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weight of their top-heavy leaves.
    “That’s the cane?” I couldn’t help but be excited. I’d never seen sugarcane before my drive to the resort and was intrigued to examine it up close.
    “Yep.” She pulled the car over to the side of the two-lane road and yanked the parking break. “These are the young plants on the left. They’re only a year old and will be dug up and replanted further apart once the older cane is harvested. It takes two years for cane to fully mature.”
    To the left stood massive stalks, thick, waxy, and almost ten feet tall. The lower parts of the cane were bare, but the top few feet were topped with broad, brown leaves that drooped in the sun. Kai had been right. These things had grown so close together that there wouldn’t be any way to walk between the rows. I’d always thought cornfields were tough to walk through, but this would be impossible.
    “They need to step up their water routine,” I commented. “Or are you all having a drought?”
    She shot me a wry glance and got out of the car. “There’s the rub. It takes two-thousand gallons of water to produce one pound of sugarcane. They’re very thirsty plants. And they’re planted in central Maui where rain is rare.”
    I hopped out of the car and joined her on the side of the road. “Well, that was a bonehead move on someone’s part. How the heck haven’t they gone out of business?”
    “Because there’s seventy-four miles of aqueduct running from the rainforests in East Maui to these fields as irrigation.” She shot a disgusted look at the plants. “Let’s just say someone with more arrogance than sense made a devil’s deal long ago, and now a huge percentage of the island’s water goes to supporting these plants.”
    I touched one of the canes, feeling the concentration of sugar through the waxy, fibrous exterior. Every plant had a right to live, but not in a forced environment such as this. And certainly not at the expense of other ecosystems. I’d seen firsthand what the control and redirection of natural water sources had done to the land in Louisiana. This was another example. These situations tore at my sense of ethics and divided my loyalties. So many humans, and we needed to be able to feed them all, but there had to be a better way.
    Kai watched my face. “Ninety percent of our natural streams are stagnant due to the redirection of water. And rainfall is an issue. We have dry periods followed by heavy flooding. Every year, the impact of this irrigation line becomes harder and harder to bear.” It was as if she could read my thoughts.
    I winced. Dry periods followed by heavy flooding were not something to lightly brush off. Soil erosion on a volcanic rock island was a serious problem. It’s not like they had much topsoil to lose. But it wasn’t my responsibility to solve the world’s environmental problems. The citizens of this island needed to take a stand and use the power of their votes if they wanted things to change. Although it broke my heart to see portions of this beautiful world fall to man’s folly, Mother Nature was far more powerful than any of us. History had shown she would rebound, although we might not be here to see it.
    We. The humans. Of which I kept forgetting, I wasn’t one.
    “Where were they burning earlier today?” It was my reason for coming out here. Might as well satisfy my curiosity and go back to the resort. This whole thing was beginning to depress me beyond words.
    Kai wrinkled her nose. “They burn in the morning, about forty acres each day. I’m not sure which section they were doing this morning, but I can show you a field that’s been scorched.”
    We got back into the car, and she drove for a bit, slowing as she went around a corner. The whole area smelled like burned donuts. Naked canes stood, some tall, others bent to the ground, all completely devoid of leaves.
    “They burn it before harvest? I thought they were setting fire to the post-harvest debris in