Amid the destruction and death, the continuing search for the missing, the questions and recriminations, the governmental fumbling and incoherence, the concerns about toxic waste and invasive dry grass and worries about somehow getting kids back in schools, has arisen a spiritual awakening of something many thought had been lost, certainly frayed, in the superhype of tourism and resorts.

The spirit of aloha.

It sounds like a hackneyed cliche, and so be it, but the people of Maui, in the nearly three weeks since Lahaina was mostly burned down, have banded together in a manner that might seem foreign to mainlanders. The levels of volunteer help, donations and concern for the ohana are difficult to put in words, so aloha will have to suffice.

On a recent evening, as the sun was setting, and the tradewinds were floating through the palm trees, my wife and I took time after work to go to one of our favorite spots on earth, Napili’s beach, where the water is always a transparent turquoise and where one can watch the clouds in the later afternoon wrap around the northwestern tip of the island and cascade off the green West Maui Mountains, delivering a few rain drops, before ghosting across the water to the island of Moloka’i.

But it’s a much different beach now, with the tourists all gone. Just like it was after the COVID plague closed down travel here. We feel guilty even coming here, with what Maui locals are calling 8/8 never far from anyone’s thoughts.

There’s a few local families on a beach that in summer’s peak tourist season is usually packed.

A couple of local guys fishing.

Two workers from the empty hotel with nothing much to do.

One of them, a woman, smiles at us as we pass by. We nod, but sense she wants to talk, as so many survivors have wanted to do since the fires.

She says, “I lost everything (in the fires). Everything.

“But, thank you Jesus, I’m still here and ...” she gestures toward the ocean. The empty hotel is putting her and her family up for the time being.

An hour or so later it started to rain, and the rainbow followed. I think of the promise to Noah.

At twilight, we decided to stop at Napili Plaza, a small shopping center which just a couple of days before had been packed with evacuees from the fire zone, along with mountains of supplies, including large shipping containers filled with basic necessities.

But the numbers of evacuees in encampments have dwindled (we have a number of displaced folks staying in our smallish complex now), even as the search for victims continues in Lahaina, including in offshore waters. The distribution and evacuee center has been closed, with many of the services consolidated elsewhere.

This night a small crowd was gathered outside a local restaurant, Joey’s Kitchen. A man with a guitar and a quick smile was singing outside the restaurant while the small staff at Joey’s (all local folks) gestured to a window where volunteers were putting together chicken salads.

Free, they said. They’ve been offering free meals since the Aug. 8 fires.

As the music continued, a few ladies danced, and others kept time with their hands and feet. People stopped by to donate a few bucks to the singer or to a basket in the restaurant window to go for relief efforts.

“Isn’t this great?” one woman said to me.

Aloha.

Later, I sat on a seawall overlooking the Pailolo Channel separating West Maui from Molokai’i and Lana’i as the lingering sunset turned to night. The only sound was the ocean lapping against the shore and I looked out at the gap between the two islands and thought about the Hawai’i the tourists don’t see, and a Maui no ka oi that local people are able to reclaim for a few short weeks only because the Lahaina tragedy has cleared this end of the island of most visitors.

I’ve long cherished James Michener’s book Hawaii, which to modern readers might seem impossibly dated, but in its breadth and scope provides an encompassing story of these islands that includes the joy Native Hawaiians once felt. It also tells of a terrible sadness that often came calling here as the people were engulfed by disease, violence, a loss of cultural identity, and a relentless European/American version of manifest destiny. Michener tale includes a history of Lahaina, focusing on the whaling industry that with all its promise of riches was accompanied by the depravity of many of the whalers who came to the harbor.

Michener’s epic novel also tells the story of successive waves of Chinese and Japanese immigrant laborers brought to the islands to work on the sugar cane and pineapple plantations.

The plantations are long gone. Today, many immigrants, primarily from the Philippines, still come here to work, though now it’s at the expensive resorts. Many of those who died in the Lahaina fires were Filipinos, many older.

And despite the Great Sadness and the strangely peaceful quiet felt here, many, though not all, local people want the tourists back, because tourism is the Maui economy.

But Maui also has shown it can be the spirit of aloha where out of tragedy can come unity and harmony.

Where out of sadness and loss can come an appreciation for what we still have.

And I thought back to the song I heard that evening in Napili, “My Island Maui” (written by Maui recording artist Pekelo Cosma):

We go walking on the beaches

The sun goes slowly down.

For I owe my life to Maui, for the peace that I have found

Oh, where have you gone? My island Maui

For I have left you, now I miss you so

I will return, to my island Maui.

Note: For now, this will be my last dispatch in this series. The future for Lahaina is going to be a long, difficult journey, and there will almost certainly be more grim news, but slowly, life for the living proceeds. Cash donations for relief can go to https://mauiunitedway.org/disasterrelief Mahalo nui loa. Don Miller is the Sentinel’s Opinion Editor, writing from Maui.