Lahaina Town Remembered

My An Arkie's Faith column from the August 16, 2023, issue of The Polk County Pulse.

My phone pinged, and I pulled it out of my pocket to look at it. A notification said that a wildfire was raging in Lahaina Town on the Hawaiian island of Maui. My heart sank as I viewed the accompanying photos. Two years ago, I spent a week in Lahaina and fell in love with the people and the area. 

Over the next few days, I watched in horror as reports of the devastation came in. This morning the Associated Press reported, “As the death toll from a wildfire that razed a historic Maui town climbed to 93, authorities warned that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages. The blaze is already the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.”

According to the Maui Fire Update website, “Lahaina Harbor is gone, and the banyan tree is charred (it’s said that if the roots are healthy, it will likely grow back, but it looks burned yet standing).” It was the first bit of possibly good news that I had read. On my visit to Lahaina two years ago, the Banyan tree made an impression on me, and I wrote about it. 

On the first morning of my visit to Maui, I dress quietly before dawn. Slipping out the condo’s front door into the darkness of the Maui night, I walk to the parking lot and get into my rental car. It is just a short drive to Kahekili Beach, and I park the car and walk down to the beach in the moonlight. An occasional sneaker wave washes over my feet as I walk south on the sandy beach. It isn’t easy to see in the dim moonlight, so it surprises me when the wave comes farther than usual. As the water washes the sand around my feet, I lose my balance. After a few times, I learn to stand still when the wave comes, not moving until the water has subsided and the sand is stable again.

After walking over a mile, I returned to my car. The first rays of morning light are chasing away the darkness. I drive toward Lahaina Town, anxious to see it for the first time. In the first morning light, almost no one is on the streets. I quickly found a place to park and started walking toward the town center. I pass stores and galleries that will be filled with customers in a few hours. I walk past an old historic home and stop to read the historical plaques that tell its story.

The Baldwin Home is the oldest house still standing on the island of Maui. Reverend Ephraim Spaulding built the original four-room structure between 1834-35. The area offered a direct view of the Lahaina landing and the ocean beyond where whaling ships would anchor. Reverend Spaulding became ill in 1836 and returned to Massachusetts, and Reverend Dwight Baldwin and his wife moved into the home. The couple had eight children, all born in Hawai’i.

As their family grew, so did the house. In 1840, Reverend Baldwin added a bedroom and a medical study. And in 1849, he completed the entire second floor. The home faces prevailing winds from the ocean with large windows in the front. The walls are 24 inches thick and constructed of coral, sand, and lava rock with rough-hewn timber framing. The thick walls and high ceilings help keep the interior cool.

As I walk the grounds of the Baldwin Home, I see remnants of the kitchen’s foundation and firepit in the rear yard. I try to imagine the sights and sounds of Lahaina during those early years when as many as 700 whaling ships came through Lahaina in a year. Ship captains on year-long whale hunts would rest their crews in Lahaina. Whaling ships would restock their provisions in Lahaina, staying there for weeks. The sailors were a raucous crowd engaging in long stints of drinking and debauchery. The sailors’ behavior disturbed many Maui residents, and the missionaries, such as Reverend Baldwin, were very vocal in their opposition to the lifestyles of the whalers.

I see Lahaina's most famous landmark just a few blocks from the Baldwin House. Spreading out in front of me is a gigantic banyan tree. It covers an entire city block and is 50 feet tall. I sit on a bench under its branches, taking in its beauty and grandeur. Because I have never seen a historical plaque that I didn’t read, I found out that this banyan tree was imported from India and planted in front of the Lahaina Courthouse and Lahaina Harbor in 1873 by the sheriff of Maui and is now the largest in the state. It has a canopy circumference spanning a quarter mile and covers almost two acres. Banyan trees can cover so much ground because they have roots that grow from outward-extending branches and reach the ground, becoming trunk-like and expanding the tree’s footprint.

In some ways, the banyan tree reminds me of what a community should be. The banyan grows by using aerial prop roots. When a mature tree, its spreading branches produce hundreds of these roots. Some grow until they reach the ground. There, they anchor themselves and develop into new trunks. Imagine numerous branches with dangling roots that produce more trunks and branches with dangling roots. Over time you have a whole grove connected, covering ample space.

The more roots the tree puts down, the more it grows. And the more it grows, the branches must have firmly grounded roots to hold them up. Everything is interconnected. Without the roots, the branches would fall. Without the branches, the roots wouldn’t exist. 

Gentle Reader, you need your community, and your community needs you. If the community is to grow and prosper, we all need each other and must work together. We will never be a strong community when we refuse to work together. We can never prosper when our disagreements become more important than our common goals. Paul describes the Christian community this way. “Each one of us has a body with many parts, and these parts all have different uses. In the same way, we are many, but in Christ we are all one body. Each one is a part of that body, and each part belongs to all the other parts.” Romans 12:4,5 (NCV) 

The phrase, “each part belongs to all the other parts,” seems like a good description of a banyan tree. If we want to be a productive part of our community and be like the banyan tree, we need to follow the guidance found in 1 Peter 4:8-10 (Message). “Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it.”