03-17-2026, 02:48 AM
The trade winds swept through the ohia trees outside Keoni's hale in Pahoa, carrying the faint sulfur tang from Kīlauea’s latest episode far to the north. It was March, and the volcano had just thrown another high fountain into the sky, dusting the community pool with ash again. Keoni didn’t check the news for details. He felt the pulse of the land itself—slow rumbles underfoot, steam vents whispering in the forest behind his off-grid lot. He had lived here twelve years, drawn from the mainland by the promise of raw earth and real quiet. A small solar array powered his lights, catchment tanks held the rain, and his garden fed him papayas, taro, and whatever the chickens didn’t peck first. Pahoa suited him: wooden sidewalks creaking underfoot like an old Western town, eclectic shops selling crystals, handmade clothing and kava, neighbors who waved without needing your story. It was the kind of place where people came to live simply, grow what they ate, and let the island set the rhythm.
Keoni used to feel that rhythm every day. Mornings began with coffee on the lanai, watching mist rise off the lava fields toward the coast. Afternoons he’d walk the boardwalk in town, nodding to the old-timers swapping stories at the café. Evenings brought the coqui frogs’ chorus, the scent of night-blooming jasmine, and the deep peace of knowing the nearest traffic jam was a continent away. Politics felt distant here, like echoes from someone else’s radio. The land demanded attention—clearing vog from your lungs after an eruption, checking tanks after heavy rain, respecting Pele’s moods. There was no room for endless outrage when survival asked for presence.
Then the 2024 election cycle rolled in, and something shifted in Keoni like a fault line cracking open. What started as scrolling through posts on his phone became hours lost to screens, arguing in comment threads with strangers he’d never meet. “Trump this, Trump that,” he muttered while pulling weeds in the garden he once tended mindfully. The fury built quietly at first—shared articles, heated texts to old friends back on the mainland—then louder. He began seeing enemies in neighbors: the guy at the farmers market with a faded red cap, the woman who didn’t post enough “resistance” memes. He unfollowed half the people he knew locally because their feeds weren’t angry enough. Conversations at the Pahoa market turned sharp; he’d steer every chat toward Washington, turning coffee runs into lectures. Friends who once shared fruit from their trees now crossed the street. One longtime neighbor, a quiet Hawaiian man who’d helped Keoni raise his hale after the last big rain, stopped dropping by with extra avocados. “Too much noise,” he said simply one day, and that was that.
Pahoa doesn’t hide anger well. The rainforest presses in close, the black lava fields stretch wide and indifferent, the ocean a few miles down the road rolls in eternal patience. Here, obsession stands out like a bright light in the dark—no skyscrapers or subways to drown it, no constant buzz to numb it. Keoni’s rage echoed back at him in the silence. He missed the sunrises he used to watch from the ridge, too busy refreshing feeds. He missed the easy aloha of waving to strangers on the dirt road, replaced by suspicion. He missed digging in the soil without his mind racing through headlines. Even the volcano, which had nearly swallowed the town in 2018 and taught everyone impermanence, seemed to mock his fixation: Pele destroys and creates without ideology, without tweets, without needing to be right.
One evening after another eruption episode lit the sky orange, Keoni walked out to the edge of his property where the ohia met hardened pahoehoe. The air smelled of wet fern and distant salt. A nēnē goose honked overhead, heading toward the coast. He sat on a lava rock still warm from the day’s sun and—for the first time in months—left his phone inside. The trade winds moved through the leaves like breath. No notifications, no outrage, just the island doing what it always did: enduring, renewing, offering itself without condition.
In that quiet, Keoni saw what Trump Derangement Syndrome cost in a place like Pahoa. Mainland fury travels four thousand miles to land here, but it lands on ground that refuses to sustain it. The islands teach aloha not as sentiment but as necessity—your neighbor’s hands might be the ones pulling you from a flash flood or sharing water when the catchment runs low. You don’t survive long by dividing the ‘ohana over distant battles. Rage shrinks the circle until you’re alone with your screen while the real community—quirky, off-grid, volcano-scarred—carries on without you. Paradise doesn’t argue politics; it simply outlasts the noise. And if you let anger blind you, you miss the one thing Hawaii never stops giving: the chance to be present, to belong, to wake up and see the mist rising again like forgiveness.
