Page 15 of Big Island Sunset
4
Fern
“Theo!” Fern bent and grabbed his hat off the ground for the tenth time. “You have to keep this on!”
Up above her in the hiking pack that Ethan wore, Theodore giggled.
“You’re going to get a sunburn,” she scolded him, pulling the hat back onto his head.
He just grinned and grabbed the brim of his hat with one chubby little hand.
“No,” she warned, holding up one finger.
He cackled and tossed the hat to the ground.
Fern bit back a smile. How was she supposed to be stern with a laughing baby?
His face was painted with thick white nontoxic sunscreen, but the red-gold fluff on his head didn’t do much to protect his scalp from the harsh Hawaiian sun.
He had gotten his first sunburn the week before, which had turned his skin pink and made him cry all night and into the next day until he finally fell into an exhausted sleep. The memory made Fern’s stomach twist with guilt.
“Let’s cut back to the forest trail for some shade,” Ethan suggested.
“There’s a shortcut up ahead, I think.”
They walked along the cliffs of black volcanic rock that undulated beneath their feet, waves of frozen lava standing above the endless waves of saltwater that crashed and receded below. When one particularly big wave sent a cooling mist of salt spray across the cliffs to speckle their faces, Theo waved his hands in the air and laughed.
Fern jogged ahead, leaping from rock to rock and scanning the trees for the path that she had found on a solo hike months before, when the noonday sun beating down on the black rock had driven her back into the shade of the jungle.
“Here it is!” she called back when she finally found the narrow path. It was just a few meters from the cliffs to the main trail, but the jungle was too thick to get through in most places.
“I take back everything I said about the coastal route being shorter,” Ethan said. He climbed up a rise and paused to catch his breath. “The sun adds five miles.”
Fern grinned at him and reached up to secure Theo’s mosquito netting. The structured pack formed a sort of tent above him that was insufficient protection from the sun but adequate support for a bug screen that protected him from getting bit.
“Just another day in paradise,” she teased as she reapplied her homemade bug spray to her arms and legs.
“Give me some of that, would you?” Ethan asked. She sprayed the backs of his legs while he stood straight, encumbered by the heavy pack and ever-growing baby.
Adequately protected, they dove back into the cool shade where the buzzing insects thrived.
“Can you even imagine what it must have been like here before ships brought mosquitoes?” Fern asked as she swatted a buzzing pest away from her ear. “Heaven.”
“My idea of heaven is… drier,” Ethan muttered as he squelched through a mud puddle.
Fern’s mouth pulled into a troubled frown as she turned to look at him, walking backwards up the trail.
“Don’t trip,” he scolded. She ignored the warning.
“Do you like it here?”
“Here in Hawai’i?”
She nodded. “Do you really want to be here?”
His brow furrowed slightly. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That’s not much of an answer.” The path widened and she faced forward again, falling back to walk beside him.
