Hawaii on Hoof : Times are changing, but a visitor can still steal a peek at a unique tropical equestrian culture on the upcountry ranches of Maui and the Big Island, where paniolos, or Hawaiian cowboys, hang on to tradition.

KAMUELA, Hawaii —  These were already awkward times for island cowboys. Ranchlands were dwindling. Vegetarianism was ascendant. Even on the islands’ largest ranch, only three or four dozen men were needed to keep the cattle where they should be. Watching those leather-skinned men squint and glide on horseback across green hills of premium real estate, a stranger would have to wonder: How long can this go on?

Then last November, 160 years after the first seasoned cowboys arrived on the islands, an era closed.

Richard Smart, owner of the Big Island’s Parker Ranch, died of cancer at 79, and the 225,000-acre ranch--largest on the islands and one of the largest in the country--fell from his family’s control for the first time.

A final blow to the beloved paniolo ?

Not quite. Their numbers are small, their futures are uncertain and their circumstances are occasionally strange, but a visitor can still find cowboys at work on Parker Ranch and elsewhere around these islands. On a visit to the Big Island and Maui last spring, I nosed around two old and well-known cowboy communities and looked for the people behind the romanticized paniolo image that Hawaii’s marketers have been painting for so many years. I found a circle of strong, friendly men who have more trouble imagining the islands without cowboys, I suspect, than the rest of us do. Meeting them, or merely watching them at work, is a peek at an often-overshadowed aspect of Hawaii’s hybrid character.

The town of Kamuela, also known as Waimea, sits 2,500 feet above sea level on the low slopes of dormant, 13,796-foot Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawaii. Trade winds howl through the trees in the evening and chase clouds so rapidly from horizon to horizon that the sky looks like a large experiment in time-lapse photography. Cattle and horses lounge on green expanses, cloaked in early morning mists.

Highway 19 is the main drag through town. There’s a highly regarded restaurant--Merriman’s--that specializes in contemporary island cuisine and, more predictably, there are a few steakhouses. Drama and musical performances are staged at the Kahilu Theatre. Locals and ranch hands can often be found hanging out at the Kamuela Deli during the week or Cattleman’s Steakhouse on weekends. It’s not particularly costly to hang out with them: At the Parker Ranch Lodge, you can get a kitchenette for $78 a night; for a little more, there’s the Waimea Gardens Cottage bed and breakfast, where I stayed, just outside of town.

Just a few steps down the street from the Waimea Gardens Cottage--and easily visible from Hawaii 19--is the home of Albert K. and Harriet M. Solomon, who have been running a museum of random old stuff there since the late 1950s. The collection, which 86-year-old Albert Solomon told me he was hoping to sell for $7.5 million, runs from old wooden shark-fishing hooks to a World War I first aid kit. There are several spectacular six-foot-tall Chinese vases, a few 19th-Century hula skirts, a sculpture of the Spanish bullfighter Manolete, a lei of peacock feathers. Admission is $5, and may well lead to a long conversation with Solomon, a retired county employee whose interests range from the Holy Land to estate planning.

The conversation is more sparing at the Mauna Kea Stables, perhaps because there’s so much scenery to preoccupy you. For $35 each, manager Frank Loney took Kathleen Hunt, a graduate student from Massachusetts, and me out for an hour’s ride across Parker Ranch pastures. With a ranch dog nipping at our heels, we inspected old stone corrals. We paused to shoot the breeze with Lester Buckley, a droopy-moustached Texan who was imported to supervise the breaking pens. We cantered over low hills. (Actually, I and my horse mostly walked; Kathleen Hunt and her horse cantered and galloped fiercely.) We didn’t see the snow atop Mauna Kea, although some days you can. But we didn’t see any other tourists, either.

The nearest beach is 15 miles away, which keeps the town at arm’s length from major tourism. (To the southwest is the sunny, resort-studded Kona Coast; to the southeast, Hilo, the island’s largest city.) Kamuela remains essentially a company town, and the Parker Ranch, which accommodates 50,000 cattle in its green fields, is the company in question.

To hear more about that, I corralled veteran paniolo Walter Stevens. Really corralled him. While Stevens sat on horseback, gently leading a horse in tight circles, I sat on the corral fence and heard some brief history.

Stevens is 62, and has worked on the ranch since he finished ninth grade, around 1946. His father drove a tractor for the ranch. When he started dating his wife, he was working in the breaking pens, and he used to look up toward Mauna Kea from there to see the white roof of her family’s house. Now the two of them live in a house on the ranch that comes with the job.

