Hawaii

The first shift at MAʻO Organic Farms starts at 5 a.m. It’ll be a few hours until the sun rises over the Waiʻanae Range on Oʻahu’s leeward coast, but the farmers—mostly in their late teens and early 20s—are awake and ready to work. They fan out into the rows of beets and kale and through orchards of citrus and ʻulu (breadfruit) trees, dragging hoses, pulling weeds, and harvesting and packing veggies for sale at markets around the island.

The Waimea Valley has always been a place of refuge. Today, the lush canyon on the North Shore of O'ahu has a botanical garden and a shaded trail to a waterfall, offering visitors a change of pace from the busy, sun-drenched beaches of Waikiki. But hidden somewhere behind a wall of jungle near the parking lot, the valley holds the memories of a pivotal era in Hawaiian history: the final resting place of the islands’ last high priest, Hewahewa.

Kou trees once grew abundantly in the sunny lowlands across the Hawaiian Islands. Its broad leaves cast cooling shade over coastal villages, and its seeds were a source of food. But it was the kou's heartwood—light but strong, easy to carve, resistant to rot, with a fine caramel and reddish brown grain—that made it a particularly valuable tree for woodworkers, who used stone adzes to carve graceful, durable bowls and platters, or umeke.