Eastern Exposure, 2003

You have to get up very early in the morning to get to the water before the wind gets up. One morning as I headed out, I came across this scene.

In the middle elevations of Haleakala where I live, the sun is slow to rise above the looming heights of the volcano. When it peeks above the rim, shafts of light rip across the landscape in dramatic contrast to the sleeping island. On this particular morning, a layer of clouds lay like a blanket across the valley floor waiting for the sun to arrive and burn it off. A jacaranda in the pasture below my house appeared to have received the first direct contact of morning light.

All through the area, an unusually long season of blossoming jacarandas seemed to be permanent fixtures of the landscape. People talked about them as if something mysterious had gotten into the jacs. The subject was a constant topic in both the Kula and Lahaina galleries. The newspaper wrote about them. The experts conjectured. The old timers reminisced.

In all my years upcountry, I've never seen a jacaranda season this colorful or last as long. This painting is an entry into my pictorial journal of the eastern exposure of a jacaranda in the spring of 2003.