Sheltering in Place #1 (21st-Century Echoes of Taylor Camp)

In 2020, I spent three weeks living in Kalalau Valley during the Covid-19 Lockdown. While my family and I had been camping in the valley for decades, this was the first time that I’d been an invited guest of residents. My hosts were a well-established couple, friends of our family, with training in botany and resource conservation. They were highly skilled and knowledgeable longtime residents of the small community in the valley, some of whom had lived there for more than 15 years. The way these people embraced each day and their surroundings reminded me in many ways of life at Taylor Camp, which I had documented more than 50 years earlier just down the coast. The time I spent "sheltering in place" with them was a bracing reminder of how close—and how far—we are to inhabiting our world with simplicity, attention, and discipline.

For these permanent (and illegal) residents of Kalalau, hiding from the law and the local vigilante was a basic requirement for daily life. Avoiding the well-known coastal trail, these highly skilled survivalists used a secret “back door” that involved a partially roped death-defying route up or down a 1,200-meter, nearly vertical jungle shrouded cliff face. From the top, they dropped through a hidden “rabbit hole” in the otherwise impenetrable vegetation ending 300 meters below on a knife-like ridge. Then the route stair-steps down the ridge in a series of descents to a waterfall spilling over a bare rock cliff face and a roped traverse. Reports of this route in the local media usually end with helicopter rescues, missing person reports or death. But the outlaws living in the valley used it regularly. This is the route that my hosts led me down to their hideaway.

I got to spend my days tagging along as my hosts occupied themselves with the basic tasks of survival—hunting wild pig and goat, maintaining ancient ‘auwai and taro terraces, tending the wild edible gardens of the forest, and building or repairing the stone shelters and cave dwellings where most cooking and sleeping took place—as well as many moments of individual and community enjoyment. I documented these experiences to remind myself and, eventually, the world, that even in our overstimulated, high-speed era of simulated reality, life could be stripped back to its physical and spiritual essentials.

I wanted to share more details of this lifestyle and why I've chosen to share it more publicly, more than five years later, when this type of life is no longer possible in Kalalau due to recent State restrictions, strict enforcement, and heavy penalties.