Adventures in
Serendipity

If you’ve been a long-time follower of the blog (or know me personally), you might remember that I last visited Ireland in 2017 as a new college graduate on a whirlwind backpacking trip with one of my oldest friends. On that trip, not only was I a fresh-faced, sprightly new college grad, but I was on an incredibly tight budget and visiting in the summer. This time, I approached my visit to Ireland as an exhausted toddler-mom with a slightly larger budget and less flexibility, and we also had to navigate the various difficulties of Irish winter weather.

Unsurprisingly (at least to those familiar with my daily life), I missed my annual year in review post for 2024. I had my daughter in the fall of 2023, then scraped together my last remaining brain cells to balance teaching and finishing my dissertation in 2024. Fall 2024 was also when we lost Argos, my soul dog whom I’d had since childhood; he survived osteosarcoma against every odd but died unexpectedly in his sleep from a heart condition. In the midst of parenting, dissertating, and grief, a year in review post on my now seldom-used blog was not at the top of my priorities list.

One of the things I’ll emphasize throughout this post is how much money you will save by going the more sustainable route (hint: it’s A LOT), but it is by no means the only positive outcome. By being a conscious consumer, you’re creating less waste, making a more stress-free environment for both you and baby, choosing materials and ingredients that are best for baby’s health and development, and more. Babies don’t actually need that much stuff and while we’re by no means minimalists, one of the first sustainable choices we made was to forgo a lot of the extraneous baby things that our consumerist society tells you that you need (even though you really don’t).

Today was our big hiking day on Maui and one of the days I was most excited for on Maui. Haleakalā National Park is named for the dormant volcano that last erupted between 1480 and 1600 and rises 10,023 feet above sea level. Haleakalā means “house of the sun” in Hawaiian, and this name is derived from the legend that says the demigod Maui imprisoned the sun here in order to lengthen the day to provide people more time to dry cloth and grow food.

As of writing this post, the Maui wildfires are still ongoing after starting around the beginning of August 2023. We stayed near Lahaina, which is where the deadliest fire burned an estimated 2,170 acres and completely destroyed the historic town. About 2,200 buildings were fully or partially burned, about 86% of which are residential, and the death toll is at 115, though 850 people are still listed as missing. Part of the reason for the severity of this fire is underinvestment in local infrastructure (this wildfire had been predicted many time) and instead a focus on tourism that is damaging Hawai’i in myriad ways, from housing costs to clean water access. If you do intend on visiting Hawai’i, make sure you do so with an investment in the local economy and culture in mind, as well as consideration for the health of the local residents (COVID being brought by tourists to areas without sufficient hospital infrastructure is a huge issue).