He is one of about 40 cowboys on the ranch, and their schedule is full. That morning, Stevens had been up before 5 to administer inoculations for pink eye and something called “black leg” to 185 Hereford calves. The animal beneath him now was not quite 5 years old, and was named Stonewall for his stubbornness.

“You see that stone wall?” asked Stevens, now pointing to a real stone wall a few yards away. “If I let him go, he’ll be gone in five minutes over that. He’s always running away when you need him.”

Stevens has a big choice coming up. He can retire this year or work three more years, until he’s 65. He hasn’t decided yet.

“If you like the work, you stick with it, and it’ll come out all right,” he said, squinting beneath a baseball cap. However, he conceded, “If you ride horses all this time, your body gets sore. Especially your back.”

For the moment, the ranch’s future seems more certain than Stevens’. Before he died, Richard Smart arranged to put control of the ranch in the hands of the Parker Ranch Foundation Trust, and directed that shares of income be passed along to two local private schools, two local hospitals and the Hawaii Community Foundation. The trust’s income-generating plans include a 1,000-unit residential project on 450 ranch acres, but managing trustee Warren Gunderson offers assurances that the ranch will remain a ranch.

“The cattle ranching business will continue on in perpetuity,” Gunderson told me one afternoon at the Parker Ranch Visitor Center and Museum. Without it, he said, “the community would no longer be the charming place it is to live in.”

Strolling through the Parker Ranch museum, one picks up the bare bones of Hawaii’s cattle ranching history. Like the broader history of these volcanoes that rose from the ocean floor, it’s basically the story of one non-native arrival after another.

The first cattle arrived in 1793 and 1794, delivered by British naval commander George Vancouver as gifts to King Kamehameha I. Another British captain, Richard J. Cleveland, arrived with the first horses in 1803, having traded for them in California and Cabo San Lucas. (Historians write that Kamehameha was not particularly impressed by the horses, and suggested that with their big appetites they might be more trouble than they were worth. But he learned to ride.)

For the next few decades, local settlers and adventurers improvised in managing the animals, apparently with no great success. And so, in the early 1830s, Hawaiian leaders recruited a trio of Mexican ranch hands to tame the island’s unruly cattle population. They were quickly nicknamed paniolos , a pidgin sort of word for a person speaking Spanish, and a massive business was built on the combination of their expertise and the wide open island spaces.

In “Aloha Cowboy,” a paniolo history published in 1988 by the University of Hawaii Press, authors Virginia Cowan-Smith and Bonnie Domrose Stone estimate that there are more than 400 cattle ranching operations, small and large, on the Hawaiian islands. (Apparently, none of the three original Mexican vaqueros settled on the islands, and paniolo culture these days includes lineage from all around the Pacific Rim.)

One of the entrepreneurs who profited most was John Palmer Parker, formerly a sailor from Newton, Mass. Parker founded Parker Ranch in 1847, having established himself in the community by marrying one of Kamehameha’s granddaughters. As his heirs took their turns at running the ranch, its fortunes and its acreage rose and fell over the following decades.

By the time the enterprise fell to Richard Smart, the great-great-great-grandson of John Palmer Parker, there was enough time, money and real estate for him to do virtually whatever he wanted. Thus did Smart come to spend more time singing show tunes on faraway stages than he spent in a saddle. Smart performed at the Pasadena Playhouse in the 1930s, and reached Broadway in the ‘40s, co-starring with Nanette Fabray in “Bloomer Girl,” among other shows. For years after that, he sang in cabarets around Europe, all the while maintaining homes in Honolulu and on the ranch.

But Smart wasn’t entirely an absentee rancher. He is credited with employing shrewd ranch managers and looking to the future. Ranch employees today speak of Dale Carnegie management courses, and since 1987, Smart’s home and art collection have been open to paying visitors. (A few years ago, Parker managers started offering ranch tours, which included working areas of the ranch, but decided that demand wasn’t high enough. The museum counts about 2,000 visitors a month.)

Walk through Puuopelu, Smart’s former residence, and you see how far from the farm Smart’s interests ranged. The walls are crowded with original European landscapes--the artists include Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Jean Dufy, Jean Batiste Camille Corot and Maurice Utrillo--and one bedroom (with a fine view of Hawaiian grassland out the window) is entirely given over to scenes from Venice. Next door, meanwhile, stands a construction of the modest New England saltbox home where the Parker empire began.

