Wisdom of the West: Pacific Paradise, Pt. 3

More from Molokai. (as ever, click pics to embiggen slide show)

We stayed in a small condo complex out on the West End, facing Oahu (you can see how small it is from the plane shot in my first Moloka'i post). There were four, one of them abandoned. The beaches were empty and damn near perfect. I hiked north along the shore from our place past pristine, abandoned beaches and across what appeared to be an abandoned golf course gradually being reclaimed by the island. At one time, it must have been a beautiful place to play (if you like that sort of thing), and I understand the PGA used to hold events there. But the developers and managers faltered in the first decade of this century, and now its only denizens are wild turkeys, Axis deer (aka barking deer or chital, a gift in the 1860s to the King of Hawai'i for his hunting pleasure), and mongoose—all also invasive species. I kept asking myself as I walked: Is this the future of our country if a certain developer gets his and his friends' hands on our pristine public lands?) As blogfriend BDR likes to say: "metaphors abound."