KAILUA-KONA — Along a stretch of an ancient trail north of Hawaii Community College – Palamanui, Camilo Ramirez and his son, Essien, carefully laid lava rocks along the trail’s edge, restoring the walls that had been kicked and tumbled by the goats that have taken up residence.
“I just think it’s important to just be in touch with the culture here,” Camilo Ramirez said as his son picked the rocks that would line the mauka-makai trail, “and to be a part of something that’s much older than ourselves.”
Ramirez and his son were among more than 60 volunteers who came to the campus Friday morning for a day of restoration and revitalization of the trail system being developed at Palamanui. The team of volunteers included students of the college, volunteers from Big Island Substance Abuse Council and about two dozen Marines on island from Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
“We’re bringing it back to life again,” said Palamanui lecturer Richard Stevens after guiding a group of volunteers down a part of the trail, “so we can have it as something to learn from, something to tune into, something to really feel the people of ancient times that when we put our feet here where they put theirs, you really can feel the mana come right up through the soles of your feet.”
Not far from the father-son duo was Lisa Twigg-Smith, a student volunteering on the trail for her first time.
“We in Kona need green spaces. This is a variation of a green space,” she said. “Our population is only going to grow; we all need to become more aware of stewardship as a world living on one planet, Earth, and I see this in the early stages as contributing to your community in healthy ways, which bring people valuable lessons.”
Still farther up worked a team of Marines, who were pulling out the fountain grass encroaching on the trail.
“We get people from all over the country, all over the world that don’t get to see this aspect of the Hawaiian culture,” said Zac Compeau. “Being on Oahu, it’s a little bit more mainland-type, so coming out here and actually seeing how Native Hawaiians live and how their culture came about, it gives them a better appreciation for what we do and for the people that we live with and integrate with.”
In addition to restoring the trail walls and removing fountain grass along that ancient trail, volunteers had also been dispatched to other sites around the campus, including a group focusing their efforts on a grove of about 30 wiliwili trees in about 6 acres of land.
There, Stevens said, volunteers put their time into tackling invasive species as well as wrapping some of the youngest trees with chicken wire to protect them from goats. And at a demonstration area just outside the campus’s administration building, a third group of volunteers was hard at work planting and preparing the area for future plantings.
That demonstration area is critical for the college, Stevens said, as a place where people can come and experience firsthand what the dryland forest that once covered these lands looked like.
“It’s a place for us to experiment with those species that will go back into what was the forest and see which ones that we can grow without danger from the goats,” he said. “But especially to gain more allies to get involved in this, to see that you really can bring back the magnificent forest that once grew here, and it’s just a matter of — like today — it’s a community effort.”
Hiram Anakalea, a student in his first year at Palamanui, worked in the wiliwili grove and demonstration area on Friday and said he saw it as an opportunity to “give back to help restore these ancient trails that once my ancestors walked in.”
And given the collaboration going into Friday’s event, he said, it’s important that people from so many backgrounds are rallying around the cause.
“In ways, we’re all similar. All our cultures somehow connect to each other,” he said, “and it’s good for all of us to come together and just connect and help each other out.”