Hawaii Is a Warning

In November 1886, at a royal jubilee in honor of his 50th birthday at ʻIolani Palace in Honolulu, King David Kalākaua showed off a rather remarkable object that had recently come into his possession: a smooth, oblong calabash, made of koa and kou woods and wrapped with decorative brass, known as the Wind Gourd of La‘amaomao.

As legend has it, the gourd contained all of the winds of Hawaii—winds that could be summoned only by a person who knew what to chant to each one. The gourd itself was named for Laʻa Maomao, Hawaii’s benevolent goddess of the wind.

I found myself thinking of the gourd earlier this week as I observed uncommonly fierce winds whipping through the palm trees on the island of Kauai, more intense than I could recall ever having seen in Hawaii, and then again hours later as an emergency warning siren screeched out, alerting me to the horrific fire that those same winds had stoked on Maui, about 190 miles to the east...
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