In trying to decide which of my Polaroid cameras to take with me to Kauai, I kept coming back to The Reporter, and my Polaroid knock-off, a Berkey
Keystone Everyflash. Both big black cameras-- the Keystone had already made some lovely images, but it is a huge brick of a thing. While The Reporter was up til then untested, it is much more compact and manageable. Ultimately, size and weight mattered when hiking. I have posted below the shots I took with my Polaroid camera, titled
The Reporter. These photos remind me of the feel of each of these places more than the crisp images that Jon and I got on our digital cameras.
Waimea Canyon. The Grand Canyon of Kauai. It is indeed a grand place, home to mountain goats and soaring birds and trees and a wild wind. We were in a place where the clouds rubbed up against the mountain's edge, where they bumped, jostled, and rough-housed until they finally fell over one another and rolled over the tree tops and over the edge of the mountains themselves. . . 
How I loved this magical, quiet, spiritual place. Whispers of hopes, wishes, and prayers nestle among the ferns and shrines that line the hillside. I couldn't help but feel peace settling down into my bones as I walked the trails of the grounds. It felt as though this sleepy, quiet, powerful place woke something in me. This is how I'll remember these sites-- in the magical, nostalgic, slightly blown-out sepia tones of my expired Polaroid film.
