Expectations, unmet and otherwise

I have never been good with expectations, and least of all with disappointment, which is, understandably, my least favorite emotion.

Any occasion rife with expectations, also comes with the lurking fear of disappointment, which I have never quite been able to dispel even in the lowest-stake situations.

I met two very lovely people, on their first visit to Guam in 40 years, in the course of writing a story for my respectable, more importantly paid, job as a local news reporter.

I was happy to write the story, and looked forward to meeting them when they arrived with their now-grown son. 

They had lived on Guam for three years in the late 1960s and early 70s, and returned with unvarnished memories of the island's friendliness, lushness, squawking birds, fiestas, rustic living, power outages and Pacific beaches. Some of these things remain, for better or worse. Others are, to my knowledge, entirely extinct.

Thus I planned a hike for our first meeting was to my favorite, as of yet, natural place on Guam.

The northern jungled region of Pagat, which will perhaps host a military firing range sometime in the not-too-distant future, has always stuck with me as one of Guam's little exceptions.


There you can see the remnants of another now-extinct way of living through the crumbled pieces of pottery and ancient grinding stones littering the site of a former Chamorro village.

You can feel the cool air of a cave that once must have inspired both awe and dread in its dark recesses, and view clifflines almost completely unmarred by housing developments or hotels.

The hike incidentally required a harrowing descent down slippery vertical rocks, and an even more harrowing ascent up those still slippery vertical rocks, pretty much in the middle of the hottest part of the day.


When we arrived at the cave, it turned out to be a little too dark, and a little too slippery for the enthusiastic couple to explore.

Their now-grown son, who spent only days on the island following his birth, came with us inside to the interior of the cave, which had been mocked up with enough candles to conjure images of the Phantom of the Opera, albeit it with a dozen cannon-balling members of our fine armed forces making the most of the chest-high pool.

When the military kids finished disturbing the otherwise placid waters, and headed elsewhere to pursue amusements more likely to kill them, the cave seemed to widen above us like a vaulted cathedral, and you could hear, as always, the soft lapping of the tide as it rushed in and out.

The village, which we arrived at after several unsuccessful detours, was also nice -- lots of grinding stones and latte stones and rocks that should not have been there.

The view of the ocean and surrounding green cliffs gave one the feeling of isolation and perhaps wonder, although the military kids now cannon balling into the swirling surf below did, once again, dampen the impulse to be reverent.

Following much bottled water and some mushed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches eaten on the cliffface, there was the thorny question of how to get back up the now seemingly unconquerable hillside.

This task was, to say the least, a bit tricky, and I felt, as I watched them struggle to the top, a deep sense of responsibility, and worry, that perhaps I had just contributed further disappointment to a trip perhaps already fraught with the weight of high expectations.

I think I nearly killed them.


All things considered, may have been perhaps not the greatest way to reintroduce them to the island.

But I launched the initiative only partly because of bad planning

I felt an insecurity and nervousness on their behalf, returning to a place they once called Camelot, where I am as much familiar with the strip mall (singular) of Tamuning, and occasionally filthy beaches as I am of the magical places still left.

I have never seen Guam before the hot paved and pot-holed roads, the traffic jams and the terrible, tacky tourist shops -- but I like to imagine that there are still places here that capture their description of a place undiscovered, and a world left out of the worst parts of the disappointing certainty of today's world.



And after the hike, when everyone was still alive, we had a lovely dinner at a spot where they once ate regularly.

When they ate there, the place looked over a dark night sky unmarred by the exactness of illumination.

Now the place is in an apartment complex converted from a hotel, adjacent to what I assume is a dive night spot, overlooking a horizon speckled with lights as far as the eye can see.

For them, it was perhaps an adjustment.

But over dinner we talked about the Guam they remembered. And I looked out the window and saw back to those quieter, darker days, to a place I have never been.