The smell hit me first as I stepped out of the accursed plane. It was lovely, although slightly ruined by the aroma of smog and airport cleaner.  The smell was the scent of fresh Hawaiian air. Hawaii has its own smell and that fragrance washed the plane like sanitizer never could have. The aroma is something that I could never explain; it has fruit, happiness, life, and any other perfume you could possibly think of that smells good. I had just spent nine hours of very little sleep on a plane filled with smelly people. The blast of air that literally rushed through the plane like a wave when the doors opened smelled like life itself. If I had the words to describe the smell of life I would, but I don’t, so you will have to believe me when I say that it was wonderful.

It was nearly six thirty in the morning when we disembarked from the plane, my sister and I being the last to touch the ground of the airport. Getting through the border was easy and nothing happened that would slow down our happy reentry to America. After gathering our baggage we stepped out into the warm Hawaiian air. The wall of humid air was like a balm to our lungs after spending a month in the desert air.

Half an hour later and we had left the airport with a rented car, which had all sorts of cool things, like moving doors and a TV. As we drove down the road, leaving Honolulu, memories rushed back to me of the times I had spent there during the younger age of my life. The tall mountains pushed up to the sky, reaching for the stars. Green coated the sides of the mountians and flowed down to the ocean below. Small birds flew here and there among the flowery trees, collecting food for the day. A hawk floated on the wind along the mountainside, searching for an unfortunate little bird or mouse of some kind to eat. But what captured and held my attention was the ocean. Waves crashed on the rocks at the foot of the mountains, rolling back out again creating foam that coated the ocean surface for hundreds of feet out to sea. Water streamed down the mountains from a rainstorm that had passed, bounding from rock to rock, creating little furrows in the greenery, until they reached the surface of the ocean where they collided with the salt water. Currents spread like spider webs across the kai (which is the word “Sea” in Hawaiian), creating a silvery stripe in the water. Clouds rolled in from the ocean slowly.

Wikimedia Commons: Lukas from Tokyo, Japan

Then it happened. The clouds started to glow, the tips turning a very bright gold. Little rays of light slid down from the clouds until they hit the water, making the water turn amber. Slowly at first, and then with more speed, the sun blasted over the clouds, turning the mountains and forest from a slightly dull green to a brilliant emerald and turning the flowers from dark oranges and reds and any other colors of the rainbow into blindingly bright colors. Rays of light spread through the sky, shattering against the peaks of the mountains like glass on stone. The wet leaves on the trees shone like a mirror creating a mirage of light. Green dominated the hillside and the cries of the birds rose to a scream as they beheld the life in the day.  The sun turned an already wonderful island paradise to a magnificent realm of life and beauty. A rainbow sprung forth on the ocean in front of us from the rain and stretched its long arm over a mountain and disappeared into a valley. Purple was even able to be seen on the very edge, faint at first, but soon it glowed as bright as the yellow. Birds all lifted off their branches and rose swiftly into the sky to embrace the sun. Any cold left on the island was swept away by this fiery sun that showed us her beautiful, blinding face.

Wikimedia Commons: syntheticaperture

As fast as it had shown itself, the sun disappeared above a layer of clouds and I was left blinking away the flash of light that was burned into my image. The mountains had turned black to my privileged eyes and the ocean had turned from an aquamarine blue to a dark, nearly black, blue. The rays of light that still shone on the water slowly closed and disappeared. Rain started to sheet down and I was sad that the sun had gone, but I knew that the rain was just a part of this area that would make the next showing of the sun even more beautiful. Not for the first time in my life I thought that Hawaii was, and is, the most beautiful tropical place in the world. It almost felt like I was returning to a old friend.

Gabriel Miller is a member of the Youth Travel Blogging Mentorship Program