Bracchium

The Banyan Tree — Pipiwai Trail, Road to Hana, Maui

Maui is one of our favorite places. If you've been, you know just how beautiful it is. And if you haven't, chances are good that you want to go. Among the many things to experience is the famous Road to Hana</a>. Past Hana, at mile marker 42, you can hike the Pīpīwai Trail,</a> a beautiful trail in Haleakala National Park, where you will find Makahiku Falls, a very zen bamboo forest, 400-foot tall Waimoku Falls, and this stunning banyan tree.

Although the trail receives half a million visitors per year, it is surprisingly easy to find one's self alone for more than a few minutes, especially if you get an early start. So it was with this banyan tree and me.

Related Posts

For the journey that leads here: the Road to Hana itself, and what it started.

From a very different kind of Maui morning: a pre-dawn shoot at the Olivine Pools on Maui's north shore.

Also from the Hana coast, a very different kind of image: a Hana fisherman casting from the black lava coast at sunset.

Fine Art Maui Photography Print

This piece is named Bracchium, from the Latin origin of our modern word "embrace."

Provenance: Nikon D850 | Zeiss Milvus 15mm

A large tree with many branches
EnlargeBuyLow-res fileSimilar images
A large tree with many branches

The banyan tree on the first mile of the Pipiwai Trail is one of Maui's largest — a single organism whose aerial roots have descended and re-rooted across a sixty-foot spread, creating the appearance of a grove where there is in fact only one tree. Greg titled this image "Bracchium," the Latin for embrace, a name that describes both the tree's architecture and what it does to the light passing through it. The camera was positioned before the trail opened, in the quiet of first light before the daily convoy of rental cars arrives on the Road to Hana — the wide-angle lens chosen for the extreme spread the scene requires. Aerial roots hang at every height; the photograph required choosing which level of the canopy to prioritize.

Comments