More F*cking Miracles
Fabulous Freaky Human-Nature Love Stories
Last week I shared about my little miracle apple tree (you can read it here: Sap in the Heart); today I am so excited to share with you two other surprising and somewhat impossible nature stories.
My friend Sylvia Cenzano, who lives on Maui, shared both these stories with me.
When Sylvia first moved to Maui and bought her land she had dreams. Her first dream had come true: purchasing land in Hawaii. The property was a retreat center with numerous houses, a main teaching center and kitchen, and a neglected farm.
If you know Maui: it is in a fairly isolated part of the island on the north shore on the winding Hana Highway.
To get there, drive with the ocean to your left towards Paia. Go past Mama’s Fish House. Stop at Ho’okipa Beach to gawk at the sea turtles and the windsurfers.
Continue onwards past the turnoff for Jaws.
What is Jaws, you ask. Oh, just the largest, heaviest, and fastest wave of the Pacific Ocean. Jaws, also known as Peahi, is Maui's most notorious surf spot and produces waves ranging between 30 and 80 feet.
That’s huge, people. Yikes. People are hauled out to the waves on JetSki. (Watch videos at Maui Guide Book).
Okay, after the Jaws turn off, which is a inconspicuous dirt road that is not marked, turn right at the tiny store towards Haiku.
What was once Maui Retreat Center and is now Malamalama Farms is a mile or so down the road on the right.
Sometime in the early 2000's, before Sylvia bought it, I taught a workshop on sexuality and healing at Maui Retreat Center. I met her years later when I started bringing apprenticeship groups there regularly.
Each time I visited it seemed Sylvia had another miraculous story to share that left me both mouth-open shocked and in ecstatic awe at the power of nature-human connection.
Here are my two f*cking, freaky, fabulous favorites tales:
But first a quick invitation: I'm doing a live webinar next week and you are invited to join... it’s free! Courageous Wisdom, Wild Curiosity
In this free 60-minute webinar I will share practical advice with a dose of humor for anyone wanting to bring soft strength and balanced brilliance to their relationships, work, and days. Two dates to pick from:
Thursday, May 30th at 5pm Los Angeles, 8 pm New York
Friday, May 31st at 8am Los Angeles, 11 am New York, 4 pm London
Sneaky Coffee Surprise
Sylvia had a dream: to import good coffee to Maui from her ancestral countries of Peru and Mexico. She researched, made connection, wrote up plans. But she soon realized it was much more difficult than she expected.
During this time she would take walks through the farm area by the creek. It was wild and overgrown, and she loved picking small red cherry-like berries off of a little bush and sucking on the pulp as she walked.
One day she was telling her friend about her dream to import coffee and they said; well you know you have wild coffee on your property...
Turns out the bushes with red cherry-berries all over her farm were little feral coffee trees.
Sylvia sleuthed that they probably came down the creek from an upstream coffee plantation and when it flooded seeded themselves. She had been eating their ripe red coffee berries and communing with them without knowing it!
Sylvia then taught herself to harvest, dry, and roast the coffee beans, an intensive labor of love. I was blessed to get to wander through these trees and suck on their berries and drink the land's freshly fire-roasted coffee. Divine. Sylvia sold her home-roasted coffee throughout Maui.
Lovely Lilikoi Luck
Throughout Maui there is a particular non-indigenous tree that was planted all over the island many moons ago. That tree is now slowly dying. It is an eerie thing: stark, dead branches, arms and fingers spread starkly against the sky, jutting out of the verdant, multi-hued green of the wild tropical understory.
Sylvia, who studied biodynamic farming, kept looking at the dying trees on her property and wondering what she could grow that could use the trunks as support.
“I need something that will vine up the trees, that has a fruit which will fall when it is ripe, but is hard enough that it will not bruise when it drops from height.”
She had no idea what would fit all that criteria, but she kept asking for a sign.
One day she noticed a new vine growing up one of the trees. Curious, she kept an eye on it. It turned out to be lilikoi, or passionfruit. You guessed it: a vine that climbs happily up the dead trunks and produces copious amounts of fruit in a sturdy outer shell that falls when it ripens...
The next year passionfruit had propagated on its own throughout the property.
Whoa.
Learn more about lilikoi here
Okay, I can't help myself: here is one more story for paid subscribers.
Sorry, I know it is obnoxious to put things behind a paywall. I get it. And people, it is a lot of work to write and research some of the articles. It is my joy, and I also need your support so I can continue to share more in-depth articles and do the emotional labor needed to write about hard, controversial, and charged topics.
We all need guidance during these changing times, and I am honored to write pieces to help us all think in new ways, look at the challenges through new eyes, and open more to possibility, even in the face of what seems impossible.
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Become a paid member now to listen to this last story about impossible roses grown at Findhorn in Scotland.
And don’t forget to join live on May 30 or 31st for the Courageous Wisdom, Wild Curiosity webinar. When you register you’ll be entered into a special drawing for marvelous gifts, including a signed copy of my new book (which comes out July 30th), Wild, Willing, and Wise: An Interactive Guide for when to Paddle, when to Rest, and when to Jump Naked into the River of Life. warriorgoddess.com/courageous
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