Get Your Thanksgiving Goat

Some folks celebrate their Thanksgiving with binge eating that mirrors their familial discomfort, but this year us Sargents opted out of that rich American tradition and instead decided to battle the elements. My sister and her wife arrived on Kauai a week ago for the first leg of our little family's holiday celebration. We have been camping around the island (a cheap and fabulous way to see Kauai) and and in the middle of the week, those two crazy broads decided to tackle the Napali coast. There is an 11 mile trail that takes you along the part of the island's coastline that has no road, mainly because the steep cliffs and constant mudslides and hurricanes have rebuffed all efforts to put down pavement. Oh and there's a swamp at one end that ate some construction trucks trying to build a road.

Some of you may recall from my earlier posts that Kate and Jess (sister and sister-in-law, respectively) are insanley fit and I am convinced that they are constantly trying to do me in with acts of inhuman physical exertion. This belief system has it's roots in my childhood where, from the moment I was born, my older sister has been trying to regain her status as an only child by daring me to do things clealry beyond my physical abilties in the hopes that i will either die or at the very least seriously cripple myself ("Wanna borrow my skate board, Jen-Jen? All you have to do is ride it down this gigantic ramp and do a back flip in the air!"). Maybe she's changed her intentions over the years, but I remain suspicious as a survival tactic. So they wanted to hike this crazy stretch of coast and stay on the trail for two nights. I really did consider it, but in the end decided that a couple days of solitude and safety sounded like heaven, so I stayed behind.

I dropped them off at the trailhead and we arranged that I would come back to get them on Thanksgiving day at 3 o'clock. I had some nice time by myself, and then while I was sleeping in my tent on Wednesday night, the sky opened up and someone turned on the wind machine. I woke up to two inches of standing water in my tent, a muddy brown ocean and when I unzipped my tent it looked like a video from the Weather Channel with ticker tape along bottom telling you where to send your donation to the disaster relief fund. I packed up my wet things as best I could and got in the car to find some much-needed hot coffee. On the radio they were announcing the closing of the Hanalei bridge due to the flash flooding of the rivers, and this of course was the only road to the north end of the island where I was supposed to pick up the ladies. So I spent most of my morning trying to figure out a contingnecy plan if it didn't stop raining and the bridge didn't re-open. Turns out there is no park ranger on that side of the island and the police station was closed for the holiday. Lucky for me it started to dry out and they reopened the bridge at about 2PM. I picked up some fried chicken and beer for my sure-to-be-tired-and-hungry sisters and hightailed it to the trailhead. They were late coming out and I was starting to get worried, but then there they were, soaked and bug bitten and bruised, but all in one piece.

And they had some great stories. Turns out there are some crazy hippies who live out there in the wilderness, living in the jungle and surviving on whatever grows out there. Some dreadlocked dude was telling them how he survives on java plums (completely disgusting if you've ever tasted them) and asked if they'd seen any goats on the trail lately. He and his companions were armed with a butcher knife and little else. On the way back out of the trail, these same films were washing a headless goat in the river, which I have to say is amazing. I don't know how many of you have tried to catch a goat, but I have and couldn't get anywhere a three-legged goat in a pen with two other people helping, let alone on a steep cliff-side jungle with only a butcher knife. Props to you, crazy Kauai hippies!

The torrential downpour on Wednesday night was inconvenient for me in my less-than-waterproof tent, but for my sister and sister-in-law it was nearly fatal. There were four rivers they crossed on the way out and these rivers were huge after all the rainfall, chest high in some places. A naked old jungle man woke the ladies up in the morning to tell them that they probably wouldn't get out that day and would need to stay on the trail again tonight. Tempting as this man was making the campsite seem, they decided to chance it with the rapids. After the last especially harrowing crossing where they had to run across a stretch of beach with 20 foot crashing waves on one side and a raging river on the other, while holding on for dear life when the surf came in. My tiny sister literally was almost washed out to sea--yikes!!! I think I made the right decision by staying behind.

So out they came from the trail, droopy and soaked and happily ate their fried chicken and beer while telling me their harrowing tales. About all we could muster for a thanksgiving festivities was to rent a room in a bed and breakfast and find the Chinese restaurant (which was of course was one of the few places open). I was thankful for the shifty beef chow fun--at least it wasn't fire roasted wild goat.