I've often received many positive comments about my writing and its ability to add to the overall appreciation of my artwork.  Having written to mainland friends about my experiences in Hawai'i for many years, I had a large supply of material from which to extract some of the more satisfying paragraphs for your enjoyment here.  I hope that these selections will give you some additional insight into myself and the things that fascinate me, which is ultimately relevant to the nature of my work. 

The images featured on this page are photos that I've taken during my travels - there is no artwork featured on this page.

Waikamoi Forest, 1995:

"The forest is outrageously beautiful.  Rain falls here more often than not, and the forest is almost perpetually wrapped in the thick fog of cloud cover, but on rare occasions the sky clears and offers a breathtaking view of the island's distant coastline far below.  The wet forest is the very image of tropical verdure, where the excesses of Nature seem to pile upon one another for lack of available space.  Every tree bears a thick, dark covering of green and orange mosses and a wide variety of other clinging plants, and enormous sedges burst explosively from the boles of living trees; in this condition, the trees often look truly grotesque and misshapen, but all the more spectacular as a result.  In color, form, and texture, the complexity of the forest is a vigorous and constant challenge to the senses; it's a visual assault, layer after layer of green confusion, tangles of intricate fern fronds curling and stretching among leafy masses, and overhung with trailing vines.  With water-drops clinging to every leaf and stem, the forest sparkles in the sunlight during uncommon moments of clear sky, and the constant wind keeps the vegetation in teeming, fluttering motion."

Waimoku Falls, 1998:

"As you exit the bamboo grove, the giant cascade becomes visible for the first time, rising like a skyscraper above the forest, although it's still a mile distant.  And when you finally approach it at close range, it becomes a spectacle of overwhelming impact.  Its beauty seems almost terrifying, as if you were approaching the Throne of God - musically, the sight could only be accompanied adequately by a choir of a thousand voices, all raised together to a powerful, deafening volume!  It's just absolutely stunning, and you can do little else except to stand there motionless, gaping at it stupidly, open-mouthed."

"In the absence of a trail to the falls, I simply walked upstream, often wading through the rapids in order to avoid rocky obstacles.  In its deeper recesses, the gulch becomes narrower as its cliffs rise ever more steeply, and several of its high springs soon become visible - like the Biblical "water from the rock," crystal streams appear to pour magically from the faces of the cliffs, then dash down through the greenery below.  After a mile of difficult navigation through the streambed, I arrived at the  waterfall, which is about 200 feet high.  The view is pleasantly inspiring from a distance, but it becomes a scene of profound violence at close range.  The cascade has carved a chimney-shaped niche for itself in the rock - within this narrow space, the cascade's fury is contained and amplified, and a perpetual hurricane exists there.  It's truly terrifying.  Many tons of water drop onto the rocks with tremendous power, and the sound can only be described as a continuous roll of thunder, at an absolutely deafening, heart-shaking volume - it's the sort of noise that fills one's entire head and chest with intense alarm.  The cascade spills into a frightening cauldron of agitated water, in constant turmoil like the ocean during a great storm.  The impact of the falling water produces a violent wind, whirling in the waterfall's crevice and rushing out into the greater canyon beyond, carrying dense clouds of spray.  Blasted by moisture, the rock walls are green with a film of stunted vegetation.  Water drips continuously from every surface, but each droplet is immediately carried away by the furies, and the hundreds of tiny ferns and other clinging plants are all in constant commotion."

The Hana Highway, 1998:

"The Hana Highway is notorious for its narrowness and curviness, and it seems baffling that the word "highway" was ever associated with a road where the posted speed limit rarely rises above 15 m.p.h..  As it tackles the rough terrain of the island's eastern slope, the road presents no less than 516 curves, as well as 56 one-lane bridges which force traffic to a halt whenever two vehicles meet head-on.  By getting a very early start, I avoided traffic problems along the way toward Hana, but had to drive about half of the road in darkness, and it's a strange road to be on at night.  It dips down into many deep gulches, where the darkness seems even more oppressive.  But there are many sounds - you can hear the hiss of invisible streams as they flow beneath the road at every bridge crossing, and bird calls are common as the morning sky begins to brighten.  At the bottom of each gulch, the night air is cool and moist, smelling strongly of tropical vegetation, and sometimes a mist can be seen hanging there, slowly revolving as it waits to be extinguished by the heat of the day."

