Tom Wolfe was right...

As much as we might wish to recreate a part of our past, it never works out. A recent return visit to Kauai proved it for my wife and me. As I wrote in The Sky Behind Me , Kauai is a magical little island, filled with the most exquisite of nature's wonders, exotic plant life, ideal temperatures, a steady trade wind that cools the land all day and night and a relaxed, almost forced indolence that takes some getting used to. Kauai is as close to paradise on earth as there might be.
But going back wasn't as enthralling or comfortable as we'd hoped. We looked forward to revisiting old spots--favorite hole-in-the-wall greasy spoons like Hamura's on Kress Street in Lihue for Saimin and Lilikoi pie for dessert, Kilauea Point on the North shore and the lighthouse there, Maha'ulepu Beach with its savage coast and its singing rocks that chant their mournful hymn with the crushing tide. They were all different. And the difference was seeing all the abundance and exotic bounty through the eyes of a tourist as opposed to viewing it as a resident. We experienced a twist on the old adage, 'nice place to visit, but...' Kauai, it turns out, is a nice place to live but I have no wish to visit. In the book, I touched on the slow, leisurely pace and seeming indifference to outside interests among the local people. Hawaii has an education system that commonly scores near the bottom among the fifty states. I mentioned the antagonism local Hawaiians have to the pace and frenetic activity of folks in LA, or New York, or even Ohio. Bumper stickers on the island say 'slow down, this ain't the mainland.' Living there, the laid-back attitude and languorous pace was pretty easy to take; it went along with the rest of the experience. Being immersed in it as a tourist after seven years away gave me a new understanding of it, an insight that, for all its beauty and appeal, island life doesn't suit me. I need the intellectual stimulation and continual mental challenge of life in a city with its demands, variable seasons and inevitable chilly winds.
Everyone should see Kauai. But living there takes an ability to slow down that I seem to lack. Aloha means hello, and goodbye as well. Guess I'll always be a haole.