We are rocking down a dusty road on the peninsula of Kalaupapa National Historical Park, on a rusty bus without sound system or air, so it is hard to hear what our guide is saying.

She is an older resident of what was once called the leper colony here, among the last of her people. She knows things that will be lost soon. She knows that the balky water tanks here were once called Larry, Curly & Moe.

But her narrative is disconnected and idiosyncratic. She seems to go into sulks and we drive past National Park signs without stopping. If she knows what they were trying to tell us, she doesn’t let on.  We are at her mercy, and she’s past all that.

People cannot come to Kalaupapa without a lot of planning and expense, so everyone is here because they really want to see this place. No one just happens upon it as they drive down the interstate. There are a handful of young adventurers, a large number of Japanese Catholics come to pay their respects to the dead, and then there’s whatever I am. Tourist. National Park geek.

I flew to the island of Molokai from Maui, landed topside in the early morning and then waited hours next to chickens and squawking kids for the next bumpy flight, which took me over the 3,000-foot cliffs that divide Kalaupapa from the rest of the island and down to the peninsula. It has been rough going all along, and we are just now getting to the focal point of the tour: The church of St. Philomena where visitors honor the Catholic missionary Father Damien, who came to serve the sick and abandoned people here in the late 19^th century.

In those days, and on into the middle of the 20^th century, people who developed leprosy (I’ll stick with the more evocative word that Damien knew over the now correct Hansen’s Disease) were banished to this nearly inaccessible coast in the middle of the Hawaiian Islands. Until Damien came, they were largely left to die alone and unaided.

Now there is little sense of what this place must have been. Outside the church, a neat little graveyard holds the remains of some of the nuns who served the people here, as well as the finger of the famous priest. But the hospitals that followed Damien have been demolished, the town that grew up here has grown down again, and the residents who remain have moved to more modern homes on the other side of the peninsula. In these woods I find only bits of foundation, rusted sinks, a bucket.

I wander around while the Catholics pray in the church. Then they eat lunch and I wander some more because I have neglected to bring any food with me. Without a tangible history to look at, I am forced to the obvious: The land is beautiful.

The coast, where sick people once were dumped and forced to swim to shore because sailors were afraid to dock here, is stunningly rugged, sharp and green. Clouds roll down the cliffs and continually change the light. I feel guilty for admiring the effect, then tell myself that the residents here must have once enjoyed it too. I have spent weeks in a hospital watching a single tree outside my window; this is how people cope.

We reboard the bus and head back to the tiny airport. Our guide has grown silent but I’m feeling better about her, realizing that I have been privileged to see a national historical park before it is only history. As the residents of the colony die away, Kalaupapa will become a more standardized site: Those signs will be improved and the tour buses will stop at them, but will anyone remember the names of the long-vanished water tanks?