Mountain Nights, 1997:

"I returned to the edge of the crater just after the sun had gone down - that vast, open space was before me, miles wide, dropping away for such a frightening distance right below my toes, and the wind was blowing fierce and cold, whistling and howling out of the expanse.  In the near darkness, I could barely see the crater floor and the giant cones, the streams of lava twisting through that volcanic wilderness; the forms of the landscape were all blurred together by the obscure haze of dusk, and there was no true sense of perspective or distance.  On the way back down the mountain, I drove through a small community of homes along the crater road - these are the highest-elevation homes on the island, at about 4,500 feet.  It's chilly up there at night, as cold as any October night in Michigan, but the houses are warmly lit inside, some with fireplaces, all beaming with orange light - I was struck by how much they looked like jack-o-lanterns in the night, the orange light glowing softly within a dark shell.  It was cold, it was terribly windy, the air smelled of pine and rain, the houses were glowing warmly, and the crater had been dark and frightening - it all left a very strong impression on me."

"When the afternoon clouds encircle the mountain, the land becomes moody and dark.  I suppose that some would find this dismal, but I love the atmospheric effects of these conditions and I often ramble around the countryside on the cloudiest days for no other reason.  I'm always hoping to encounter the big clouds that drift close to the ground - these have a way of moving independently across the landscape, drifting between the dark groves of trees.  When they do this, they look like great floating ships, or enormous ghosts travelling on their way toward some uncertain destination.  They come in all shapes and sizes - they can be huge, tattered masses of dense, white vapor, or sometimes they're just thin, thready wisps that spin as they go along.  Sometimes I can walk right into them - they're cool and humid to the touch.  Blown by strong winds, the clouds do remarkable things, moving very rapidly and constantly changing shape, revolving and twirling into corkscrews and spirals and whirlpools.  The wind cuts and divides them into slender strands, until they appear as nothing more than a tangle of wispy threads.  Eventually, these threads disappear altogether, replaced by a new batch of moisture to repeat the process all over again."

"I walked through clouds yesterday evening.  The clouds came low on the mountain and wrapped a certain forested hill in a shroud of mist.  I sometimes walk to this hill during cloudy weather, just for the weird experience of walking in the fog.  It was so humid that my breath puffed visibly from my mouth, although it was not at all cold.  Under these conditions, huge trees are barely visible at a limited distance, but they gradually condense into darker tones on closer approach.  At the base of any tall tree, you see the highest branches rising up and away into the cloud layer, almost disappearing from view as the thick atmosphere turns them to a pale bluish-gray.  I entered an especially dense grove of trees, and was surprised to find myself suddenly stepping out of the cloud bank - ahead of me, I saw the view in complete clarity, but in looking back the scene immediately disappeared into the fog." 

Kilauea Volcano and the Fern Forest, 1996:

"Kilauea is a bizarre wonderland of volcanic activity, a region where fantastic rainforests grow at the very edge of volcanic devastation, and a remarkable desert of fine ash and cinder occupies the sweeping slope just downwind from the volcano's summit.  Unlike the other islands, Hawaii's lands seems to stretch on without end across great, barren distances, through mile after mile of harsh and irregular lava.  There is little beauty in the landscape, but it makes up for this deficiency through an excess of character - there is simply no other district in which the unique qualities of Hawai'i are so profoundly displayed, and the air seems thick with the very essence of the Hawaiian world.  The land is cracked and fissured almost everywhere, and steam rises perpetually from countless natural vents in the rock.  You might imagine this as a place of constant, intolerable heat, but nothing could be farther from the truth - Hawaii's basaltic lavas are very effective insulators, so the subterranean heat of the volcano is not felt at the surface, unless one happens to be in especially close proximity to a steam vent. Contrary to common preconception,  Kilauea's 4,000 foot summit rises into an atmosphere of perpetual autumn, with very cool temperatures and a great deal of cloud cover and rain.  During rainy periods, the summit area is wrapped in thick, wet clouds, which sweep across the surface of the land and wrap the whole in a dense fog, adding to the inherently eerie quality of the place.  The rainwater which seeps down through the porous lava soon contacts the heat of the volcano, adding fuel for the steam vents and sending up ever more vigorous plumes of white vapor into the air." 

