When the end of the road takes you back to the beginning

BY MICHELLE PLOTKIN

Makena Road, Maui, Hawaii

Makena Road, on the southwestern side of Maui, ends at a lava field. The remnants from the last time a volcano erupted on Maui, over 200 years ago. Dark, jagged volcanic rock, as far as you can see. When you pick up a piece, it is porous, light yet sharp, cutting into your hand if you hold too tightly. Scattered vegetation has struggled to poke through the harsh terrain in places, but it is otherwise barren. Warm trade winds gently roll in from the Pacific Ocean to the west as waves break close to the shore. To the east, green hills roll across the landscape. We had driven Makena Road many times before, usually stopping at beaches or a coconut stand, but we’d never gone all the way to the end.

I’m standing in a parking lot with my husband and our nine-year-old daughter, staring at the vastness of the lava field in the scorching, blinding sunlight. It takes a moment to sink in. This exact point—where the dirt road transitions to rock— is a portal, echoing back to the beginning of Maui. This primordial panorama beckons to the time before there was a road, before there was an island, before there was anything here but water. The end of the road has taken us to the beginning.

Deep within the earth, a million years ago, magma burst through the ocean floor, became lava as it hit the surface, and created an island in the sea. A million years ago, this is all that Maui was—a volcanic mountain tapering to a field of molten rock.

In Hawaiian, Makena means abundance, a gift, a reward. The lava emerged in great abundance; it was a gift. A gift that put this magnificent place here in the middle of the ocean. This remote, bountiful, inspiring land—a land rich with diverse micro-climates that create abundant ecosystems to feed the souls, appetites, and livelihoods of the people who live and play here, and majestic sunsets that gently end each glorious day.

You should wear rigid shoes to the lava field, the guidebooks all tell me. And sunscreen. Bring lots of water. Maybe a snack. The guidebooks all sound like my mother.

The guidebooks. My mother. Both are partially responsible for where I have ended up today. But getting to the lava field at the end of the road, like getting these words to the page with commas neatly inserted—hopefully in the appropriate places—to submitting articles and pitching story ideas, starting my first book, considering myself a writer and not an impostor…this has been my journey.

The desire to write percolated inside me for years. Like the magma under the ocean, I felt the pressure. It was fear, creating a physical force, that held the words inside. I was afraid to write, fearing I would not be good at it, that I might embarrass myself. Fearing I wouldn’t have anything interesting to say, that no one would listen. And, psychologically, fearing what might come out once I started. Fearing I might not be able to stop. Fearing it would consume me. For a long time, the feeling was there, and I ignored it.

Like the volcanoes under the Pacific, whose immense power built the massive Hawaiian archipelago, the pressure inside me could hardly be contained. Until it couldn’t. My mind split open, and the words, like lava, came rushing out. Flowing across the landscape of my life, past my family, my friends, my work, my social commitments. And with it the fear. Would it be beautiful, lighting up the night sky? Would it be destructive, swallowing everything in its path? Or would it be just a big, flowing, hot mess?

In the lava field, there is a path. The signage urges visitors to keep on it. The lava rock is fragile and unstable, dangerous and alluring, sacred and otherworldly. The path through it is fairly well-worn, safe and sensible. I listen closely to the sound of my footsteps. Each step sounds like something underfoot is being crushed, destroyed, as if we were shrunk to miniatures, walking across a bowl of corn flakes.

Beneath the fall of our footsteps, we hear the crunching sounds of other creatures on the rocks. Their steps do not have the same cadence as our own. Dark as the rocks from which they emerge, we see goats, nimbly but confidently navigating the terrain, bleating quietly to themselves as they move. My daughter insists they are talking to each other. “What are they saying?” I ask.

She answers, “I hope the people stay on the path; they might not know how to walk on the rocks.”

My husband wants to go off the path. He always does. He has the confidence it takes to forge his own way. He came from a hard-scrabble town as he describes it. To get out, to move on, he had to abandon fear. It was his best option; there was no roadmap for where he wanted to go.

As adults, we can reflect on which moments of our childhood have affected us, determined our path, molded us into the people we have become. My childhood was privileged. Sheltered. Safe. Secure. I don’t remember being taught to take risks or even needing to take risks. Can I be like the goats, wandering about on the sharp rocks? I want to think that I, too, can be a confident navigator. My upbringing led me to be self-assured, optimistic. But also to be calculated.

We can stay on the path. Safe, with our kid. We can venture off. Be reckless. We consider the options. Will my daughter remember this day and internalize the decision that was made? Will she know the choices we make are not the same ones she can make? Will she free herself from fears, take risks, try with wild abandon, not concern herself with failure?

I came to writing later in life. I was always unnerved by a blank piece of paper. Tabula Rasa, I remember my English teacher saying as if that phrase would magically give me literary inspiration and license. But the blank slate did not inspire me. The emptiness intimidated me. And this feeling never went away.

I’m thinking about the lava. The lava that erupted from the undersea volcano. Lava does not care about intimidation. It goes where it goes. With reckless abandon. As an island in the sea, Maui began as a blank slate. From the thoughtless rolling destruction of something inhospitable, unrelenting, unreasoning, and unapologetic. Over time it grew. Solidified. Became majestic.

Like the lava, with my words, I am unrestrained. Fearless. Free. I don’t have to start at the beginning, staring at a blank page. I don’t have to stay on the path. I never know where my writing will take me. But I do know that sometimes, at the end of the road, I might find a beginning. Perhaps a beginning I had not yet imagined, but one that had been there all along.