I was driving home yesterday and found myself in a long line of traffic. I live not far off the Hana Highway here in Maui. This road turns into the Road to Hana, a journey which for very good reason, for its beauty and culture, attracts a lot of visitors each year. Morning time can find the road busier with cars heading out towards Hana, and evening can find the road busy with cars returning, the numbers varying as the holiday seasons come and go.
While moving slower than usual along the highway, locals turning off on the side roads as we headed east, I found myself wondering what this journey was like for those visitors who were driving the road for the first time? I regularly drive this section of road, I know what comes next, what there is to see, how long it will take to get from A to B. For visitors though, each turn in the road offers a new site, buildings and homes will be seen for the first time, what is around the next corner or over the next hill? Indeed even, in my complacency of knowing the road well, what do visitors see that I miss?
Well this is obviously a thought that has stuck with me for a long time. I initially wrote about it over four years ago, saying,
Sometimes when I am driving home, following a car containing a family or persons visiting Maui, I wonder how they are seeing the road and its surrounding scenery? For them, each bend in the road will be revealing a vista that they have not seen before. Views that for me I see pretty much every day, will be a first occurrence for them.
I guess that there is something in this dialogue that for me has some meaning? Perhaps it is around the subject and state of awareness? How present can I be to what is around me, even when what is around me is very familiar?