The vog, the eruption, these disasters will pass.
But sometimes we lose faith. We wake up for months to gray, voggie skies, and think it’s the end of the world.
Like it’s biblical, the last days.
We’ve never seen this before, the mountain is gone, the ocean is gone, and half the town is hidden in pea soup. How long can we stand it till we go out of our minds?
Sometimes Mother Nature teases us, she lets the sun come out and our hopes lift up high, then down it comes again, surrounding us with drabness once more. It’s torture.
But we are not alone. There are places where gray clouds surround a city and county for months. People plan on it. They name coffee drinks after it. Put it on T-shirts.
It is called June Gloom and it happens in San Diego every year, the first week of June on the dot.
For most of the year the sun beams down on a sparkling bay, the beaches are filled with beachball tossing, beer-popping people, sailing and swimming under bright blue skies. Even the seagulls are smiling.
Then around June 1, they wake up and it’s dismal and cold, and it stays that way till July 4. On the Fourth of July the sun comes out and shines like an eternal promise from heaven. Backyard BBQs start up again and go all year long till the next June.
But nothing, no vog, no June Gloom, no biblical sign from heaven can touch the Flood of ‘86. The time in February 1986 it rained for almost two months straight in Sonoma, California.
The Russian River flooded and poured over the town till the water was above the shelves in Safeway. All you could see were rooftops above the black water. Some reported seeing Noah’s Ark floating by.
There were dark gloomy clouds for seven weeks, the wine we had to drink just to get through.
But one fine day the big yellow orb came out, the river sparkled with diamonds and Ospreys twirled in the blue skies above the pines.
And if anyone has ever lived in Hilo, you know about rain and depression. I feel sorry for the poor visitor who saves up all his life for a trip to Hilo and arrives in January. It pours down rain sometimes till March. I can still hear the deafening raindrops pounding on my metal roof. But again, it’s the same story.
Eventually the sun comes out and Hilo Bay is like a shining sapphire and the sugarcane on the mountain sways like a bright emerald ocean.
Which brings us back to our vog-filled Kona Town. It is nothing compared to our neighbors in Puna, we send our aloha.
But as for the vog, don’t worry, real soon you’ll look out the window and there will be Kona again, green and golden like it’s always been, the sunny side of the island.
Dennis Gregory writes a bimonthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com.
