Burning thighs

So yeah...its Tuesday. 3 full days since returning from the most grueling hike of my life. My quads are still weak and my muscles stiff. But what and awesome and amazing valley I hiked through. For those of you who understand grades the first mile of our hike was down a 25% grade over 1 mile to the valley floor...aka sea level. Once down we followed a dirt road further into the valley past a number of humble dwellings. We were told that those who live in this valley chose to live here because of the solitude and quiet. To bad so many tourists now flock to the valley floor disturbing their peace.

Anyway, we cut off the dirt road and entered "the jungle". I was transported into a world like not other. Wild ginger, coffee, orchids, bamboo, begonia, impatients and tons of other plants captured my heart. I love plants and to see these all in their native setting was incredible. I felt so privileged to be bouldering over the ancient lava rocks and clinging to the trees for balance. At one point we could no longer continue along the small river we had been following as the trail became a steep cliff. We were forced to wade waist deep through the river for a small stretch with our bags hoisted over our heads. In river floor was made of large lava rocks made smooth over the years and made for very unstable walking. I kept thinking....what an amazing adventure.

We criss crossed the river again in a number of spots as we made our way deeper into the canyon. At various stages in our hike I could see the falls we were journeying towards in the distance. It grew closer and closer...and finally over an hour later we arrived, wet, hungry and a bit tired at the foot of the falls. The height of the Hi'ilawe falls is over 1,400 feet. It cascades off the rock as it descends down the valley wall and pools into a beautiful deep swimming hole. I devoured my egg salad sandwich, complements of the U of N cafeteria, and jumped into the refreshing water. I was a bit freaked out because the water was so dark. Not much direct sunlight makes it to the back of the canyon. What an amazing feeling to swim in this beautiful oasis. And what an amazing God I serve who made this for so few to actually see and experience. It was just awesome...words can't compare. The falling water felt like a really hard rain and made my contacts go all crazy even with my eyes closed.

After we got out it started to rain so we decided to make our way back down the river trail. By the time we got back to the part of the river we had to wade through it was about a foot and a half deeper do to the rains. Needless to say since our group of 21 was mostly female the river was too deep for us to carry our bags over our heads. So we made a huge train down river. Each person found a rock the allowed them to stand relatively firmly in the river and we passed the bags down the chain from one side to the other. Not one bag passed down the chain fell in the river. What a testimony to the value of team work. It was still raining as we came out the valley trail onto the dirt road.

Our trek back to the falls was over but our journey out of the valley was just beginning. We now had to drag our weary, wet selves back up the 25% grade road out of the valley - 1,000 feet in a mile. I've done a lot of hiking in my day but this was so hard. I wanted to cry about 1/3 the way up. My silent mantra became...Lord you said when I am weak you are strong...so over and over I repeated...when I am weak you are strong.

I'm sure that in a month if you asked me to hike there again I would but not today or tomorrow. I don't think my legs could handle the 12 miles of valley hiking and the 1 mile back up again. It was crazy exhausting and like I said I still hurt. But you know what...God did carry me up the valley wall and he showed me that he is indeed strong when I'm weak...which is basically always. Such a tangible lesson of his faithfulness to carry us through hard times, when we just don't have the capacity within ourselves to do it.

I didn't bring my camera because I knew we would be in the river but here is a website with some pretty good pics. Enjoy!!!

http://www.hawaiiweb.com/hawaii/html/sites/waipio_valley.html