Passage IV

House of the Sun

[1]

I had to drag myself out of bed to see the sunrise. Kayla had been insistent. And so there I was in her car, it being 3: 30 in the morning, equipped with a seldom-used hoodie and a giant thermos of coffee. "You'll need this at the top," she said. She handed me a wool hat, which I regarded skeptically. We were in Maui after all; we had spent the day before lying on the beach. Further, I decided to take her word for it. I had never been to the top of Mount Haleakala, the"House of the Sun. " [A]

[2]

Supposedly, a view of the most beautiful sunrise in the world from the summit of the dormant volcano 10,023 feet above sea level.[B]Tourists and locals alike make the arduous 38-mile drive, cheerfully navigating the hairpin turns in the dark hours of early morning. Kayla was one of them. I, on the other hand, clutched my coffee and tried not to focus on the well-traveled road before us.

[3]

Once we reached the summit and parked the car, my misgivings were compounded by the shocking cold; being, at most, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. [C] I grudgingly pulled on the wool hat, trudging behind Kayla until we reached the main observation point. About a hundred people had already gathered, a guard rail the only thing separating them from the craters edge. Granted, all I could see were clouds. A thick lid of them foamed slowly over the crater, creating what looked like the surface of another planet. It was strange to stand before such alien beauty and hear the familiar murmurs of chitchat and the casual slurps of coffee coming from the collective crowd that had gathered.

[4]

At exactly 5: 57 a.m., the sun made its way out of the clouds. Not to mention that someone standing near us began amele oli, a native Hawaiian chant. We observers stood next to each other shoulder to shoulder and observed as the ascending sun lit the sky golden and casted a rosy blush onto the clouds below.[D] I was simply grateful to be there at that moment, with Kayla, watching the new day break over the island.