Athlete and Adventurer Tutu Lorna Just Keeps Moving!
By Sara Stover
Lorna Larsen-Jeyte has always been on the move. The lifelong swimmer and 81-year-old adventurer does not, however, workout for the sake of working out. “It is about being outside and in nature,” she says of the active lifestyle that growing up in Hawai‘i lends itself to. “When you get the blood flowing, it does keep your brain and body healthy. That’s an added bonus.”
As a child, Lorna lived in Keaukaha. On the weekends, she would often join her father on hikes in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. “And I was always swimming,” recalls Lorna, who eventually moved to O‘ahu, where she was on the synchronized swim team at Punahou School. “I swam all the way through high school.” Today, Lorna still enjoys swimming in the ocean when she’s not managing her vacation rentals, the Volcano Heritage Cottages.
Hiking to New Heights
Years before she and husband Albert Jeyte owned the Kīlauea Lodge or the Volcano Heritage Cottages, Lorna was a teacher at O‘ahu’s WR Farrington High School and a school advisor for the Sierra Club. As an advisor, Lorna was responsible for taking a group of teens on hikes around the island.
“The second hike was on a Ko‘olau mountain trail,” Lorna says, referring to a challenging ridge trail that requires guide ropes for hiking eroded sections. Her fear of heights almost prevented her from attempting the hike at all.
“When we got to the ridge, I told the kids I couldn’t do it. They insisted that I could!” Lorna exclaims. Tied together, she and her young hikers conquered Ko‘olau. After that, the group traversed a new trail every weekend, including the Pu‘u Ohia (Mount Tantalus) trail.
For Lorna, the most rewarding aspect of those hikes was helping teenagers understand the concepts of mālama ‘āina and mālama i kou kino, caring for the land and caring for their own health, in the context of nature.
“Communing with nature is spiritual and it happens to be good for your mental and physical health, too,” she asserts. “The more you spend time in nature, the more you love nature and want to care for it. You want to do something about ROD [Rapid ‘Ōhia Death] and other issues!”
Lorna recalls the Sierra Club hikes fondly. One of her favorites, however, is a multi-day hike she participated in through Hawai‘i Bound. The hike took Lorna from Pololū Valley to the Honokane Nui Lookout via the ‘Āwini Trail. Known for its diversity, the trail is technical on a good day. Lorna has experienced it during downpours, when mud prevailed and the river levels rose.
“It’s still my favorite hike on Hawai‘i Island. One of the best parts is collecting pepeiao, an edible Hawaiian mushroom,” she points out.
Lorna has also spent considerable time among the cinder and silverswords of Maui’s Haleakalā Crater Trail. Together with Albert, she has hiked all 11.2 miles of the scenic, difficult trail, on several occasions. “We’ve hiked through the crater to the cabins carrying a 75-pound pack and a tent. Albert and I did that hike regularly until we owned the Kīlauea Lodge.” Unable and unwilling to shake the hiking bug, Lorna has also explored trails in California and in Oregon, where her son now lives.
Finding Self-Confidence on the Field
While watching her son’s soccer game in 1978, Lorna remarked to another soccer mom that she wished she could play soccer too.
“Buy some shoes and show up at Kapi‘olani on Sunday!” was the reply she received. Undaunted by the fact that she had never played and was nearly 40 years old, Lorna and her new shoes showed up a few days later for the first of many games with the women’s soccer league. She went on to play soccer competitively for the next eight years.
“Here’s this bunch of teachers that just love to play soccer who actually climbed from third to first division!” she says, beaming. Lorna herself was on a roll, and it wasn’t long before she began playing fullback on a coed team, a position she would hold until she moved back to Hawai‘i Island. “Soccer gave me a lot of self-confidence! Some injuries too,” she chuckles. It proved to be all the confidence she needed to make a career change at age 46.
Adventures off the Beaten Path
In 1986, while honeymooning in Volcano, Lorna and Albert purchased a property that would soon become the Kīlauea Lodge.
