Clancy Greff, AKA the notorious Captain Zodiac, was reciting his own poetry when I caught up to him on the trail into Hanakapi'ai Valley.

"I am longed to be a captain,

with the breeze in my pocket

and the stars in my hand!"

was in no mood for poetry. I was just trying to stay upright as I staggered under my load of camping and camera equipment. There are many ways to see the Na Pali coast, but nothing can compare to actually immersing yourself in the rainforest, even if it is just about the most physically demanding walking there is.

Na Pali simply means, The Cliffs: 20 miles of sheer volcanic buttresses pounded by the Pacific Ocean; of hanging valleys clogged with waterfalls and jungle. There are no roads through the Na Pali. An ancient footpath, made by the Hawaiians who lived here, covers half the coast; the rest is only accessible by boat. The Sierra Club rates the 11-mile walk from Ke'e Beach to Kalalau Valley a nine on a difficulty scale that only goes up to ten.

It makes you appreciate the place all the more. Stopping by a stream to catch your breath, you're struck by the quiet vitality of this benign jungle. It also makes you appreciate man's impact on such a delicate ecology. For although the Na Pali has known human habitation for more than 700 years, modern tourism threatens changes the jungle cannot simply grow over. No observed system is unaffected by the observer.

Settled as early as 1200 A.D., as many as 6,000 Hawaiians once lived in the valleys of the Na Pali. Now there were only the legends. Near the beginning of the trail, for instance, is the ancient temple, Kaulu Paoa, where the goddess Pele danced the hula and fell in love with the high chief Lohiau.

Greff himself is one of those legends. As a teenage surfer fresh from California, Greff's love of this wilderness led him to buy an inflatable dingy to explore it's inaccessible coast. The rest of the story is one of Na Pali's legends. He learned the Na Pali's history and earned the locals' trust by using his boats to rescue injured hikers and remove trash from campsites. 18 years later, Greff's company is one of the largest employers on Kauai's north shore and gives zodiac tours of the coast to 20,000 people a year.

Settled as early as 1200 A.D., as many as 6,000 Hawaiians once lived in the valleys of the Na Pali. Now there were only the legends. Near the beginning of the trail, for instance, is the ancient temple, Kaulu Paoa, where the goddess Pele danced the hula and fell in love with the high chief Lohiau.]

The wind was still blowing from the north. Whitecaps punctuated the sea from the cliffs to the horizon. "This will blow itself out in another day or two," Greff said. His boats ply these waters like a pirate fleet, but he hadn't been able to send them out in days. We continued down into the valley.

Hanakapi'ai means Valley of the Weavers, named for the master weavers who once lived there, making baskets, mats, sails and other items from pandanus. In the 1920s there was a coffee mill there, and wild coffee trees still grow throughout the valley. By the 1930s however, the mill was just a front for an operation distilling liquor from the roots of the ti plant.

I'd been up the valley on a previous hike. Guavas and mangoes grow everywhere, as the trail gets thinner and the woods get thicker, winding across the slippery valley floor and along the canyon walls, threading under fallen trees and over tangled root systems. At the top of Hanakapi'ai Valley is a waterfall. Four hundred feet tall, it drops in a straight white line to a blue-green pool in the middle of a massive amphitheater.

Greff and I rested on the beach. The water looked inviting except for the warnings posted everywhere about the dangers of tidal waves, a killer riptide and flash floods from the mountain. I whipped up some of my favorite trail snack, instant cous cous. Clancy sneered at it and unwrapped a soggy hot dog. "We'll let the cats decide," he said, leaving a bit of each for the feral cats left years ago by squatters.

At five we said goodbye, and went over plans for my rescue the day after tomorrow, when I would rendezvous at the far end of the trail with one of Captain Zodiac's regularly scheduled tours. Because it was winter, boats were not permitted to land on Kalalau Beach. I'd have to waterproof my gear and swim out past the breakers.

"It's easy," he assured me. "The riptide sucks you right out to sea."

Clancy started back towards the car. I started the 1000-foot climb out of the valley. I had four miles to Hanakoa, where I would spend the night. The two miles from Ke'e to Hanakapi'ai is a popular day hike, and we'd seen lots of people. Now I was alone.

Afternoon light splashed against the hills when the sun dropped beneath the clouds. Near the summit of the pass, I started seeing strange bundles of rock and leaf -- traditional Hawaiian offerings to the gods, as adapted by superstitious hikers. I made my own lava and ti leaf sandwich and jammed in under a boulder. It couldn't hurt.

This is the highest point on the whole trail. It crosses the pali only a few yards from the edge of a sheer cliff 980 feet high, with an outcrop of rock standing guard on the outside. Below me was Ho'olulu Bay, named for it's calm waters and the refuge it provided weary paddlers fighting against the current. Ho'olulu Valley, thick with vegetation, was below me on the left. From where I sat, Hawaiian sentries kept lookout, sounding alarms with a blast of their conch shells.

"The Hawaiians loved these valleys, because they were such a warlike people." Bobo Bollin of Jungle Bob's in Hanalei had told me, "These valleys were very easy to defend." Inaccessible from both top and bottom by unclimable cliffs, all they had to defend was the narrow trail.

Descending through Ho'olulu Valley was the toughest hiking of the trail, which had been washed out and required some climbing. I was in the next valley, Waiahuakua, which means Sacred Pools of the Gods, when the sunset shot golden light deep into the forest. There are terraces at the back of this valley, but by the time I might have seen them, it was dark and I was traveling by flashlight.

The trail wound into the forest, deep in the valley. Moonlight fell through the leaves; waterfalls were glowing in the light. Twilight is when the Menehune, Kauai's mythical little people, come out.

