Celebrating 25 Years

My sisters and close friends know our origin story -- how Jim and I met randomly in 1997 online, an unsolicited AOL e-mail that would be spam today but went through, that "you've got mail" chime, a response, another response, more contact, a meet up and here we are are a quarter century later in Santa Fe. 

In 2024 we will celebrate 25 years of late-in-life wedded union, after both being widowed too young, and after an odd but remarkable meeting that brought us together.

To celebrate 25 years of this long strange journey, we booked a stay in Hawaii for next March. Well in advance, but we are planners.

We booked a stay in Lahaina, on the island of Maui. At the Pioneer Inn, right on the wharf, in the tourist section of historic old Lahaina, an old whaling village and charming little town. 

The wharf at Lahaina, Maui

It is no more.

The news from Hawaii this week was of terrible wildfires that have leveled the small town of Lahaina; Front Street, the wharf, all of it is gone. Our hotel is likely no more, it was at the center of town on Wharf Street where resorts line the waterfront. 

Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said in a press conference on August 9 that Lahaina was almost totally burnt to the ground.

This would have been our hotel

There were casualties and horrific stories of people jumping into the ocean to escape flames and a terrible toll of lives and property. Wind from a hurricane in the ocean far to the south whipped up fires on droughty Maui's west side and wildfires ignited.

I don't think we are going to Lahaina next spring. Even 6 months will not be enough to rebuild after this kind of damage.

Lahaina harbor from a news photo August 9

Our deposit and plans are nothing -- the losses in Lahaina and in Maui are terrible. 

But what are the odds -- we live in the fire-prone west, with drought and winds a constant worry along with nuclear arms at Los Alamos and floods when rare downpours scour parched earth. We live in a very climate-challenged place.

The line of beach resorts is no more

But a 25 year anniversary vacation away at a balmy resort on the ocean in a little fishing village in Maui destroyed to the ground by wildfires? That's where things get baffling and incomprehensible. 

I just don't know where to aim my worries any more.