Keoni still follows some news. But now he also follows the path to the garden first thing each morning. Because in Pahoa, the worst thing isn’t who sits in Washington. It’s forgetting the ground beneath your feet—and the people who stand on it with you. Once you forget that, no election result can fill the quiet that follows.
Keoni used to feel that rhythm every day. Mornings began with coffee on the lanai, watching mist rise off the lava fields toward the coast. Afternoons he’d walk the boardwalk in town, nodding to the old-timers swapping stories at the café. Evenings brought the coqui frogs’ chorus, the scent of night-blooming jasmine, and the deep peace of knowing the nearest traffic jam was a continent away. Politics felt distant here, like echoes from someone else’s radio. The land demanded attention—clearing vog from your lungs after an eruption, checking tanks after heavy rain, respecting Pele’s moods. There was no room for endless outrage when survival asked for presence.
Then the 2024 election cycle rolled in, and something shifted in Keoni like a fault line cracking open. What started as scrolling through posts on his phone became hours lost to screens, arguing in comment threads with strangers he’d never meet. “Trump this, Trump that,” he muttered while pulling weeds in the garden he once tended mindfully. The fury built quietly at first—shared articles, heated texts to old friends back on the mainland—then louder. He began seeing enemies in neighbors: the guy at the farmers market with a faded red cap, the woman who didn’t post enough “resistance” memes. He unfollowed half the people he knew locally because their feeds weren’t angry enough. Conversations at the Pahoa market turned sharp; he’d steer every chat toward Washington, turning coffee runs into lectures. Friends who once shared fruit from their trees now crossed the street. One longtime neighbor, a quiet Hawaiian man who’d helped Keoni raise his hale after the last big rain, stopped dropping by with extra avocados. “Too much noise,” he said simply one day, and that was that.
Pahoa doesn’t hide anger well. The rainforest presses in close, the black lava fields stretch wide and indifferent, the ocean a few miles down the road rolls in eternal patience. Here, obsession stands out like a bright light in the dark—no skyscrapers or subways to drown it, no constant buzz to numb it. Keoni’s rage echoed back at him in the silence. He missed the sunrises he used to watch from the ridge, too busy refreshing feeds. He missed the easy aloha of waving to strangers on the dirt road, replaced by suspicion. He missed digging in the soil without his mind racing through headlines. Even the volcano, which had nearly swallowed the town in 2018 and taught everyone impermanence, seemed to mock his fixation: Pele destroys and creates without ideology, without tweets, without needing to be right.
One evening after another eruption episode lit the sky orange, Keoni walked out to the edge of his property where the ohia met hardened pahoehoe. The air smelled of wet fern and distant salt. A nēnē goose honked overhead, heading toward the coast. He sat on a lava rock still warm from the day’s sun and—for the first time in months—left his phone inside. The trade winds moved through the leaves like breath. No notifications, no outrage, just the island doing what it always did: enduring, renewing, offering itself without condition.
In that quiet, Keoni saw what Trump Derangement Syndrome cost in a place like Pahoa. Mainland fury travels four thousand miles to land here, but it lands on ground that refuses to sustain it. The islands teach aloha not as sentiment but as necessity—your neighbor’s hands might be the ones pulling you from a flash flood or sharing water when the catchment runs low. You don’t survive long by dividing the ‘ohana over distant battles. Rage shrinks the circle until you’re alone with your screen while the real community—quirky, off-grid, volcano-scarred—carries on without you. Paradise doesn’t argue politics; it simply outlasts the noise. And if you let anger blind you, you miss the one thing Hawaii never stops giving: the chance to be present, to belong, to wake up and see the mist rising again like forgiveness.
Keoni still follows some news. But now he also follows the path to the garden first thing each morning. Because in Pahoa, the worst thing isn’t who sits in Washington. It’s forgetting the ground beneath your feet—and the people who stand on it with you. Once you forget that, no election result can fill the quiet that follows.