"This plentiful supply of moisture supports a rainforest more spectacular than any other that I've seen in Hawai'i.  The lower half of this beautiful Ohi'a forest is dominated by giant ferns, the Hapu'u, Hawaii's largest tree-fern.  These ferns grow in astonishing abundance around Kilauea's summit, packing the forest understory  with their enormous green fronds, which are held aloft on yellowish stalks, and the stalks themselves may be elevated upon a woody trunk twice the height of the average man.  The tree-ferns form something like a forest within the forest, and to walk below their canopy of fronds is like entering a lost, prehistoric world.  Even the air and the light seem eternally green, filtered from above through a mesh of overlapping fronds.  They're often epiphytic, growing from the trunks or branches of living or fallen trees, which only adds to their impressive sense of height.  And the ferns themselves may host a rich growth of other botanical guests, such as mosses, smaller ferns or other ground-cover plants.  Plants of this sort may form a green covering so thick that the surface of the fern's trunk is entirely obscured beneath the growth; even young trees may sprout from this blanket of growth and use the fern's bulk for support, while sending down a tangle of aerial roots in search of terrestrial connections."

The Coral Reef, 1996:

"There is simply nothing to compare with this strange environment under the sea.  I think that I've never been so shocked and amazed by a vision of Nature, where such a variety of bizarre things were on display.  In every way, it's entirely foreign to the sights and experiences of those who spend their lives on dry ground.  The life of some distant planet, where everything is just the opposite of that which occurs on our familiar Earth, could be no more startling than this alien world below the waves.  Snorkeling, I've found, is like a strange dream experience - it's like flying, as long as you regard the water as just extraordinarily thick air.  You're suspended above this bizarre landscape, and surrounded by other "flying" creatures, who seem to levitate magically, rising and falling through this dense, atmospheric space - a fluid wilderness of pure color, pierced by great columns of sunlight.  The sea-floor is an elaborate construction of coral towers and lava blocks, and smooth expanses of bright sand; there are natural arches in the rock, the result of collapsed tunnels which mark the route of old lava tubes, in which many marine animals now find shelter.  The area within close proximity to the reef is teeming with creatures of every shape, size, and color.  Living things cling to the reef, or swim about it, or lay half buried in the sand, or crouch in the protective cover of some nook in the coral - spines and tentacles sprout from a multitude of small holes in the reef, to do the work of the creatures hidden within.  There are great schools of fish - hundreds of them huddled together in one place, hanging motionless in the water, suspended above the sea-floor as if defying gravity.  Other fish seem solitary, wandering about on their own, some of them so strange in form and color that they resemble brightly colored hot-air balloons, or glowing UFO's.  Only among wildflowers will you find such a variety of brilliant colors on land - these fish wear striking exteriors of purple, orange, yellow, green, blue, red, silver, white, black, and brown, and the colors are often of the fluorescent sort, alive with a sort of neon glow, as if these creatures were somehow brightly lit from within.  They're striped, mottled, spotted, ringed, or just plain uniform in color, and the colors seem to flash and change every time that the fish moves one way or another.  Some have enormous fins which rise far above and below their bodies; others are stream-lined to the maximum, very long and slender.  Some have peculiar fins which flap up and down at their sides like a pair of outrageous wings, and still others seem so grotesque in shape that one wonders how they manage to swim at all."

