Centuries ago, a fleet of war canoes attempted to land on Molokai. The island's priests began chanting, and as their voices grew in strength, so did the ocean's currents, sweeping the invaders away. Molokai became known as Pule Oo, place of powerful prayer.
The island's reputation for resisting intrusion has grown over time, though it hasn't stopped outsiders from trying to tame Pule Oo and its people. The island's arid West End is scarred with signs of these struggles: flecks of black plastic in the red dirt of fallow pineapple fields, a boarded-up hotel, an abandoned sand mine and military waste baking in the sun.
Molokai Ranch has dominated the West End since 1898. Over the past century, the ranch's multiple foreign owners tried establishing a luxury resort, golf course and safari park complete with zebras and giraffes. The ranch finally closed in 2008, taking with it the West End's only gas station and movie theater.
Meanwhile, the West End endures, wild and raw. Wind wipes footprints away from Papohaku Beach as fast as they're laid. Native pohuehue vines reach across the sand dunes at Moomomi, where fishermen harvest according to the moon, as did their ancestors. Generations of paniolo—Hawaiian cowboys—continue to rope and ride on the slope of Maunaloa.
Photographer PF Bentley moved to the West End in 2009 and documents life in the slow lane on daily walks with his dog, Ehu Girl. For twenty years Bentley captured history as it happened as special correspondent for TIME magazine. The same camera that followed US presidents on Air Force One and guerillas in the mountains of El Salvador now catches the sea mist rising like breath along Molokai's northwest coast, seen above.
Strong currents roil the water at Papohaku, especially during winter when large swells collide in the shorebreak.
Paniolo (cowboy) Kainoa "Bulla" Kamakana puts his teeth into a recent competition at the Uncle Jimmy Duvauchelle Rodeo Arena.
Which is mightier, water or stone? A wave eclipses the hundred-foot-tall Kaiaka Rock at the south end of Kepuhi Beach.
The view from Maunaloa, the gently sloping volcano that defines the West End, has a mythic quality. The summit is known as the birthplace of hula, where the goddess Kapo taught her sister Laka to dance.
No leash necessary at Kapuaiwa, where the shallow flats extend nearly a mile out to sea.
Hale o Lono Harbor
Paddlers await the start of the Molokai Hoe, the world's oldest and most prestigious long-distance outrigger canoe race. Each year, around a hundred crews converge here to begin a forty-one-mile journey across the Kaiwi Channel to Waikiki, battling big swells, chapping winds and each other.
Papohaku
This nine-minute exposure captures the ethereal beauty at the north end of Papohaku, a wild, often deserted three-mile stretch of sand.
Maunaloa Highway
Rush hour on the West End, where motorists are as likely to encounter a herd of axis deer as another car.
Kaiwi Channel
The waters of West Molokai alternate between tranquil and tumultuous.
Papohaku
This stone arch usually lies buried beneath twenty to thirty feet of sand. Bentley discovered it after a season of unusually high surf laid it bare. "Maybe West Molokai allows PF to capture its spiritual side," says Lori Buchanan, whose family roots reach deep here, "so he can share it for the next generations."
