I've been living on Maui in my pup man tent for the last five months when I decided that I need a little bigger more permanent place. It wasn't that I didn't like living in my tent, after all I’d been in some really wonderful places. When I first got to Maui I spent the first month in an abandoned guava and macadamia nut orchard filled with lilikoi vines, with a pineapple field across the street and an abandon mango orchard next to that. Even though I was dirt poor, I ate like a king. The only thing I lacked was beer, I had brought my own stash from the mainland.
The next month I moved into the mango orchard because it was in full production and didn't have cows wandering around like the guava orchard did. I ate my fill of mangos everyday, as many as I could and to tell the truth, I feel sorry for anyone that has never tasted or eaten a lot of mangos. Because mango, in my opinion, is the best tasting fruit on earth and I've tasted a lot of different kinds. The only other one that comes close is the durian from southeast Asia. It smells like shit and looks just like yellow baby turds but it tastes like creamy butterscotch from heaven. Anyway, when the mangos were done I moved into an ironwood forest and stared looking for a place to build a tree house. I looked in the jungle on Hana side; to hard to get to. I looked in the kiave forest on the Makena side; too thorny and too many other freeks. I looked in the uplands of Kulu; too cool. Then I found a nice little 200 foot high pua (cinder cone) on the Haiku side. It was perfect.
At its base it had pineapple fields on two sides, an ironwood forest on one and a 500 foot deep ravine on the other. It's sides were covered with a mixed jungle and it's top had ankle to thigh high grass covering it with a great view of the ocean about five miles away looking north. Looking south you could see the mighty Haleakala, a 10,000+ foot extinct volcano. At the foot of the pua in the ironwoods was an old unkempt Japanese graveyard, an auspicious omen I thought. I cleaned off the headstones, offered the ancestors some food and water then asked their permission to build my tree house on their pua. They did not say no, so I went looking for a place. I looked mostly on the ravine side. It was so steep that I was sure that no one would bother me there. I found a couple trees close enough together to put a platform up between them. They were about a hundred feet from the top of the pua with a great view of the cane fields and the ocean but the spot couldn't be sees unless you were right on top of it.
I walked three miles to a bamboo grove and cut a bunch of supports for the roof, floor and sides, waited until it got dark then hauled them back to the pua. I built the floor 4 feet high off the ground with an 8’X8’ platform, 4 foot high walls and the roof to the same specification as the great pyramid of Giza and oriented it to the North Star. After the frame was finished I went to town and bought two 4'X8' sheets of plywood for the floor, 40 feet of 4 foot fiberglass screen for the walls and door and a big roll of clear visquene for the roof so it'd be bug and waterproof. It rained every day in Haiku and there were plenty of mosquitoes and other creepy-crawlies. I then hired a freek who had a car to take me in the dead of night to the pua and drop me off at its base with all of my supplies. I didn’t want anyone knowing where I was. I humped all of this stuff up the pua and in the next few days finished the tree house. I put a camouflaged trap over the top of the plastic sheets on the roof for shade and concealment then a rug on the floor and 'Viola', Home Sweet Home.
I had a little stove to cook on and even a perfect place to shit. About 30 feet from the tree house was a rock overhang with around 40 feet of clear air to the bottom. I’d just hang my ass over the edge and let loose. The only thing it lacked was water, which I had to carry a mile from the Haiku store. About the only problem I ever had was when it rained a lot. The ravine was so steep and slippery that I couldn't make it up to the top for a day or two so I’d just sit in my tree house, do yoga, watch the rain and be grateful just for being there
Only five people that I know of ever visited my tree house. There were two different tourist babes that I picked up and who wanted to see the sights of Maui. After hiking the crater or hitching to Hana and back, I’d show them the tree house and let them spend the night. The third I don't know exactly who it was. I came back to Haiku after spending a couple days with my friends on Makena beach, all of whom wanted to know where my tree house was at but no way that I’d show them because that would have been the end of it. When I got back there was a note on the floor that read, "To the owner of the tree house. I was hiking around Haiku and saw this pua and thought it'd be a good place to hike when I found this beautiful little tree house and decided to wait for you. I even spent the night. I hope you don't mind. I had to leave the today (today's date) or would have waited longer because I really wanted to meet you. Thank-you so much for building it. I'll always remember it. Love, Terry." Whether Terry was male or female I'll never know. The fourth person didn't leave a note but he did leave something else. One morning I got up and there about 30 feet from my door was a 6 foot high marijuana plant, of course all of the buds had been taken off of it but there was still plenty of tiny buds and bud leaf left to be enjoyed. BOM SHIVA!
The last was definitely the weirdest. In fact, he may have been the strangest guest that I've ever entertained in my entire life. Nate was a freek who lived a mile down the road from me. He was the caretaker of this really beautiful 5 acre meadow surrounded by guava trees over looking the ocean. He had a pretty nice shack with one wall removed then covered with screen so he could look out over the meadow and all the way to the ocean. Since we lived in the same area we'd met and he'd showed me his place then asked about mine, which I told him about but not where it was located. He gave me his rap, which was totally bananas.
