I planned to write about moons and walks and moves and coffee. But I can’t stop thinking about Maui.
As a kid, I went three times (only child living). And I’ve been three times in adulthood. One of those trips, I called Maui home for the summer between first and second year of medical school, desperate to find a path that felt like mine. Surfing was the gift of that six-week stay, which in a leading role, helped get me here. What I found in that summer (to eventually lose and recently recover) was what I wrote an article about this week.
The canvas for those memories—the city of Lahaina—was destroyed by wildfires on Wednesday. The toll is catastrophic. 53 people confirmed dead. Lahaina, a National Historic Landmark and once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, lost 80% of its buildings. Irreplaceable history and culture, are gone.
When I was eight-years-old, I saw the ocean for the first time while eating a cheeseburger at Cheeseburger in Paradise, located on Lahaina’s Front Street and one of those lost buildings. I will not claim this tourist trap as a historical loss for Hawaii, trivial in relativity, but for me, its absence aches. As a kid, it was the coolest place on Earth. My parents still have a plastic mug souvenir that changes color when it touches cold liquid.
Something happened to my eight-year-old self on that trip, unlocking a part I didn’t know existed: an adventurous spirit. Hawaii did that. So, when I was lost in medical school, soul on life support, I traced adventure back to its origination and lived a summer on the island, learning to surf in the harbor just south of those cheeseburgers. Most nights, I’d be out long past sundown, looking for one more wave, and I’d gaze north at Cheeseburger in Paradise’s torches, blinking at me; knowing the adventurous spirit was alive, unaltered by time.
And for that experience, I’m eternally grateful. Hope I get to repay it someday, somehow. But right now, I’m just sad; time travel didn’t really exist, and I’m left with the truth: we have to live it while we got it.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. For anyone looking to help support a place that’s lost everything (and given so much), here’s a means: https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/maui-strong)
