The love? After a couple of weeks on the big island, I've got the spirit of Aloha. To all of you, Kea mau mana nui. Hard to translate- the best I can do is- "May all the best come to you, and may your power and prestige grow." What a place! Of the world's 13 ecosystems, the Big Island has 11 of them. They should have shot the Mordor sequences of Lord of the Rings on the lava fields on the west coast north of Kona. With your back to the sea, as far as the eye can see in a 180 degree arc, blasted, lifeless lava fields. No grass, no insects, no life. And back there is Mauna Loa- Mount Doom. On the east/jungle side of the island, the rain breaks down the lava into soil and the plants take over in 50 years, but on the west side, it's been 200 years since the last major eruption, and the land is still a devastated, post-apocalyptic wasteland. The cool part is that there are little oases here and there that the lava just went around, and some of them have been isolated long enough to start developing their own ecosystems, and maybe new species.
The south side has been continually erupting for more than a decade, and has created 4500 new acres of land (if you call Mordor "land"), and annihilated a town or two. The apex predators are fairly wussy as they go,
the Hawaiian Hawk and the Mongoose, an invasive species from India. They brought them in to kill rats that had escaped from ships and gone native, but rats forage at night and Mongooses hunt in the daytime. So they eat eggs and birds. They're weasels about the size of a squirrel, but are mean enough to kill some dogs!
The best Hawai'i story for me was the Douglas pit. The Douglas Fir is named after him, a big-time naturalist. Some cattle Baron, probably Parker, brought in Texas longhorn cattle as a gift for King Kamehameha, and they were declared Kapu (taboo) for ten years, so that they could breed. To kill one was a capital offense, even in self defense. Well, they bred alright, and soon became the wily, aggressive, feral, summer replacement for a Capetown Water Buffalo! Best of all, they had a taste for Hawaiian houses with thatched roofs! Eventually, the ban was lifted, and going after these things with a spear was not for smart people. So- the Hawaiians dug big pitfalls and covered them with thatch to trap these killer cows. The official version says Douglas wasn't looking and fell into one of these. He was fine, but so was the cow... There were various claims of foul play, but none was ever proven.