David Vance
Wendy Scott-Vance
Waiola—Water of Life
David was raised on Waiola Avenue in La Grange, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Growing up he never questioned the meaning or reason for the name, and didn't know that it was a Hawaiian word until he moved to the Islands in the early 1970's.
By chance it was in this very same suburb that Frederick Lyman settled. Frederick's parents, newlyweds David and Sarah Lyman, had sailed around the Horn to the Kingdom of Hawai`i as missionaries in 1832 and put down roots in Hilo. The trip was a harsh and rugged six month journey and they never went back to their native New England but raised their seven children on Hawai`i Island. Frederick left to attend university on the mainland and never again returned to Hawai`i. His life and travels brought him to Illinois and to La Grange and he met and married the daughter of the town's founder. We can only assume that he sorely missed Hawai`i because when the time came to name the new street next to Spring Street he dubbed it 'Waiola,' meaning 'Water of Life,' and one of the Hawaiian words for spring.
There is a spring on this property and when we had the land blessed, without knowing any of the history, the Hawaiian man who did the blessing said, "You should call this place "Waiola!"
We're The Lucky Owners!
We are Island residents of 38 years, twenty on Maui and eighteen on Hawai`i Island. We loved Maui and found it hard to leave until we were offered the caretaker/manager position at Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s Tibetan Buddhist retreat center, Orgyen Dechen Chöd Dzong, in Ka`ū, the southern-most part of Hawai`i Island. Until we came to Ka`ū we weren't sure what we were looking for but we certainly knew it when we found it—beautiful, rural, rugged, small-town Hawai`i. Then we found ten acres of possibility covered impossibly densely in an invasive tree called wililaiki or christmasberry.
Perhaps an apocryphal story,
it is said that one of the early settlers, Willie
Rice, had a hatband made of the very pretty red berries that appear on
the tree around Christmas-time. His hatband was admired by many of the
people he met in Ka`ū and he shared the bright red seeds with them. The
seeds were planted and they grew and multiplied prolifically. Wililaiki
is Willie Rice’s name in Hawaiian. The rest of the story is actual
history and christmasberry has reproduced and become a scourge on the
Island, crowding out many of the native forest trees and plants that
make up the critical habitat of native birds and insects.
Not knowing what we were signing up for, we purchased the land in 2000 after David climbed to the top of a huge `ōhi`a tree and saw the bright blue ocean in the distance.
We were advised to simply hire a D-10 and bulldoze everything, but there was an old dry-stack stone wall along the ahupua`a (the land division that runs from a mountain top to the ocean) boundary between Kawela ahupua`a and our land in Wai`oma`o ahupua`a that we were unwilling to risk to the dozer’s blade and David starting hand clearing the wililaiki from the perimeter of the wall.
And so the unfolding began.
He
carved tunnels through the wililaiki tangle so that we could get from
one end of the property to the other and every tiny patch of blue sky
that was revealed by the felling of another christmasberry was cause for
celebration. And we found more walls. And archeological sites. And
100-year old `ōhi`a lehua trees. And other native flora that was just
waiting for sunlight to start to thrive again.
And so the unfolding
continued and now there are two dwellings, a lush pasture, farm animals,
a green house and pets and we look forward to sharing it all with
guests who are looking for a comfortable, cozy eco-friendly place to
reconnect with nature and life!