Hob Osterlund moved to Hawai'i after being visited in a dream by an ancestor, Martha Beckwith, author of the monumental classic, "Hawaiian Mythology." It was there, on the island of Kaua'i, where she happened upon a few courting albatross and felt an inexplicable attraction to the birds an attraction too powerful to be explained by their beguiling airbrushed eye shadows, enormous wingspans, and rollicking dances.
In Hawaiian mythology, ancestors may occupy the physical forms of animals known as 'aumakua. Laysan albatross known as moli are among them. Smitten with these charismatic...