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Nightfall on the Na Pali Trail
by Colleen Kaleda
      

Excerpts:

I felt only the tickling of wings in the black night as I sat alone on the muddy riverbank. Beetles crawled in my hair. Mosquitoes swirled around my nose and eyes. My friend and travel companion Marcie was stuck on the opposite side of Kalalau Stream and had just been taken away by two men with miner lights on their heads.

So much for our tropical adventure. I envisioned Marcie kidnapped and myself devoured alive by river beetles.

“You can do it! You CAN do it!” I’d shouted to her just minutes before, trying to coax her into the rope swing that would get her across the rushing water. Terrified, she’d cried as I instructed her to grab hold of the rope and hoist herself into the burlap ring. “You can do it!” I called out again, my voice echoing through Kauai’s Kalalau Valley . . .

 

 

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