Wild Pigs in the Pines

February 25, 2026

The Climb

CLUMP. CLUMP. CLUMP.

I heard the unmistakable sound of a wild pig trudging up the trail somewhere behind me. An unusually large one.

I felt it too — hollow bass notes pounding the dirt, then vibrating up through the soles of my shoes, through my beat-up ankles, and straight into my brain where they registered like a low pahu drum somewhere in the valley.

I stopped and listened.

Then I sighed as I realized...

No wild pigs today. Just me.

Clomping around like a retired dairy cow on the way to the glue factory.

I immediately shifted into what I call stealth-warrior mode — lighter, intentional steps, rolling lightly from heel to toe like a hula dancer who also knows how to survive in the wild. My steps had transformed into a delicate work of art. Deadly quiet.

Turns out, this was easier done than said, especially in the thick bed of fallen pine needles carpeting the trail.

I was hiking up toward a grove of Cook Pines overlooking the small town of Hauʻula on the North Shore of Oʻahu. Cook Pines look like a regular pine tree and Dr. Seuss collaborated on a side project. Tall, theatrical, slightly improbable. Some in this grove reach over 200 feet into the Hawaiian sky.

If you saw one, you’d want it in your yard. Or handling Christmas tree duties.

I chose this grove because it felt stately. Quiet. A little sacred.

And because Caiya would have loved it.

Caiya spent the final six months of her life on this side of the island in 2021. She died at thirteen.

Today would have been her eighteenth birthday.

So I came to the mountain to think.

Afterward, I planned a pilgrimage of sorts, to drive to some of her favorite North Shore spots, eat some of her favorite food, and do it all in the exact same car we used back then — a 2013 Toyota Prius that I thought was on its last leg five years ago.

It is now unquestionably on its last leg.

Rust freckles the exterior. A squeaky suspension with opinions. And in the evenings, small roaches sometimes appear on the floorboards like uninvited tenants conducting inspections.

Not a single strand of golden dog hair remains.

I checked.

The Places We Carry

In the grove I thought about a passage in Travels with Charley in Search of America where John Steinbeck writes about the impossibility of returning to the past and finding it intact. How memory preserves what life quietly edits.

“You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

He was right.

I knew that a large section of the Turtle Bay trail Caiya and I hiked every single day has been cleared for development. The big trees are gone. The trail feels wider. Less intimate.

There is no way to reconcile the altered landscape with the one I carry in memory. They do not match.

And it’s astonishing how much luster everyday places lose when you remove the enthusiasm of a Golden Retriever. Beaches are still beaches. Trails are still trails. But without that constant, tail-wagging insistence that everything is the greatest thing that has ever happened… the world flattens a bit.

Not empty.

Just quieter.

Less electric.

I realized I wouldn’t actually be revisiting her life.

I would be confronting the distance between then and now.

Birthdays Are Defiant

The ache might be with me all day.

Not sharp. Not debilitating.

But present — like a low hum under everything.

Then it struck me: death anniversaries carry weight. They symbolize endings. Transitions.

The moment something closed.

Birthdays are different.

Birthdays are defiant.

They celebrate the moment a life entered the world and started rearranging it.

Today wasn’t about the day she left.

It was about the day she arrived.

I leave Hawaii again tomorrow after several weeks here this winter. There is always a subtle tension in leaving a place that holds memory. But I would refuse to let departure sneak into the day.

Because this day belonged to celebration.

Even if the celebration felt muted.

Even if it was just me in a grove of improbable trees and a Prius with mild insect complications.

The Dogs Knew

On the way down the mountain, near the metal gate at the trail entrance, a woman and her two dogs were coming in as I was going out.

She was wrestling a leash onto one of them.

“Hey!” I called. “You don’t have to leash them on account of me. I love dogs — especially when they can run free.”

She looked up, startled.

The dog she was trying to leash slipped free and trotted toward me.

“Be careful!” she said. “That’s a hunting dog.”

I honestly wasn’t sure what that meant, so I laughed.

“So if I run, will it tackle me and go straight for my jugular?”

She did not laugh.

The hunting dog — Kua — approached with professional seriousness, sniffed, assessed, and moved on. Apparently, I did not qualify as prey.

The other dog, a small black lab named Blue, came straight in. No hesitation. I knelt down and she leaned into me like we had a history.

Tail wagging. Body pressed close. Immediate trust.

We chatted briefly. The woman’s name was Diane.

Blue stayed.

Kua circled back once more for a second opinion, then trotted away again, uninterested.

“The dogs like you,” Diane said. “They’re not usually that friendly.”

I didn’t say anything.

I just smiled.

No jugulars would be ripped out today.

And I knew why.

This morning I had been worried about what was missing.

The dog hair. The old version of the trail.

But not everything would be gone.

It was Caiya’s birthday.

She had always been the kind of dog who got along with everyone — especially other dogs, especially in places like this.

Blue leaning into me like that didn’t feel random.

For a moment, the world didn’t feel flat.

“Happy birthday, Caiya,” I thought.

And headed home to get the Prius.

Caiya, a few weeks before her death.