IKOKEE STATE PARK, Hawaii - Of course we thought about turning back, but we knew we couldn’t.

Never mind that the trail had gone from bad to worse and the afternoon was getting on. We were stubborn - and hopeful.

“What’s it like ahead?” we asked hikers returning to the trail head.

No one could give us the complete picture. Most had given up, discouraged by the slippery clay and the ankle-deep mud that had been with us from the start.

So we continued, burning our way up the eroded ridgeline, lifting
ourselves through a maze of exposed roots, limbo-dancing beneath fallen trees and snaking up the sharply etched gullies that criss-crossed the trail.

One misstep would have led to a twisted ankle, a wrenched knee or worse: To our left was sheer freefall, an elevator chute into open space.

Yet as much as our feet hurt and our legs ached, Pihea Overlook - at 1,305 metres, the highest peak overlooking Kauai’s Na Pali Coast - lured us on.

Let others settle for more scripted entertainments - running a zip line, cruising the coast, sipping mai tais at some seaside resort. We had a different idea.

My wife, Margie, and I wanted to escape the tourist-industrial complex and get some red dirt in the tread of our shoes, to find a place where the ancient goddess of fire, Pele herself, was more than a twittering joke for mainlanders - and to hear what the mountains had to say.

By the time we reached the summit, a denuded crown no larger than a pitcher’s mound, we were spent.

To the north, lay the expansive Kalalau Valley, a complex watershed of steep fluted ridges, red cliffs, waterfalls and jungle extending 1,219 metres below us and running close to where the blue Pacific rose and fell upon the sand.

To the south, as far as we could see, stretched the Alakai wilderness, the source of Kauai’s seven rivers, a forested plateau riven by deep, eroded and unseen gorges, punctuated by the summits of Kawaikini and Waialeale hidden in their eternal rainstorms.

Clouds swirled around us.

We had two more hours of daylight.

We needed to start back, but first we paused and listened: In the midst of it all - the gusting wind, the muted surf - we heard a deepening silence.

As we looked out from Pihea and watched the wisps of ragged clouds spiral in the valley below, rise up
toward the sun, reveal rainbows inside their misty cores, turn silver and spectral and cyclone over the ridge
into the interior, we found ourselves suddenly listening more carefully.