KWA-KSA

By Michael H. Kew

Jackson is deeply stoned, sucking his red teeth and spitting red betel nut spit. A stray drip of drool droops like a pendant from his black beard. Half his visage blanked by big sunglasses and a blue bucket hat worn low. His green Reebok shirt suggests an ample belly; his lack of chat and the beat-up panga suggest he’s not a tourist's glad-hander. Fine with me, the only tourist on Kosrae.

Beneath the day's heavy gray, an offshore wind was forecast. Yet a strange and surprising onshore wind fluffs the erstwhile glass. Tide remains too low but inconsistent head-high groundswell sets pop over the corals of the pass connected spiritually and physically to freshwater swamp forest and mountain ridges looming over the holy 400-acre preserve called Yela Valley, home to the world's largest and most intact stand of ka (Terminalia carolinensis), a tree endemic here and on neighboring Pohnpei.

"Wanna go see?" Jackson asks softly.

We’ve time to kill. This is my chance—Yela Valley will forever be roadless. Twenty years ago were talks of tying it to the rest of Kosrae as three-quarters of the isle, a verdant volcanic speck, is linked by a ribbon of potholes. Punching a new road above, below, or through the valley proved technically and environmentally futile. Instead, a conservation easement was born and, for financial compensation, the areal landowners (10 families) happily chose to leave their ancestral dirtundisturbed. Any human access would remain aquatic.

The panga slides us slowly us from the pass into the tawny shallow estuary of the Yela River, a small clear stream that through millennia had carved the pass itself.

"Have you ever felled a ka?" I ask.

"Yes. Long time ago. Usually we use it for lumbers. In the past it was use for canoe. It's a really good wood."

The air is markedly cooler mere minutes from the open-air theater of ocean. We approach the thatched and mildewed one-room "eco lodge" and its placard and boardwalk, all products of the conservation deal. Then, after slinking deeper into pure greens of tropical rainforest, Jackson stops the boat. We hop out. His feet slosh loudly as he drags it onto a tongue of bare sand. Suddenly, with the outboard motor off, an immense and heady hush envelops the scene. Unseen birds chirp and coo. I do a 360: ferns, palms, vines, breadfruit.

Where are the ka?

"Follow me."

We step across the moist, healthy understory before finally facing the birdy Sun-dappled dell. Their mossy, fin-like buttress roots are big enough to flank an adult human. Trunks bristling with epiphytic plants, crowns like huge green umbrellas.

"Maybe should be named umbrella tree, eh?" Jackson says, sprinkling lime powder onto another betel nut. Five dollars for a bag of 20, which he chews daily. A weekly $35 habit.

"You want one?"

"Sure."

Momentarily comes the red teeth/red spit and instant change of head.

"What nuts are these?" I ask, somewhat dizzily looking down at the scattered brown thumb-sized spheroids resembling cacao seeds. Some are bright green, nearly identical to betel.

"From the ka. Green ones just fell from the tree. Brown ones are best now for eating."

With a rock against another rock, he bends down to split one open.

"Here. Crunchy and tasty like peanut."

I wish for a whole sack of ka nuts instead of the Cool Ranch Doritos and Taiwanese “nutrition biscuits" I'd brought for surf sustenance.

Speaking of. During our ka admiration and betel inebriation, the Sun has fully killed the clouds and the estuary's rising water is to free the panga from its berth. Quickly we push off and putter back toward the ocean. Emerging from the mangroves, I feel like the quite-possibly-also-stoned Yates brothers at the start of Forgotten Island of Santosha—upon a river exiting rainforest, single-fins lashed to their outrigger canoe and, indeed, happily exhaling with the sight of promise—clean lines of white along the distant reef.

Excerpted from Xanatollu (2026), my book about the world-famous Island Hopper flight route from Hawaiʻi through Micronesia to Guam. Signed copies available here from my online store.