“Albert worked for Magnum PI and I had my teaching career. We left it all behind to open an inn and restaurant,” says Lorna. “Everyone back on O‘ahu wondered if we were having a midlife crisis!”
The venture was a far cry from a crisis. Soon, the refurbished Kīlauea Lodge began welcoming visitors from around the globe. Although running the resort kept them busy, Lorna and Albert still found time for adventures off the beaten path. In 2014, they traveled to Bhutan with a few friends to celebrate Albert’s 75th birthday with a hike up the Tiger’s Nest Trail, past a waterfall, and other pilgrims who chose to travel by horseback.
The Bhutanese believe that pilgrims who make this journey will acquire excellent karma if their own feet take them to the Paro Taksang Monastery perched 10,232 feet up in the mountains. A wide dirt trail, Tiger’s Nest takes each pilgrim up 1,700 feet, and ends with a trek down and back up a stone staircase before reaching the monastery. “Albert got to the top first. That should add about 10 years to his life!” declares Lorna.
A Pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago
A few years after the Tiger’s Nest hike, Lorna was on the phone with her best friend, Janet Coney, affectionately known as Puchi. As they occasionally did, the two talked story while sipping wine.
“Puchi, there’s something I really want to do before I’m too old,” Lorna confided before detailing her dream of hiking El Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of Saint James. The hike is a network of pilgrimages that leads to Spain’s Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which houses the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great.
In 2017, at 77, Lorna and Puchi flew to Madrid to make the famed pilgrimage. “I trained by walking up to six miles a day on my treadmill,” Lorna reveals. “I had to be in good shape because we’d decided to take the more interesting route instead of the gentle, coastal route.” They stayed at country inns at night, and had maps to follow every day.
“We still got lost, but that made it more interesting!” Lorna affirms. Fueled by Padrón peppers and white wine, Lorna and Puchi hiked 13 to 14 miles per day with walking sticks and a pack. “We were scared. We wondered what would happen if we ran out of steam!” It was a reasonable concern, as Lorna’s hip went out after eight days on the Camino. “We were nowhere near civilization and I couldn’t even walk!” recounts Lorna. Fortunately, she and Puchi encountered an Australian hiker who was able to identify the problem. “My pack was all wrong. He took the time to show me how to fix it and with a few adjustments I was able to keep going!”
The pair averaged two miles per hour, stopping to have their Pilgrim’s Card stamped at least once a day. On the last day, Puchi and Lorna faced a 16-mile journey to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. “We hiked over mountains in the pouring rain and through mud that was unreal. Then, there it was—Santiago de Compostela!”
As is tradition, Lorna and Puchi celebrated their journey by visiting the Pilgrim’s office to receive the official Compostela (certification of the pilgrimage completion) before attending mass with at least 1,000 others.
Bonding with Nature
2017 was also the year that Lorna joined a hula hālau. Although she had done hula her whole life, joining the Ke ‘Olu Makani O Mauna Loa Hālau connected her to a deeper side of the practice. Training under the tutelage of Kumu Hula Meleana Manuel, Lorna had the honor of dancing in the Merrie Monarch Ho‘olaule‘a in 2019.
Sensing a connection to nature, the dancers express this bond with the wind, waves, and land in each step of hula. It is the same bond Lorna forged through hiking, conveyed instead through the movements of hula.
“Growing up here made me want to learn about the culture. But practicing hula made me want to learn the ‘ōlelo,” says Lorna, who looks forward to returning to hula when the pandemic is behind us. “Hula taught me the deeper meaning of Hawaiian words. There are so many different words just for rain, all in the dance!”
Lorna is also looking forward to returning to the Camino de Santiago. “I’ve met courageous people on these hikes and I want to travel El Camino again, but this time I’ll take the route through Portugal,” Lorna proclaims. “Because if you don’t keep moving, you might not move at all. I say, just keep moving!
There’s no denying that exercise and time spent in nature are key to longevity, and Lorna is living proof. ❖
All photos courtesy of Lorna Larsen-Jeyte