The Lava Wilderness of Kanaio, 1997:

"A few days ago, I accompanied some friends on a walk through a very impressive lava wilderness.  Maui's most recent lava flows have plastered the south slope of the mountain with dark, swirling streams of brown rock, some of which are merely a few hundred years old.  As of yet, Nature has declined to conceal these young flows below a vegetative layer of any sort, and they remain distinctly obvious to the eye, dark and barren, in contrast to the older flows between them, which have developed a yellow-green tinge of plant life.  The eruptions deposited immense volumes of rocky material to form a vast, level plain, which rises only very gradually away from the coastline - to an observer near the coast, this plain presents a spectacular scene, one to take your breath away, since there is nothing to obstruct one's view across miles and miles of open lava.  Farther inland, the mountain's slope rises suddenly and steeply to great heights - enormous cinder cones stand on the slopes like the great pyramids of Giza, and the flows of lava are clearly seen to stream down from the bases of these towering hills.  The view of Haleakala reveals one of the mountain's most stunning profiles - a sweeping panorama of the volcano's wide dome, studded with dozens of prominent cones, like the warts and bumps on the skin of a toad.  The volcano's summit rises away to such great heights that it slips into a hazy realm of tropical pastels, where thin veils of light-filled atmosphere intervene to render the scene as soft and beautiful as a vision of Heaven.  Down below, however, the lava plain is far from heavenly.  The ground is irregular and unstable, and appears as if it had been subject to the most abusive treatment and violent upheaval - in many places, the land looks as tormented as the surface of a storm-tossed sea, as if the choppy waves had suddenly been frozen in place, the permanent record of a hurricane's fury."

"A walk in the mountain country takes you through a landscape that seems enchanted, especially when the clouds brush against the land and sweep you into a mysterious haze, in which so many elements of this place appear to have materialized from a storybook world.  For instance, I recently visited an astonishing tree.  I had observed it from a distance for years, because its enormous size renders it conspicuous on the mountain's slope from even as much as ten miles away.  I hiked up to it for the first time in February, and it was no disappointment.  Approaching it for the first time, I was awestruck.  It's a grand, rugged, spooky tree of overwhelming character and presence.  An imported Eucalyptus, it can be no more than 150 years old, yet it appears venerably ancient and must be one of the largest trees on the island - the lack of a winter season here accounts for the tree's remarkably rapid growth.  Although its crown is indeed very tall and wide-spreading, the tree's foundations are really the source of its exceptional grandeur.  It rises from a mass of exposed, knotty roots, which have fused together to form a stage-like platform.  The lower trunk is really a complex union of many individual trunks and branches, all emerging from one another, and their combined width is nearly ten feet, according to my best approximation - I'm sure that at least eight people, hand-in-hand with arms outstretched, would be required to close a ring around the tree's perimeter.  The wood feels as solid as iron, and even has the appearance of having formed from a great slab of molten metal, which, in a superheated state, had sagged and warped under its own tremendous weight, creating innumerable folds and wrinkles before cooling.  There are many deep crevices in the trunk, some large enough to conceal a man of average size, although the gauzy cobwebs stretched in these spaces would discourage anyone from sheltering within.  Twisted branches reach out toward every horizon, some dipping down to contact the ground.  The tree offers a uniquely dramatic view from all directions, and walking around its cathedral columns is like surveying a work of grand architecture, while its organic qualities leave you with the alternate sense that it might actually be a living creature of monstrous size and disposition, caught napping in the sun.  All of these features conspire to make the tree appear perfectly haunted.  I call it "Forever's Tree."

Molokini, 2002

"Molokini is little more than an arid crescent of lava, almost devoid of vegetation.  It's the upper rim of an old volcanic cone, most of which remains submerged beneath the sea, and the inner depths of its central crater are likewise flooded, yet shallow enough to support a thriving coral reef there.  Huge, dark seabirds circle the island like prehistoric things - they nest in great numbers on this isolated rock, which is free from all predators such as cats.  The south side of the islet is dominated by a jagged cliff perhaps 80 feet high, a wonder-world of twisted, wind-sculpted rock.  Having formed in the midst of the ocean, the cone's outpourings of searing lava were in direct contact with the cold water, resulting in numerous explosions which blasted the lava into tiny fragments of ash.  The cone was formed as layer after layer of this ash settled down around the blast site, and these layers are exposed to view in the cliff, where they look very much like the grain in a piece of gnarly wood.  The ash is so fragile that it's readily subject to erosion by wind and water, so the cliff is a stunning display of weird sculpture, very smooth and rounded in many places, sometimes almost billowing like wind-blown cloth, and all these curves and billows are emphasized by the dramatic grain that runs throughout the whole.  Even more spectacular than the rock, however, is the water which sparkles all around it.  We witnessed colors which were simply astonishing.  The colors were most spectacular near the mouth of the crescent, where the two arms of the island embrace the dazzling shallows within the crater.  Here, sunlight reflecting from the bright, sandy sea-floor delivered a cerulean blue of such heavenly radiance that it seemed practically supernatural." 

