It’s been exactly a month since Kekoa passed. Today Julia and I planted a koai‘a tree in his memory. Koai‘a is the little brother of koa and produces a much denser curly grained wood. In lower elevations below 1000 feet it grows much better than regular koa. The word i‘a (fish) refers to how the koai‘a wood was used to make fish hooks among many other traditional Hawaiian carvings.
I can remember the early days of learning how to tend to a garden with Kekoa. Although we didn’t know anything about growing anything at the time, he had his own authentic understanding of the spiritual aspects of the natural world. Perhaps it’s something encoded into our DNA. As most of our ancestors were farmers who formed special relationships with plants whether it was for survival, sustenance or for ritual. Our circle of friends used to enthusiastically discuss stuff like metaphysics, the paranormal, synchronicity, shtf scenarios, and esoteric knowledge with a grain of salt.
This koai‘a tree planting was a serious undertaking as we dug out an extra large hole for it and put in a lot of black cinder, aged manure, home made compost, crushed coral, lime, and of course some extra Mana!
Thank you Melanie and Ka‘iana for providing us this beautiful tree and Seph One for sending me recordings of Kekoa on the mic.
Originally posted on 2021-04-09, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.