Nick Goodness, Storyteller and Haleakala Park Ranger

As we made our way down Haleakala that day that the Hawaiian chanted up the sunset, we stopped at the main visitor's center.

One thing I love about the visitor's center is that they work hard to keep a bed of volcanic rock blooming with silverswords. This is an important part of preserving the more remote places that these endemic, fragile plants grow. It gives visitors a place to view the blooming plants, without tromping and destroying wilder silversword habitat.

Silversword in bloom, in front of the Haleakala National Park Visitor's Center.
Silverswords only grow in the Haleakala crater and have been endangered
due to pigs, goats, and humans.

Inside, we met a park ranger who made our day!

One of our group members started asking him questions about Pele. He spent quite a bit of time telling us, in vivid detail, the story of Pele, the story of Maui, and all sorts of wonderful things about polynesian navigation. But those are stories for a different day...

A trickle of tourists came in and out of the shop, but he kept talking to us.

I was moved by the generosity he showed -- with his time, and energy, and sharing his knowledge of Hawaiian culture. I gave him one of the globes -- one where the land was represented in red, like the glowing molten lava of Pele.

We asked his name on way way out. "Nick Goodness!" We like that name!

The next morning, he happened to be the park ranger at the summit gift shop, when we returned for sunrise. When he saw us, he pulled the little globe out of his pocket and held it up to the sun, and smiled.

Mahalo nui loa, Nick Goodness, for sharing so much with us!