Keaomelemele and Clouds:

Various types of clouds above He‘eia.

“There is a mo‘olelo, a mythology about the Keaomelemele,” Ian relates, “goddess of the golden cloud. It’s an epic tale that was written down by Moses Manu and translated by Mary Kawena Pukui. And whenever you read these, you can read the stories in English but you really have to read the chants in both English and Hawaiian to begin to understand the layers and layers of metaphors that bring out this environmental and cultural information.

Location of Waolani, where Keaomelemele was raised, relative to He‘eia.

“This story is set here at Konahuanui, behind us on the peak on the above the Nu‘uanu Pali, and where the gods Kāne and Kanaloa, brothers—Kāne, god of freshwater and Kanaloa, god of the sea—used to hang out. And their cousins were Kū and Hina. They lived in a far-away island, Kua‘ihelani, and they shared the grandmother, Mo‘oinanea, which would have come from the high lineage of Haumea, the main woman, the source of all the chiefs came through Haumea. And so they wanted to adopt a child, a high-born lineage, and they asked Mo‘oinanea for help.

“So a child was born from Kū and Hina, and given to Kāne and Kanaloa to be raised over here at Konahuanui. Before it split from Waolani, as they say. And it’s a beautiful story. When the child is born, many many different kinolau—body forms of the deities in nature—are shown. Hō‘ailona—signs of nature that have meaning. Just like forty days of rain. And it was exactly that scenario that was going on with the thunder in the lightning and Kauilanuimākēhā and all of these things in.

“Born was this child that they called the adopted child of the gods Kahānaiakeakua. And as the story moves along, it introduces relative after relative, Kāne and Kanaloa’s sister the rainbow Keanuenue who flies down on the wings of the ‘Iwa bird to pick up the child and wraps him in the blanket of mist and changes form between rainbows and and human form, and tells Kū and Hina who she is and brings the child up. Then another child is born. And in this succession, each one comes with a phenomenon in the sky, like the rainbow.

Rainbow—ānueue—in Hawai‘i. Photo by Joel.

“The sun is Kāne and Kanaloa, but Kāne is procreator or god of fresh water and god of life. When the sun shines on the ocean, then we have convective heating, we have the water come up—the fresh water—and it’s carried by Lono. This child is given different names in different family versions of the story, but he is the one who carries Kāne’s freshwater in the sky.

“How would the ānueue, the rainbow, be a relative of Kāne and Kanaloa? When that water comes into the sky, we have the horizon clouds, the kūkeao clouds, and the clouds that stand on the horizon bring in the gentle trade winds with the light rains. With the morning sunshine it brings the rainbow. It’s a cycle, it’s a system, it’s the hydrologic cycle expressed in relation to what we would call a synoptic feature map.

“Over time I began to realize that the mythology that I was reading to try and find these snippets about surfing and ancient Hawaiian culture, was actually an entire epic saga of the synoptic feature map, like a schematic representation of the passing of a cold front and all of the cloud forms. In it they say that there are thirty-seven forms of main types of clouds, says Kūkeaoloa to Kū and Hina. And that there are all together 405 subdivisions of clouds, and all these clouds speak to us. Amazing. The author mentions how sad it is that this knowledg has been lost in these times, meaning the mid 1800s.

“Several more children are born, the last one being a child of magic proportions who is pulled from the fontanel of Hina’s head. The fontanel, the manawa. Important concept. Fontanel of Hina, now, and Mo‘oinanea took special care to build a house for this child named Keaomelemele. It was built of all of the different types of clouds fringing around this house. And this house was the dome of shimmering clear. And underneath. ‘Ālohilohi is ‘to shimmer,’ and this morning the ocean was like a lake, and the water was shimmering with the sunshine. Ke‘alohi is for that.

Clouds over the interior.

“It is this house that was in the center of all of the known lands. It was the house that was built and all the types of clouds fringed around it. And as this is being told, I realize that’s the center of the high pressure cell—the dome of cool, dry air sinking out of the upper atmosphere. A place where you have no clouds grow except over the islands. During the interior, the convective heat builds up over the interior and in describing it they say that there she is rising up on these dark clouds in the afternoon. So that kind of blew me away, and I began to look at the world very differently.

“In realizing that the epic tale of Keaomelemele is this story about the meteorology of the Pacific. And in it, when it talks about the high clouds that come up from the horizon, the cirro-stratus clouds that come up—which are the cloud drifts that come up from Tahiti that are seen in as high, whispy cirrus clouds and blanketing cirrus clouds, he would mention that these clouds [pointing at the sky], there you can see the deity, Ka‘ōnohiali‘i there on top the cloud, which is the sun dog, the rainbow around the sun. she’s the one who can see all from above and sends messages to Ke‘alohilani and to Kau‘ihelani and to all the known lands of the earth. Did this all take place on O‘ahu or did it take place all over? because we can see Konahuanui and here we are sitting at Ke‘alohi. Really does you know make me wonder about how separate it was.

“Kū is the warm, maritime-tropical air mass pushing up. And he is balanced by his wife Hina, which is the cool, dry, sinking air mass—maritime polar. And the two together, the husband and wife, are stable weather. They balance each other out. Because Kū is like ‘GRRrraaahhh!’ and Hina is like, “Whoa boy, mellow out,’ because the high pressure won’t let the clouds push up.

The red skin of the banana flower.

“The winds are so light this morning, the lands heated up they tried to do the Lono, the thunderstorm. And the threat to Kū’s relationship was Hina and Lono getting together—disturbed weather. So what happens when that happens? It says the second child born after Keaomelemele, Ka‘uma‘ili‘ula, the kid whose body was red all over like the sheath of the banana, who also got to live there and you saw two days of the red skies with the Kona winds and everything, because first the ridge passes over.

"Once the ridge goes south of us we start to get the Kona winds from the south and the West which is Kū’s body, the tropical air mass coming up bringing all the vog. It’s red red, red, red. And then following along with that, the kona winds will either get stronger and then the cold front will come through and that’s Kūkealoa. And so you have the bodies of Kū as the maritime-tropical air mass, tongue out in war, angry, get away, pushing the storm away.

“And then in this case, the cold front didn’t come all the way through, but receded up. And when that happens, the ridge comes back over and we have clear, clear skies. Ke‘alohilani is here, straight over Ke‘alohi. There’s a chant that talks about the coming of the clouds, Kūkeaopoko, all those little tiny ‘poko.’ short clouds. And then Kūkeaokīei, peering clouds that peer up over the horizon. And then you have the leaning clouds that show that there’s wind on them now. And then the many, many dog-shaped ‘ehu—ruddy, reddish clouds that we see marching along. Until you see the whole the whole horizon with the Kūkeao clouds of many types. Trade winds will come strong for several days, and then we’ll see the life-giving cloud.

“I think that when the clouds build up from the Ko‘olau, they will reach all the way across Maunawili, but once they hit ‘Āhiki, they can go no further. The winds coming from Waimānalo push the clouds back. No way will wetness ever make it down to Ka‘iwa, down to the pill boxes in Lanikai.

“So if you understand them from an experiential landscape basis, you begin to see how these stories all come alive. But you’ve got to be there. Changes on the landscape change the ability to see easily the connections with the mo‘olelo.

“But we definitely know for sure, when you see the next weather map, when you see the H for high pressure, you just think Hina, because that’s what came from the fontanel, Keaomelemele, this house surrounded by all the different types of clouds. And of course, when you see the big L for low pressure, think Lono!"

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Living World > Seasons