to us; the
soul of the planet and thus ourselves; the natural world.
The
island of Oahu shrinks away, the most urban island in a
chain that has been, to a large degree, reconfigured by
man to suit his interests. Ahead lies the extended chain
of those same islands, an undersea mountain ridge whose
tips bear the names of the unfamiliar; Nihoa, Necker, Garden
Pinnacles, French Frigate Shoals, Laysan, Pearl and Hermes,
Maro, Midway, and Kure. All configured and occupied by the
hand of nature in its grand majesty created through fire,
molded by water and air. The primary elements knew how to
do the job right. These islands, adorned by sea birds instead
of airplanes, turtles instead of tourists, monk seals instead
of automobiles, await us by way of a geographical time warp.
I am humbled by the sheer idea of stepping back into time
and into this relatively unknown stretch of sea that has
been held intact by the protective hands of the remote and
undesired. There is mystery in the unknown, a magic that
awaits the seeker, a crystal hidden in every rock, life
discovered within a flowered piece of coral, multitudes
that once inhabited the world finding in these last outposts
a refuge to live and procreate undisturbed as they once
did. To witness such events is to hold dear one's own place
in the scheme of things and attempt to restring the connective
spirit that binds us all to our home, the planet Earth.
There
is the distinct feeling that this mission is one of greater
importance than we ourselves can fully fathom. As such every
effort and all skills that can be mustered and brought to
bear on this project will be done so with a dedication and
a determination to bring about the protection of these islands
for future generations.
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