And something was indeed moving underfoot. Just before I stepped on it, a toad leaped away. Startled, I jumped a little myself, twisting an ankle on landing. Na Pali's toads are so big that four of them in the brush sound like a migrating moose.

I camped with four others I met on the trail. Except for two of the three women, all of us were traveling alone and glad for the company. Not long after I set my pack down it began to rain very hard. I offered to share my two-man tent with as many people as would fit. All three women climbed in. Only Phil Pucel, an engineer from Laramie, Wyoming was left to sleep in a hammock over the tent. The rain pounded on the tent all night. (Sure, we've all had these fantasies, but, let me tell you, all I fantasized about from then on was getting the tent to myself.)

It was still raining next morning when we were ready to move on. Hanakoa means Valley of the Warriors. I was anything but. The contents of my pack, now soaked, seemed impossibly heavy. Hanakoa's primary wildlife seemed to be mosquitoes. Exhausted and sore, I was no longer human. I was The Sniveling Zombie of the Kalalau Trail.

Crossing Hanakoa stream by the rope strung near the ruins of an old cabin, I climbed out of the valley. Beyond this point, you round the mountain range that bisects Kauai, separating the wet and dry sides of the island. Instead of tropical rainforest, the terrain is much more arid. The valleys are shallower walking was easier.

The rain stopped but the wind still blew out of the north. If it kept up, Clancy's boats wouldn't get out and I'd have to hike back out. A more immediate problem, however, was traversing the cliffs without becoming The Flying Backpacker as I made my way along narrow trail.

In the last few valleys, goats fled before me. The last part of the trail slithers down a bare hill of red rock and then I was finally at the Kalalau Valley.

More than 3,000 Hawaiians once lived in Kalalau, growing taro, sweet potato and other crops in the valley and fishing off the beach. All but a few had moved out by 1920. The Robinson Family, who own the nearby island of Niihau, bought the land in the 1890s and kept cattle there through the 1930s. In 1975, the state bought it, and all the land as far around as Ke'e Beach. The valleys had been overgrazed and had to be seeded by air with lantana, guava and Java plum. Now it was jungle again.

I camped on the beach, on a low rise beside a waterfall. I joined Pucel and several other campers for dinner. We pooled our resources and had quite a feast. That night the moon was almost full, and left shadows of the pali across the sand.

It seemed calm enough in the morning, so I broke camp and lashed everything to my air mattress as a sorry but serviceable raft. Unfortunately, the boat never came. I spent the whole day on the beach thinking up reasons why I should wait before walking out, until finally it was too late to go.

I met George Niitani, who first hiked the Kalalau Trail as a boy scout, and has been caretaker of the Na Pali for 30 years. Now district park superintendent, he started with the Department of Land and Natural Resources when he was just out of college and Hawaii had just gained statehood. He has been one of the most outspoken defenders of the area.

"I'm a conservationist by heart and by profession," he explained. "I don't like unnecessary impact on the environment." A 1970 management plan set limits on hunting, camping, flights and boats. Still, in the summer, Kalalau gets up to 80 campers a day. Every four years, Niitani conducts a two-week survey by archaeologists, wildlife biologists, aquatic biologists, and botanists.

"I think we have it pretty much under control" he said. "In winter the north current comes in with huge winds, surf and rain and just cleans out the whole area, so by spring we're ready to go again."

Niitani, who spends at least a week a month camping in the valley, also told me more of the history and legends about the Na Pali. "In Hawaii, most of the valleys have names and the names have meanings," he explained. Kalalau, for instance, means Straying Valley. Legend has it that two beautiful girls were once seen swimming on the beach, but when they were followed, they strayed into the brush and disappeared. My kind of legend.

The most famous legends on the Na Pali coast concern the people who took refuge there from the outside world -- for one reason or other. Like the Hermit of Kalalau, a learned Fijian physician named Bernard Wheatley, who grew disgusted with "civilized" people and came to live alone in a sea cave in the beach at Kalalau in the 1950s and 60s, living off the land.

Another legend had been born back in the 1930s, when the sheriff on Kauai picked up a leper named Ko'olau to send to the colony on Molokai. When Ko'olau was put on the boat without his wife and little boy, he jumped ship made his way to Kalalau with his family. The sheriff and the national guard went in to get him, but Ko'olau had chosen a spot easy to defend. He shot the sheriff and kept the troops at bay. They were never able to get him out. Ko'olau and his family lived in the valley until he died of his disease.

Helicopters buzzed in and out of the valley constantly. On one hand I was annoyed, on the other I was envious. An exciting enough experience in its own right, helicopters are, like the boats, a way to see areas like this if you don't have the time or the stamina. A 1970 management plan prohibited private helicopters from landing in the park, restricted boat landings, and set limits on camping and hunting.

I'd only spent a few days in the Na Pali, and already I was starting to understand why Niitani is so protective of these valleys. Hawaii's landscapes are as bountiful as they are beautiful, but we casual visitors have to learn to live as much in harmony with the land as the ancient Hawaiians did.

Late in the afternoon, Phil Pucel came back from his exploration of the valley above us. It had taken him about six hours. "It was pretty pretty and pretty wet," was all he said. I sat on the beach, sheltered from a light rain by a shallow cave, and watched the sun drop from drifting clouds into a restless sea.

It rained all evening. There was a bonfire party in one of the sea caves. It was BYOF (bring your own firewood). I was too lazy to collect driftwood, so I climbed into my tent and went to sleep.

Next morning I was ready for the trail again, even looking forward to it. The pali were stacked in front of me like warriors waiting for my challenge. I finished packing, flipped my pack onto my back and said my goodbyes.

That's when I saw the boat, with its telltale skull and crossbones. Everybody came down to the beach to see me off. I think I finally got to be a Na Pali legend myself: The Man Who Floated Away on Garbage Bags.

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