Haleakala travel planner: galleries, restaurants, lodging, and more

Sunrise seen from the deck of Star Lookout, a small Upcountry bungalow high on the slopes of Haleakala, is an event to be leisurely savored. This morning it starts around 6 with an ever lightening veil of cloudy gray gradually tinted with shades of rose and fuchsia until the misty sky becomes an infusion of incandescent pinks. The grassy slopes (I have never seen them not green) slowly gain shape, revealing the dripping outlines of outcroppings, trees, and stone fences.

An hour passes and the sun is still hidden behind Haleakala (the volcano's name is Hawaiian for House of the Sun), but its light is on the move. First it touches the distant tops of the West Maui Mountains, then it gradually works down to the emerald fields of sugar cane that define the blue, blue waters of Maalaea Bay. As the angled rays creep up the last few hundred yards below my deck, illuminating individual blades of grass and bloodred flowers, the dawn chorus of birdsong begins to fade.

Now I understand why Betty Hay Freeland and a surprising number of Maui's most successful artists choose to live and work Upcountry.

Many visitors rushing to explore the colorfully stark, volcanic namesake of Haleakala National Park simply miss this country. From my cottage, I can watch the sunrise in comfort and still be in the park in time for morning bird-watching on the ½-mile loop through Hosmer Grove. There would even still be plenty of time to drive to the 10,023-foot-high summit for views or a more difficult hike into the stunningly desolate crater on the aptly named Sliding Sands Trail.

Haleakala is on my agenda, but today I'm meeting Freeland, a landscape artist whose work I've admired, to learn more about the burgeoning Upcountry arts scene. After meeting for lunch in Makawao, we visit a few of the galleries that have opened in recent years along Baldwin Avenue.

Viewpoints Gallery is a local cooperative with a little bit of everything from paintings to bronzes. Hot Island Glass makes whimsical jellyfish art and other hand-blown glass items. David Warren Gallery claims to be the town's oldest; Gallery Maui is one of the cutest.

But the center of Upcountry's artistic life isn't in town at all: It is at the Hui No'eau Visual Arts Center about a mile down Baldwin Avenue. Set back on the shady grounds of an old estate, the main gallery of the complex is in a 1917 stucco mansion set in a serene garden. As we walk the grounds, a welcoming breeze rustling leaves, Freeland acknowledges that Maui's artistic life is changing. The island's art scene is becoming world-famous. The most successful artists show their work mainly in big galleries in Lahaina and Wailea. But much wonderful, lesser-known work is shown only in smaller galleries Upcountry.

Freeland seems more concerned about where she works than what she sells. "It's still quiet up here," she says, pausing to admire the light on a line of trees, "and there is an endless supply of inspiration."