It’s hard to imagine a place with a greater built-in sense of dislocation: You’re on a Hawaiian island. Yet you’re standing in the middle of a cattle ranch. Yet you’re surrounded by early Impressionist canvases. At your elbow lies a cassette recording by the late ranch owner, bearing the ranch’s stylized steer’s head logo and an $8.95 price tag. On the tape, the ranch owner croons creditably in English, French and Italian, a baritone backed by swelling strings and the occasional accordion.

Thrill me with your kisses/Let me know what bliss is , Smart beseeches, sounding decidedly unlike any of the Cartwright family. He closes with “Arrivederci Roma.”

Then you step outside, and you’re back in the land of horseflies, cowpies and aloha.

Makawao, my guidebook said, is one of the islands’ oldest cowboy towns, set well away from beaches on the sloping central area of Maui known as “Upcountry Maui.” It’s also home to the most famous annual rodeo in the state. Every July 4, the Makawao parade and rodeo draw riders from all over the islands, and crowds as large as 8,000 fill the town’s Oskie Rice Rodeo Arena.

Sure enough, as I drove up toward town, the view was broad and full of green pastures and rural equipment. The still-working Ulupalakua Ranch and the Tedeschi Winery, I saw on my island map, lay just a few miles farther on. (To horseback ride, I could head back down the hill to Makena Stables, which arranges excursions on Ulupalakua Ranch property.)

But when I reached the center of downtown Makawao, I truly wondered for a moment if I’d made a wrong turn. The rustic wooden commercial strip along Baldwin Avenue was largely covered over in peach and aquamarine hues, and the first business I walked up to was Down to Earth Natural Foods, a New Age-flavored grocery with two words brightly painted on its front window:

“NO MEAT.”

Next to those words was a picture of a cartoon deer with big brown eyes, and a promotional pitch for the Great American Meat Out.

The rest of town seemed just as unranchy. Across the street at Casanova’s Restaurant and Deli, customers leaned on an outdoor counter, sampled muffins and cappuccino, and looked out on a frozen yogurt shop and a bulletin advertising Egyptian hair braiding, something called a “dreamtime group” and “upcountry psychotherapy.” Silk scarves and sequined bustiers dangled in storefront windows. Every few minutes, a pack of mounted riders would dash past: bicycle riders, buzzing down the 38-mile downhill path from the Haleakala volcano rim to the sea.

Under close inspection, however, some of the New Age trimmings fall away and Makawao does reveal its roots. Look carefully at those Baldwin Avenue storefronts and you find 50-some-year-old Komoda’s bakery and general store, the Makawao Steakhouse, Kitada’s Kau Kau Korner.

Kitada’s, tiny and cluttered, is where longtime locals gather for saimin and coffee, where a posted handbill announces an upcoming team-roping competition in Reno, Nev. The Kitada family has run things since 1946. When I sat down for a bowl of saimin (Hawaiian noodles) and disclosed my mission, the staff demanded that I interview Suteko Kitada, and, specifically, that I ask her age.

“I am sweet sixteen. Never been kissed,” Kitada announced with quiet dignity, as her 52-year-old daughter nudged her forward from behind the counter. Then Kitada disclosed that she was in fact 77, old enough to remember Makawao when the walls weren’t peach and aquamarine and the tourist business didn’t make the economy go ‘round.

“That lady, she’s an institution,” said Benjamin Joaquin, a retired fireman who was born and raised in town. “We used to come in here since we were kids.”

Then came various complaints from Joaquin, Kitada and company about Makawao’s long, steady slide into trendiness. But when I was done, they directed me to the rodeo grounds up the hill on Olinda Road, where I found actual horses, actual livestock and actual paniolos .

These were members of the Maui Roping Club, passing a typical weekend--mostly men, but also a handful of husband-and-wife roping teams. Though the crowds come only for the July 4 rodeo, the rodeo grounds are busy most Saturdays with practicing ropers and informal contests. The day of my visit, about a dozen onlookers sat on a bank of sun-warmed aluminum bleachers. A few volunteers worked the public address system, peering down from an upstairs perch. There were no entrance fees, neither to compete nor to watch.

“A lot of the country kids are turning to the city. The easy life,” lamented Joe Caires, owner of a small cattle ranch outside Makawao. “Not many people can find it in their heart to be a cowboy.”

Still, Caires said, he takes the long view, and expects that demand for beef will rise again.

“Wait,” he said, “until they start worrying about the chemicals in vegetables.”

