A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

I have returned from another part of the forest, the Hawaiian island, Kauai. We stayed five miles west of the coastal village of Honalei. 

Honalee was where “Puff the Magic Dragon” of the 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary hit song frolicked. For many years I thought it was a mythic place. When I discovered it was real, I had long wanted to visit. I wanted to meet Puff. I assumed he would be alive and well in Honalei’s marketing, as Anne of Green Gables is for Prince Edward Island, or the Monster at Loch Ness. 

I found the village charming, but no sign of Puff. I dug deeper. Peter Yarrow was only nineteen when he wrote “Puff,” based on a poem by his friend Lenny Lifton. While there are suspected drug references in the song, Yarrow maintains that at the time he had no drug experiences to convey, and that the song was about the passing of childhood. He also had no idea that Honalee was a real place, regardless of spelling. He used it only because it sounded right and rhymed with “sea.” 

When Yarrow discovered, to his amazement, there was a real Honalei, he visited and found Puff! The northern shore of Honalei Bay is a small mountain range that rises from the sea and protects the village from storms. It looks like a dragon’s head. The head tapers into a series of ridges, like a dragon’s back. It ends with an evergreen copse, like a dragon’s spiked tail. 

I took this photo through the mist and returned on a sunny day for a better view. On a sunny day, the mountains are clearer, but Puff disappears. He is more easily seen in the mist, as the song describes. 

Yarrow and Lifton thought they had imagined Puff and Honalei. It appears the mythic beast merely used them as a way of revealing himself. Puff the Magic Dragon for me was no longer a story only about losing the magic of youth. It was now also a story about its recovery.