You could see the flames from the highway miles away. The column of dark smoke rose into the sky. The sun glowed orange through the haze. The hillside looked awfully dry from a distance. Any minute there would be the sirens and the fire trucks and the unavoidable, interminable traffic jam that comes with every brushfire.

But it wasn't a brushfire. It had been so long I didn't recognize that precise line of flames around the rim of the field. It was a cane fire. First one I've seen in almost 20 years. Probably the last one I'll ever see.

Gay and Robinson Plantation on the west side of Kaua'i is winding down sugar operations. They aren't planting anymore, and are harvesting the fields as they mature and ripen.

This field above Hanapepe harvested last week will soon be like others on the west side: fallow, with a few patches of "volunteer" cane stalks rising up from the red dirt just for old times' sake. A fallow field is a thousand times sadder than an empty house or a shuttered business, especially in Hawai'i, especially on the west side of Kaua'i, where the rich soil and steady sun just ache to grow things.

Not everyone gets nostalgic about the way sugar cane is — was — harvested in Hawai'i. There are numerous vehement detractors with concerns about health, environmental impact and the general humbug that comes when the sky rains soft curls of black ash in the developments that sprouted up around the cane fields. Those folks have their points.

But for those who grew up in sugar families, who remember sticky, rainless nights falling asleep to the sounds of cranes loading big trucks in the fields all night long; wearing clothes that smelled like burned sugar because they hung on the line on harvest day; the thin layer of field dirt and soot that covered the car, the mango tree, the dog — those memories are dear. A cane fire is like the sound of a train whistle in the distance or the smell of grandpa's pipe. It takes us back.

There's a saying about cane fires that has many variations: Smells like cotton candy. Smells like good surf. Smells like a college education. This one in Hanapepe smelled like the past.

There will be field harvests — and cane fires — for one more year on Kaua'i, where sugar first began in Hawai'i in 1835. After that, HC&S on Maui will be the last sugar plantation in Hawai'i.