stonetosser.com

We were thousands of miles from home, living out of a suitcase and beginning to tire of the sun and water and tours; I decided to go stone hunting. I chose to hunt down a bead store in Honolulu that looked on Google Maps as though it was within walking distance. I wanted to find treasure buried in the environs of Pearl Harbor, where WWII memories and working Navy yards have pushed out the real pearl hunters, and so I packed up my backpack with essentials, including my credit card and cell phone, and parted from the family.

As I struck out from my Waikiki posh abode, lush with koi ponds under unHawaiian wedding chapels and water splashing artfully over precision-placed lava rocks into swimming pools full of noisy children and their parents sucking rum drinks, I headed over the arching bridge towards the less touristed part of town. Before I even exited my temporary home, I was struck with a noxious odor. My nose automatically wrinkled into a little snort right before I heard the plea, "Do you have a quarter for something to eat?" The vision of rumpled black cloth over thin bones came and went before I fully realized that just behind the concrete pillar of the bridge I had crossed lay a homeless man. I was a little disoriented, cars rushing everywhere and no street signs and the homeless man reeked. Feeling uncomfortable and beginning to wonder if I was lost, my charitable nature contracted and I'm ashamed to say I kept walking.
I was beside an expressway between rushing, noisy, smelly, oily vehicular motion and walls of concrete that ran horizontally.along parking lots, shopping malls and office buildings. These were the backs of places I knew – Starbucks and Borders, Crazy Shirts and Subway, Hair Salons – but they were inaccessible to me because I had come to the rear side where there were no doors. I wasn’t homeless, but this was not my home; Gripping my backpack I thought of my cell phone but I wasn’t giving up; I wanted my treasures. So on I walked on until I was sweaty and my feet hurt and I stopped to get out my map at a crosswalk where a nice young Japanese tourist was also lost. He wasn’t homeless either but he was clearly not at home, and we were unable to help each other - me not speaking Japanese and he not speaking “Engrish”. We shared a smile of encouragement instead.
Determined, I continued into the tropical concrete rim of Honolulu until I reached the road I was looking for and followed the street numbers to the dingiest little strip mall I'd seen yet. Up the stairs of the 60's era, flat-roofted, steel gray concrete brick structure I trudged to find a barren concrete courtyard that reminded me of out-of-the-way places I'd visited in Latin America. Though I’m sure Virginia has equally run-down malls, at that moment I looked on the dumpy little place, I truly felt far from home.
But there was my bead store!!

I'd done it! I'd found my grail! It was bright inside and so I entered air conditioned paradise. Friendly propritors met me and ushered me into a little treasure chest where I found more beautiful stones than I have available to me at home. Appetite and Imperial Topaz. Carved Pink Tourmaline and Mossy Agate. I found the tiny gold seed beads I've been seeking and some cute little sterling silver "rice" spacers. Not so many pearls I couldn't get elsewhere but I was so delighted with my finds that I stayed too long and spent too much. Treasure acquired, I reluctantly headed out into the sunset along the expressway for my trudge back to the paradise most people come to see.
   
I took the ocean park side of the rushing trafficked road back and even though my ankles were swollen (I totally wore the wrong sandals) my heart was light. I'd found my treasures, I knew the way back and my adventure had taken me into the real places where people who have homes here go. I passed many homeless hovels in the park, but no one was home for me to give a handout to. Unlike homeless people at home, these people acted more like these compilations of carefully arranged trash were really their homes, leaving them to go out and about in the balmy evening air.

I walked past the garbage containers for the yacht club and the sludge backup in the canals which would return me to the tall concrete manmade cliffs with busy elevators. Approaching the arching bridge I was ready to help the homeless man, but to my disappointment I realized I was four lanes separated from him – being on the ocean side of the expressway this time – and once more helpless to help. My heart in the right place at least, I walked on aching happy feet back to our manufactured jungle hotel, complete with fake waterfalls and tiki torches where my children were ready for dinner. I was satisfying with my hunt for this day; I had wondered off the beaten path, acquired my treasures and found my way back home.
After more adventures in the Islands, our family has agreed that we won't visit Waikiki again, preferring our temporary homes to be somewhat less precisely arranged and our treasures to be a little harder to find than on Google Maps (though it's getting tough to find anything NOT on Google Maps). The following week we moved on to Kauai and were much more at home in our suitcases. More on that later.