Around the rodeo grounds, Caire’s confederates chatted in paddocks, then took turns thrashing with their animals on the soft dirt of the ring. A beefy man in a red shirt flung rope around the horns of a calf and jerked the beast to a halt. Another man did the “mugging”--leaping in to help hold the calf down while the roper tied the legs. Outside the ring, a pint-sized boy watched, then looped a tiny lasso around a pint-sized girl.

“It’s getting hard to keep a horse. They’re selling pastures off,” said Chubby Pridgen, a 31-year-old local who lounged beneath the sun in a white hat and black T-shirt.

It may be hard, but Pridgen seems to be bucking the trend, and if you’re looking for a reason to be hopeful about the adaptability and endurance of Hawaiian horse culture, he could be one. Five days a week, he works as a bellman at the Inter-Continental Hotel in the Wailea resort, but after years of saving, Pridgen now owns a modest home in Makawao and his first horse. Just recently, he was asked to mug for another roper, and he’s considering the request seriously.

“I like the rodeo scene,” he said. “I’d like to get into that.”

GUIDEBOOK

Cowboy Country

Getting there: Several airlines fly regularly to Hawaii, and inter-island flights are available daily. Contact airlines or a travel agent for details.

Where to stay:

On the Big Island, I stayed at Waimea Gardens Cottage, Highway 19, Kamuela, Hawaii 96743, tel. (800) 262-9912 or (808) 885-4550. A bed and breakfast operation, with two units (at $100 and $105 per night for two), antique furnishings and greenery all around. Proprietor Barbara Campbell also acts as an information and booking center for several upscale B&Bs; around the islands. Also in Kamuela, there’s the Parker Ranch Lodge, P.O. Box 458, Kamuela, Hawaii 96743, tel. (808) 885-4100 or fax (808) 885-6711. Central location, nothing fancy. Double rooms: $68-$85.

On Maui, I stayed in Wailea, a luxurious sand- and-sea resort area that includes six hotels. My room at the Stouffer Wailea Beach Resort (3550 Wailea Alanui Drive, Maui, Hawaii 96753, tel. 800-992-4532 or 808-879-4900) ran $199 nightly, with a buffet breakfast and rental car thrown in.

Where to eat:

On Hawaii: Merriman’s Restaurant (Opelo Plaza, Highway 19, Kamuela, tel. 808-885-6822). Innovative treatment of island ingredients (local lamb in local herbs). Dinner entrees: $12.50-$24.50.

Hawaii Bread Depot (also in Opelo Plaza; tel. 808-885-6354). Fresh bread daily and pizzas. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sandwiches: $5-$8. Pizzas: $8-$10.

On Maui: Haliimaile General Store (Haliimaile Road, off Highway 37, Haliimaile, tel. 808-572- 2666). Sophisticated menu, with lots of local ingredients (carrot soup with ginger and coconut milk). An airy old wooden building, bright local art on the walls. Lunch main dishes: $6-$12. Dinners: $14-$24.

Kitada’s Kau Kau Korner (Baldwin Avenue, Makawao, tel. 808-572-7241). Lots of old photos, and probably old-timers at the next table. A place for breakfast, lunch or a snack. Saimin and sandwiches, $4.25 tops.

Where to ride: Several stables can be found on Hawaii and Maui. On Hawaii, I used Mauna Kea Stables, run by Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Kohala Coast (tel. 800-882-6060 or 808-885-4288). Open Mon.-Sat.; one-hour ride $35, two hours $60.

On Maui, possibilities include Makena Stables (7299 S. Makena Road, Makena; tel. 808- 879-0244), whose customers ride on Ulupalakua Ranch land. Three-hour sunset ride, $95; four-hour sunset ride, $115; 5 1/2-hour winery ride, $135. Another company, Adventures on Horseback (tel. 808-242-7445), offers five-hour rides for $160 through lush areas near the old Hana Highway, on the windward side of the island. Pony Express Tours (tel. 808-667-2200) offer guided horseback tours of Haleakala Crater and Haleakala Ranch, at rates from $30 an hour to $130 a day.

Where to learn about paniolo history: Parker Ranch Visitor Center and Museum (P.O. Box 458, Kamuela, Hawaii 96743, tel. 808-885-7655). For a $10 ticket, an adult gains admission to two Parker family houses, including an impressive art collection, and the Parker Ranch museum, which includes artifacts, photographs and a video on ranch history.

For more information: Contact the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (3440 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 610, Los Angeles 90010, tel. 213-385-5301).