The first thing that struck me about Big Island was that it was well…big. This became immediately apparent when I flew into Kona, found out that the Airbnb I had booked just because it was the cheapest possible option was in Hilo, and ended up driving for 2 hours in the middle of the night to get there 😛

My first order of business was to check out the food situation. Although Hilo is pretty tiny, I was pleasantly surprised to see that downtown actually had quite a few hidden gems. Puna chocolate company was especially fun for a huge chocolate enthusiast like myself. The Hāmākua Chocolate Farm, which is only a short drive away, is also pretty amazing.

I spent the rest of the day in volcano national park, where you get a bizarre scenery of volcanic craters, hardened lava, ocean, and rainforest all in one fell swoop.

I ended up coming back to this park several times, and each time I saw something new and exciting. Luckily enough, I ended up being there while Mt. Kilauea was actively erupting. This, combined with the relative lack of light pollution made it really hard to bring myself to leave the park, even late into the night.

Watching the eruption during the rain was especially cool because the clouds started to turn all red too!

The moonrise that followed was also surreal.

The sheer variety of scenery in this one park was truly stunning and I felt like my first few days in Hilo were an amazing distraction from life as a young computer scientist. I’d spent them rushing around every Hilo landmark I could find: I’d begin each day with no clear agenda, but by the end I’d have chaotically run back and forth between waterfalls, rainforests, volcanoes, and beaches. My goal initially was to just clear my head, and I was frequently reminded of one of my favorite quotes from TV:

“The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning. It’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you’ll be dead.”

Mr. Peanutbutter, Bojack Horseman

In many ways I have tried to live by this philosophy: things feel much more relaxed when you don’t think about each choice you make as some pivotal decision that will affect how every aspect of your life is about to unfold. Then again, I’ve found that I’m rarely satisfied with what I’m doing unless I have some sort of longer term goals. These goals don’t need to be profound or important, and I often do actually view them as “unimportant nonsense” like trying to achieve some time in running or trying hot chocolate in every cafe within a 1 mile radius. The beauty (or problem) with these goals is that they allow you to avoid “searching for meaning” because the goals themselves give your life the temporary meaning it seems we all tend to crave. With this in mind, I decided to push off my own introspection and strive for something more ambitious and concrete: it was time to climb some big mountains 🙂