Road to Peahi - Fine Art Weekly Photo

Peahi. Jaws. If you're a surfer you've already got a veritable ocean of images surging through your mind. Massive waves stacked as far as you can see. Jetskis. Helicopters. Tow-in surfers charging down choppy wave faces the size of six story buildings.

But how do you get there? Well, hop a flight to Maui for starters. An unassuming road off highway 36 in Paia, Maui's north shore, winds it's way through a local, rural neighborhood, soon becoming a bumpy, twisting, rolling dirt track leading through a mile and a half of sugar cane fields. Hope it hasn't just rained, and if it has that you have four wheel drive.

But winter or summer, it is a beautiful sight to see. The little unassuming bay, at the end of this little unassuming road, off the major state highway running along Maui's north coast, comes alive in winter. The solitary summer drive through green sugar cane fields can make you feel like one of a very select, special few on the entire island. Time it right, the verdant fields shine golden in the sun.

Summer or winter, Peahi is a special place in the world to be.
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Eruption - Fine Art Weekly Photo

Shorebreaking waves are an amazing thing. Not the tiny little waves that lap onto shore. No, we're talking about large, heavy, dumping waves that crash directly on shore. The ones that fascinate people yet keep most of them out of the water. The ones that bodyboarders, bodysurfers, and skimboarders love. The ones that over the past few years standup surfers have been tackling as well.

There are many such waves around the world. One of the most famous is here in Orange County, CA. Yes, the Wedge in Newport Beach.

Heavy waves crash down their weight on land, not a reef or sandbar off shore. There's no fine, silky sand here. It's coarse. The ferocity of the waves have long since carried away any finer sands and deposited them just off shore on the sea bed. Here you'll typically find a steep sloping beach down to the water's edge. And sometimes here you'll find that steep sloping beach has been eroded by a series of massive waves into a vertical shelf of sand. But it wont stay that way.

As the tide rises, so will the waves. They'll no longer pound the shore below the wall of sand. The rising water level will bring the churning, bubbling, surging white water of these heavy shorebreaking waves up and over the precipice, erupting skywards as they do. Eventually all that will be left is the characteristically steep slope leading towards the ocean.
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Sept 11, 2001-2011

10 years ago today...I was late waking up for my first class of the day, sophomore year at UConn. I hurriedly took a shower, and was stopped by my RA walking back to my room with news I didn't, couldn't believe. "It's on TV- come look." That was precisely when the second plane hit the second tower. Needless to say I wasn't going to class. Watching the smoke rising, then the towers actually fall, and the frantic calls to check on family and friends living/working in NYC. Remember today. Remember the Victims, the Heros, the Families, and the Friends who were affected by this cowardly act of terrorism 10 years ago today.

Revelwood - Fine Art Weekly Series

Revelwood.

The Banyan Tree is truly impressive. Is it one tree? Multiple trees growing in close proximity with intertwining canopies? They appear ever-stretching. Branches grow out at long lengths. They extend arial roots down into the soil, forming auxiliary trunks. Branches continue out into the seemingly ever-reaching  distance from these roots-which-appear-like-tree-trunks.

The tree's common name comes from the banya, Indian traders, who would conduct business under its sheltering expanse. First the Portuguese, then English explorers picked up on the tree and the banyas, returning home telling their tales. Eventually English writers began incorporating it into their stories, and the name Banyan became synonymous with the tree itself, despite the latin taxonomy Ficus benghalensis.

Whether from our own history or that of fanciful stories, the Banyan Tree has long been a source of wonderment, worship, commerce, and shelter. Countless stories tell of exotic trees that cover entire valleys, of entire cities within the confines of one enormous tree. And these fictitious stories are not far off.

Revelwood is one such tree city in one such piece of fiction. As a city that serves entirely as a school, here not only rooms, but entire homes are grown and shaped out of one enormously large Banyan tree... Our likeness stems from the Kipahulu Area of Maui's Haleakala National Park. While it's at not home here in Orange County, CA, we encourage you to go find it (it's right on a main trail) and setup a tripod with the early morning light!
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newport beach parking control double parked blocking the road. can I give them a ticket?