When Mark Twain climbed Diamond Head atop a horse, he discovered the trail littered with bones--ankle, shin, knee, arm, hand, and finger bones. 140 years later, so did I. However, the ones I found were attached to tendons, muscles and skin and still very much in use. Twain figures the ones he discovered were Hawaiian warriors defeated in a magnificent battle. The ones I passed were, quite simply, tourists. American tourists. German tourists. Chinese tourists--lots of Chinese tourists. It seems many of us are walking in Twain's trail--whether we know it or not--and I would go so far as to suggest that I was the only one in the know that fine Wednesday morning.
Diamond Head is a popular hiking trail. It rises 560 feet over .8 miles to the summit lookout following switchbacks and climbing exactly 227 stairs. It was originally built in 1908 as part of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery defense system; however, not a single round was ever fired in actual defense of the island, at least by the U.S. government. If Twain's discovery is any proof of combat, Hawaiian warriors wielded their own weapons here.
Of course, the name "Diamond Head" is a Western invention. The story goes that explorers and traders visited the crater and mistook its calcite crystals for diamonds. This was the early 1800s--about the same time Fools' Gold was discovered in the American West.
The Hawaiian name for Diamond Head is Leahi and with all things Hawaiian, there seems to be more than one explanation for it. This reminds me a bit of Twain, because you could never seem to get a straight answer from him, either.
The first goes that the fire goddess Pele's sister Hiiaka named it Leahi, because the summit resembles the forehead (lae) of the ahi (tuna). I buy that. It does. And that's also consistent with other explanations I've heard of various landmarks around Hawaii. It seems to me those ancient Hawaiians identifed headlands, mountain peaks, and rock formations like I identify clouds in the sky. Hey, that looks like a fish's forehead; let's name it Leahi.
The second translation of the name Leahi makes sense, too, though. Maybe it's the literal translation: Fire headland. It refers to navigational fires at the summit that once lit the way for canoes traveling along the shoreline. Indeed, its elevated location on the southeast corner of the island is a natural spot for a lighthouse, of sorts. A modern-day version does the same today.
When I crawled through the one-time army bunker to emerge on the summit of Diamond Head, I saw something Twain could never have imagined. Sure, he supported commerce with Honolulu; sure, he encouraged more American business involvement with the islands; however, he also predicted the demise of Honolulu with the demise of the whaling industry, so I'm sure he never could have pictured what I did at the observation deck atop Diamond Head Crater. Skyrise hotels and office buildings dot the landscape of Waikiki and Honolulu. I admit, it's a pretty landscape, yet a far cry from what Twain saw. Here's what he saw: A thousand-strong coconut grove, streams striating the mountains to the ocean, a half-dozen homes along the beach at Waikiki, maybe even a lake after heavy rains at the basin of Diamond Head (it was already called that when he arrived), in the far distance, a grid of buildings and homes no taller than the tallest palm tree forming the city of Honolulu.
Times change.
