Jeff Dunn, retired professor of art, has survived in our credit card, buy-now-pay-later society for 67 years without a mortgage. He just broke down and got one. I couldn't believe it. I asked him, "How is it possible for a married male in debt-ridden Honolulu to exist for 57 years without a mortgage?"

He sat back in my koa rocking chair and told me: "The original thought was that the old Hawaiians lived in Honolulu without money — why can't I do the same thing? I started learning to live how the Hawaiians did before Captain Cook.

"I learned to climb a coconut tree. I fed myself by trapping wild pigs. I picked wild fruit and found a small taro patch way up in Makiki, also Waiahole and Waikane Valleys. I learned how to make haupia. I learned how to throw net and make an imu. This island has fed me for 35 years."

Dunn said he cleaned coconut trees for people who gave him the nuts, which he sold at swap meets and bought food he couldn't find in the wild.

"I'd do this on days I wasn't teaching," he explained. "On my days off, I'd go hiking. I felt blessed by the Hawaiian gods because I found all this food. I believe in the Hawaiian gods and they have taken care of me. ...

"I was living in a tent on Wa'ahila Ridge behind the East-West Center under a giant mango tree growing in symbiosis with a date tree. From my tent I had a view from Diamond Head to Pearl Harbor. I'd look down and see traffic bumper to bumper. Then I'd walk down the hill to teach.

"In six years I saved $70,200 and bought 8 1/2 acres of land in Fiji and three acres on the Big Island. My lifestyle gave me enough money to travel. I climbed mountains all over the world: Pakistan, Borneo, New Zealand, Java, Central America, the Dominican Republic and 48 states."

Dunn said he was teaching art in San Francisco during the Vietnam War. "In 1971 I came to Hawai'i to get away from that stuff," he said.

He became an art professor at the University of Hawai'i, still with no mortgage, living in a tent. So why after all this time did he break down and get a mortgage?

"I started getting old and tired," he said. "I could go and live on my land in Fiji. But Hawai'i has a hold on me. ... I found a condominium with a courtyard planted to palm trees and bought a little condo for $264,000. It's a quiet place to get old and do my art. No mosquitoes."

But Dunn still takes off for somewhere in the world every other month and he still hikes. His truck is full of wild bananas. He insists there is plenty of wild food to be found in Our Honolulu.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.