"I awoke rather late that morning, perhaps because the unsettled weather had been a disruption to my sleep throughout the night.  It was a surprise to look out of my front window to see the mountain peaked with white snow, against a clear, blue sky.  If only that clear weather had persisted throughout the day, I might have collected some great material for a snowy painting - but it was not to be, I regret to say.  By the time that I had driven up to the summit, the weather had turned stormy once again - a cloud wrapped the entire summit in fog, and a light but steady precipitation of rain and sleet blew on the cold wind.  Nevertheless, this did not deter a great crowd of people from joining me at the summit.  It was a disaster of almost hilarious proportions, really - so many vehicles filling the park all at once, and mobs of people literally stomping about in sensitive areas, unwittingly smashing rare plants underfoot, all in the eagerness to acquire a handful of snow.  A few people appeared to be making a ridiculous attempt to sled down a rocky slope, using inverted trash can lids as makeshift tobaggans.  Soon, a great downpour of half-frozen rain sent people screaming and scattering for cover.  It was such a comically terrible scene that I didn't even exit my car at the summit, but simply departed as hastily as I had arrived.  Still, there were some endearing aspects of the whole event, and I don't wish to paint it all in a negative light.  People were building miniature snowmen on the hoods of their cars, complete with stick arms and carrot noses, and they displayed these creations proudly as they descended the mountain, perhaps providing some bittersweet entertainment for the scores of people who were still stuck in the ever-growing traffic jam at the park entrance.  Snowball fights took place by the dozens, of course." 

"To escape the crowds, I stopped at a trailhead about 2,000 feet below the summit, near the boundary of the snowfall, and walked the short distance to an overlook of the crater, where I was able to enjoy the foggy, winter scene in complete solitude.  It was a truly beautiful sight, the snow forming bright patches on the dark lava rock along the trail, and bits of snow caught among the leaves of alpine plants.  Of course, the snow was melting rapidly, and water was flowing across the land everywhere - I had to step over small, musical rivulets along my way, but I had earlier seen true whitewater streams flowing through many of the summit's larger ravines, which are most often entirely dry.  At the crater's edge, the fog was rushing visibly out of the deep expanse, curling over the cliff-ege at high speed as it was carried along by a fiercely cold wind.  The view of the crater was limited to only the most immediate surfaces of the nearby cliffs, plunging suddenly into the grey void, but an occasional thinning of the clouds revealed a few patches of snow still clinging to the jagged rocks below."

Of particular interest to me was a landform called Mount Eke (pronounced AY-kay, with the same long "a" vowel sound in both syllables) - sometimes called Eke Crater, although that's technical a misnomer, since no visible crater remains to  be seen today.  This unusual peak is actually an exposed tower of lava that had once plugged the interior of a former crater, but now stands revealed after the volcanic cone and its crater have eroded away.  It commands an exceptionally exalted, lofty perch at the summit of a promontory separating two monstrously deep valleys, and this location is as spectacular as any that could be imagined.  The great valleys on either side feature magnificent waterfalls plunging into chasms of terrifying depth, and the heights of the valleys are topped by sharp, craggy peaks smothered in vegetation.  Some of the waterfalls emerge as springs directly from the cliffside, while another - the tallest cascade on Maui - leaps from a narrow gorge in the clouds to a sheer descent of more than a thousand feet.  

As we first approached Eke, we passed over it at close range, and through a thin veil of dispersing clouds I was able to see its surface in detail.  The entire plateau is pocked with deep sinkholes and smaller pits, giving it a rugged, prehistoric appearance.  The plateau shelters a bog where a variety of rare plants prevail in an isolated, pristine environment.  There are no trees or any other plants of tall stature in the bog, and all that can be seen from the air is a thin veneer of stunted vegetation.  Pools of standing water sparkled in the bog, alternately reflecting the blue of the sky or the white of nearby clouds as we passed this natural tower again and again."