A natural rush
Hawaiian resort near waterfall a healing paradise
HILO, Hawaii — If you arrive here on a moonless night, you can hear the water before you can see it rushing to seek its lowest point, as water always does. At first, it sounds like a hose that’s been left on, but as you try to track down the source, it begins to sound like a horrendous water main break. Suddenly it appears seemingly out of nowhere: Kulaniapia Falls, not a public works disaster but an aquatic masterpiece that tumbles over itself on its 120-foot drop to the pool below, spilling 50 bathtubs’ worth of water in a minute if it’s not raining, about 10 times that much if it is, which it often is on the Hilo side of Hawaii Island.
For years, vegetation hid these falls. Once that greenery was cut away, the cascade became the centerpiece of and the soundtrack for the Inn at Kulaniapia Falls. This is a different kind of resort, not the marble-bathed, Frette-linened, chilled-air kind of lodging you frequently find in the islands. Want pampering? No problem, but here it is nurture by nature. It’s the gardens filled with bamboo and orchids, the early morning sun glinting off Hilo Bay below, the feeling of being free from artifice as you stroll down a country lane lined with macadamia nut trees.
And always there is the water, a kind of liquid worry bead. For one occasional group of guests, that is part of the allure of this place, which is more than just a resort. For some of them, it is a last resort. In the early 1990s, Lenny Sutton bought the 22 acres sight unseen that are now home to the inn. “It had good ‘mana,’ ” he said, using a term that often refers to an energy or power that can result in good. Sutton, his wife, Jane, and their children moved here because the place had, as they like to say in real estate, potential, but it took vision to see what that was. The falls were so overgrown that only the top 12 feet were visible. There were
no buildings, only the land and the water — the big falls, three smaller falls and the stream into which they flow. The inn began its hospitality life as a four-room bedand-breakfast. “We raised our kids there,” Sutton said. Today, the inn comprises the Residence (four rooms) and Harmony House (five rooms), Jade Cottage (sleeps two) and the Pagoda House (sleeps four and has a kitchen). There are glamping tents up the road at the 20acre farm that can be booked through Airbnb (from $89). Breakfast is part of the package at the inn (fruit, breads, cold meats, cook-your-own waffles, juices, coffee) and can be eaten on the balcony of the Residence, where the falls could easily rock you back to sleep, if there weren’t so many other things to do. Those things are fairly recent additions. In 2015, Sutton was retirement age and perhaps ready for a not-seven-days-a-week job, so he put the place on the market. Enter Christophe Bisciglia, whose mile-a-minute mind had plowed mostly fertile land in the tech industry. Now he was ready for what he called a “legacy asset” that enabled him to be part of and contribute to a local and larger community. By chance, he stumbled on the inn. It wasn’t quite what he thought he wanted, but when he saw Kulaniapia (said to mean “heavenly power”), he knew this was it. He didn’t want to buy the inn outright. Instead, he wanted to partner with Sutton as he learned a new industry. In the end, as it often does, life gave Sutton what he needed (a partner to ease his burdens), not what he thought he wanted. Bisciglia wanted to create new revenue streams by introducing adventures — hikes in a nearby lava tube, stargazing, and rappelling and ziplining the falls — for the guests. To do so, he needed someone who could train a staff to guide the guests. Enter Dave Black, a Maui resident and a Utah native. He had decades of outdoors experience as part of credentials that also included military service and serving as a correctional officer. Black was interested, but his motivation wasn’t money. He wanted to find a way to honor his son Darby, a military veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder so severe that in 2015 he killed himself. Darby Black is part of a deadly pattern. In 2010, about 22 vets a day killed themselves, according to an estimate in a 2012 Department of Veterans Affairs study. Some scientists and medical personnel dispute the numbers, but no one thus far has disputed the problem. That is how Brian, Lee, Christian and Jim, under the leadership of Dave Black, came to be at the Inn at Kulaniapia in August, the second group of a still developing program for vets scarred by war. Airfare, lodging, meals and activities are provided. This is no free lunch. Slaying the dragons of memory takes as much grit as the military service that created them — and maybe more.