The Holy Ghost on the Day Before Christmas Eve

   The day before the day before Christmas, Sandra and I had a plan.  We would get going early and bust up the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel for a morning snorkel.   Initially we had contacted Peter and Marla to see if they would like to swim with us at Mahukona, but they had plans to help a disabled friend snorkel that day, so we were on our own.   Everything went according to plan , including a

Seaward Rocks at 49 Black Sand Beach

smooth drop of our yard debris as we exited Kailua going north.  We arrived at the Mauna Kea at 8:35 only to be told that the last beach pass had been awarded three minutes earlier.

   Thus thwarted we had to pick a second choice.  As it is winter and we had our wetsuits, we decided against the long walk to the Mauna Lani beach and chose 49 Black Sand Beach, also at the Mauna Lani but involving a very short walk.

Imitating a Dead Cauliflower Coral

    The day was gorgeous, with blue skies and relatively cool and dry.   The tide was such that we needed to enter through waves over shallow sand and  then step down a slope of about four feet onto the rocky bottom.  It was immediately apparent that the water clarity wasn't very good...not Shanghai at rush hour, but heading in that direction.

    We started swimming to the left, towards the craggy rocks and the sea.  As I swam along over the shallow rocks, I spotted an octopus slithering under a dead head of cauliflower coral.   Sandra was nearby and I called her over.  I explained where the octopus was and we waited.  In many situations, this would be fruitless.  But in this instance we had caught a very friendly octopus.  As long as we stayed about six feet away, he would crawl out, sit on the coral and do his best to look like a piece of cauliflower coral that had given up the ghost in October of 2015.  He was throwing up a variety of textures and brown and gray colors.  Praise Octopus the Holy Ghost.

    After five minutes I changed position and when I stabilized, the octopus was gone.  A moment later Sandra started hooting at me through her snorkel.   She had watched our friend slither over the bottom and down to the base of a yellowish lobular coral.  As I arrived, he was poking his head out, along with his tentacles.  He was now smooth and yellow, like pahoehoe lava made out of crème

Can you see the octopus, now a smooth yellow?

brûlée.  As we watched he tucked himself under the coral and extended two tentacles a surpising length.  Over about thirty seconds he manipulated a hunk of coral rubble about six inches long to produce a barrier in front of his hide away.  I am in awe of octopi, but I had never seen anything like that.

  After swimming across the small bay, we had the opportunity to exchange Christmas greetings with some nice folks on a small boat.  As they motored away Sandra and I serenaded them with a rousing rendition of We wish you a Merry Fishmas (and a halibut New Year.)

    Back on shore, we met a group of young adults from Baylor.  They had buried one of their number, an affable young black fellow, all the way so only his head and neck stuck out of  the sand.  As we left, there were a bunch more people arriving.  Christmas is indeed the busy time here in Kona, for the tourists,  us kama ainas and our friend the octopus.

jeff

   Hard as it is to believe, Sandra and I are now going to church on a regular basis.  Stranger yet, the

Checking out the coral rubble

congregation of the Kona United Methodist Church will sing a carol written by yours truly on Christmas morning...just about twelve hours from this very moment.  Prior to the debut it was printed in the weekly bulletin and I've received positive feedback, which is good because I would suppose a strict doctrinarian might find it offensive.  Who knows about these things?

 I'll leave you with the lyrics.

O little Town Kailuaville, how still we see thee rise,

Upon thy deep and dreamless reef, the silent fish swim by.

Yet in the dark depths shineth, the phosphorescent light.

The sharks and rays who sleep by day will swim with us tonight.

The Keiki dream of sugar cane,
 while Maui seeks the sun.

Please save the fish and grant this wish:

God bless us everyone.

O little town Kailuaville, how brave on Christmas Day.

While pilgrims pray and palm trees sway,
 the dolphins swim the bay.

Yet ‘neath your shining waters,
 the Christmas wrasse doth dwell.

His brilliant colors herald in 
Our Lord, Emmanuel.

When it isn't raining, we get sunsets like this one, taken last week.