"Witness to Time"

Before there was a national refuge designated for Kealia on the northern end of Kihei, the area was known simply as "the mudflats". Large pools formed in the rainy season for a month or two of each year and then dried to small puddles of water surrounded by crusts of sludge and sea weed. In the summer, the stench of decayed fish waffed into Kihei with every hint of a breeze and swarms of flying insects covered the windshields of the cars that traveled the highway.

"The Mud Flats" was sometimes a collection point for discarded cars and ice boxes. And at other times, when our county's funds could afford the pickup, the area appeared pristine except for the tracks of the cars that used it as a shortcut to the back side of Maalaea. "Kealia Mudflats" is my recollection of that time.