He'd been raised a strict Catholic; Catholic schools, alter boy and all that crap. He wanted to become a priest and entered a seminary. One night just for fun near the end of his schooling, he and some of his buds wanted to see what this LSD was all about so they dropped some. He lost his Faith, quit the seminary then moved to Maui and has been fucked up ever since. He still wanted to be a Catholic, even going to the Haiku church every Sunday, going to Confession and taking Communion but he just couldn’t believe it anymore. He told me that even the priest was getting tired of his rap, giving him the same old song and dance that priest basically told him to either shit or get off the pot. I told him the same thing.
Anyway, one day he's following me around crying about his predicament, begging me to show him where I live and promising never to tell a soul. I tell him to fuck off, but he says that he'll just follow me from now on until either I show him where it is or he finds it for himself. That I don't want so I show him.
He sits in the tree house for a long time not saying a thing, just looking over the cane fields to the ocean, then he says, "Would you please do me a favor?"
I ask him what?
"Would you please slit my throat for me right now."
I know that he's nuts, but he's got to be kidding.
"No" he says, "I'm not joking. I feel at peace right now and would like to die, so if you could just cut my throat for me, I’d be grateful."
I hand him my knife and tell him to do it himself. I've been around quite a few suicidal maniacs before and I've found the best way to deal with them is to give them the means to do themselves in and tell them to go ahead and do it. I'll even watch. Not one ever has, instead they get mad at me for being such a heartless and uncaring bastard.
Anyway, the dude hands me the knife back telling me, "I can't do it or I'll go to Hell for Eternity for committing suicide."
I remind him that he no longer believes in Hell, that it's just a Catholic fantasy.
"But" he says, "it might be true and I just can't risk it, so if you'd be so kind as to kill me, I’d appreciate it."
I tell him that I’d like to oblige him but then I would go to Hell for murder.
That stops him, after all it is a mortal sin to kill someone so he shut up and leaves.
I don't see him for awhile and when I do he's all happy and smiles. He's found a solution to his problem, he's joined the Navy! He's just come to collect his things and say good bye.
Well, good bye. I am, and I bet the priest is happy to see him go. Let the Navy deal with him, after all, it's already full of nuts and idiots, and it might even do him some good.
A few months after that I get a letter from Kelly, which my Mom forwarded to me. She's been living in Amsterdam and had gotten herself deported back to the USA. She was staying with her mother in Illinois and said would that she’d like to see me again so I decide to say good bye to my tree house and Maui and head for Kelly.
She took the train to California and we meet in Sacramento. After talking it over we decide to go to Mexico and live together. I’d hitched around Mexico before and knew this small town right on the beach where life was easy and cheap with hardly any other tourist to bother either us or the locals. We took a bus from Tijuana down the coast to La Barre De Navidad, a three day bus/train trip, rented a fully furnished house a block from the beach for $50 a month and moved in. At first life was great, the weather, the food, the people, $25 kilos of mota but something’s were just too cheap, like tequila $2 a litre and beer $2 a case delivered, and we liked to drink a lot, almost as much as doing drugs.
After a couple months we knew that we had to get out of there or become full fledged alkies. I told Kelly about my tree house on Maui and we decided to go there. So it's bus back to the USA then plane to Maui. The tree house is still there and after a bit of tidying up we move in. The next few months are wonderful. We're young and in love and have just enough money to stay high without getting totally fucked up. Of course, it can't last.
One night we were sleeping on Makena beach when a jeep load of young drunk angry Hawaiian mokes try to run us over with their Jeep. They miss the first time so they come around for another try. They miss again and this pisses them off so bad that they stop the jeep, jump out and while two of them hold me, the other five or six break my face. One of the even slaps Kelly around a little just for fun, all the while telling us not to mess with the locals. It takes a week for me to heal up and in that time we decide that it's time to leave Maui. Also, the treehouse is discovered by the pua's owner.
One day two boys about age 9 and 10 come up to the tree house and say, “Our Dad owns this land and he'd like to see you. He's waiting down below."
We follow the boys down and see their dad, a Hawaiian guy around 40. He says, "Hi, are you the people living on my pua?"
I say, "I guess not any more."
He looks at me kind of funny, then asks, "And are you the ones who've been taking care of the graveyard and leaving the food and water?"
I admit that it was me.
He asks me why I did that.
I say, "I don't know, it just seemed right that's all."
He says, "I've known that someone was up here for the last year but I could never find you, that’s why I sent my boys. They say that you got a real nice little tree house up there, no trash around it either. So I'm not here to kick you off. You can stay as long as you like. There's just two things I want you to do. One is; don't let anyone else move onto my pua. And the second is; if my boys come around, chase them off. I don't want them hanging around with hippies, you understand."
We tell him, "Thanks" but we're leaving Maui. Getting beat up real bad just takes all the fun out of a place and anyway, now that Kelly and I are together, there's a whole world to see and experience.
Why, we can hear Alaska calling us right now and for just a $99 airfare. We left the tree house and Maui and have never returned, but I'll always remember that tree house on the pua as one of the finest homes I have ever lived in.