Hawaiian Mall Magic

"Geocaching knows no gender, no race, or economic status," I declare to my pandemic bubble friend Fujimi as I squat to enter the same weed-webbed area for about the fifteenth time in about thirty minutes. "And to think it only requires one tool: a Garmin or a smartphone."

"It still seems sort of… arbitrary," Fujimi says. She’s beaming the flashlight into the bushes like I told her to. I know she’s bored, but I have to show her the joy of finding a cleverly hidden mini-vial amidst fifty feet of shrubbery that borders the eastern side of the Prince Kuhio Mall in Hilo.

I came across the game name in a crossword puzzle I was doing a few months ago. Geocaching, where players worldwide stash containers all over creation and list them with only coordinates and often coded descriptions and bare-bones hints, is more

than 20 years old. I wanted in, now. I downloaded the app and started my geocache career, scoring a handful of tokens and clocking lots of wasted time – which, during a pandemic, has become perfectly acceptable.

The name of this particular cache site grabbed me: "Hawaiian Mall Magic." It seemed easier than wading through jungle and dripping rainforest, too. Ideal for Fujimi’s introductory hunt.

We're on the less fashionable, east side of the Big Island, outside our only and decidedly dowdy shopping mall, more down at the mouth than ever with no movies to see or holidays on the horizon. The vague directions on the app suggested that hunting for this cache after hours, or at least after dark, might be wise. That part’s not difficult. Fewer people than ever are going to this mall now. I think it's less to do with pandemic fear than people are too bored to even walk around and window shop. It's sad, really.

What magic lay tucked away here? I can't wait to find out.

I've decided the cache container, described as “micro,” might be propped along the wall instead of perched in the bushes themselves. I slide my bare hands back and forth, still crouching, ruining my shabby home manicure.

"What do you get for this again?" Fujimi asks as I re-emerge, empty-handed except for my phone. I'm scratched and sweating in the misty night. “Anything of value?” She still speaks with the slight lisp she’s had since childhood. She’s been one of my most steadfast friends, if not always who I called my best, since Chiefess Kapi’olani Elementary. I was a chubby half-Hawaiian fourth-grader and she my graceful, smart, Asian classmate. When you live here, you realize some stereotypes are not incorrect.

I ignore her to study my phone, which insists I'm within three feet of the cache. "Three feet! It still says three feet. Where the hell is it?”

Fujimi shrugs and looks upward. She shines the flashlight overhead, then suddenly drops it to the cement. I cringe. It’s my official

Geocaching flashlight, a pricey, high-intensity discharge one I bought about a month ago. Darkness descends with it. Then the wan, pale-yellow parking lot light above us flickers on half-heartedly.

Wasting no more time, Fujimi’s shimmying up the lightpole. No wonder the directions advised us to do this off-hours. If anybody saw this, we’d probably be arrested, even here in the land of leisurely cops.

“Three feet.” Fujimi squeeks to the ground. I train my cellphone on her and squint at her slender fist, which she triumphantly opens. “This it? Looks like it meant

three feet up.”

I feel stupid. I grab the tiny clear vial out of her hand. “This better be good,” I say, more to the vessel than Fujimi.

“Sometimes the best loot comes in the smallest containers.” I’m not real sure what could possibly fit in here. It’s the smallest cache I’ve ever found. I unscrew the half-inch lid, wincing as the ridges scrape my raw fingers. There’s the expected narrow, sodden roll of inky paper on which we’re to sign our names to log the

find. Stuffed under it is a small lump in a wadded up, snack-sized plastic baggie.

I pull the gently-sealed edges of the bag open and give it a little shake into my hand. Out tumbles a dirty-whitish object. It’s clumpy and a bit wet.

“What is it?” Fujimi asks.

I rub the glop between my fingers. Bits of white confetti come apart. They lie in an awkward constellation in my palm, appearing to be clinging to their last remnants of sparkle.

“Oh look,” Fujimi says. “A Hawaiian snowfall.”

“They’re usually better,” I say, glad Fujimi can’t see my crimson face. I’d hoped for a more rewarding prize, maybe a Geocaching coin or even a cute pebble. Just anything to give Fujimi with the hope she’d get enticed and join me in my so-far solitary hobby. She’s spent most of the pandemic stranded with relatives in Japan. I actually figured she might be a pushover for it, to be grateful for something new to do.

We stare at the tiny paper bits. Hawaiian Mall Magic my foot. I start sifting them back into the baggie.

“What are you doing?” Fujimi says. “Are you supposed to keep it?”

“I’m putting it back,” I say. “I don’t have anything small enough to trade this for anyway. If you take something, you’re supposed to leave something of equal or lesser value.”

“So you bring a tiny thing, and trade it for another tiny thing?” Fujimi asks.

I’m starting to be embarrassed by more than the pitiful booty. My whole exciting, novel pandemic-fueled pastime has abruptly lost its steam.

“OK, this is stupid,” I say. “I’m not doing this anymore. The little treasures can be really cool, though. And it’s rewarding to find them, I’m serious.”

“I’m sure,” Fujimi says without a trace of sarcasm.

“I found a plastic dinosaur in this ancient graveyard near Mountain View,” I say. “It was cool and kind of creepy. The experience, I mean.”

“Plastic dino, huh?”

“It glows in the dark,” I mumble.

When most of the confetti is stuffed back in the tube and capped, Fujimi takes the vial from me, jumps up to embrace the lightpole, and easily replaces it in the niche from where she’d grabbed it. I have to marvel at the geocacher's ingenuity, even though I’m almost sure it’s illegal.

“All right, we don’t have to do this again," I say. "Let’s just leave.”

Fujimi follows me to the car. “I’d like to see that graveyard,” she ventures.

“Well, the real point IS to get us places we

wouldn’t go.”

“I get it,” she says. “I think.”

“We need it to be daylight for this one,” I say. “Or at least dawn.”

“Ancient graveyard at dawn. Got it. Where is it?”

“I actually don’t really know,” I say. “We can find it again with the app coordinates. I drove around for an hour looking for it. I don’t remember how I got there.” Fujimi nods. Without doubt, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had, I realize. I’m determined to find her the best treasure in the history of Geocaching.

“You know, the snowfall was kind of cute,” I say as I get in the driver’s seat. “It’s not the hider’s fault Hilo’s so wet.”

 “Yeah,

maybe the hider was from the mainland, like Oregon or Washington state,” Fujimi ays, buckling herself into the passenger seat. “They wanted to share their snow with us.”

I grin. I knew she’d get it.