Near Ka’ena Point on the west side of Oahu, well-hidden from passersby, is a lonely cave alongside the ocean. Every day, hikers walk a trail directly above this cave, yet, on most days, no one has any idea it exists. It has not always been this way.
Centuries ago, Hawaiians called this cave Ke Ana Moe o Ka’ena, and it provided welcome shelter on their voyages around Ka’ena Point, where the currents of the north and the currents of the west collide in a confusing, wild mayhem of surging surf. Cleaving the water with swift paddle strokes, they propelled their canoes through the maelstrom and into a welcoming cove alongside a rocky beach. Not far away, a shadowed opening in the basalt cliff marked the entrance to a cave created when the island was born. Some people say that in the night, soft winds still bring the low murmur of the oarsmen and the muffled splash of their paddles.
The ancient oarsmen are not there now and the old trail is not there now, but the cave still exists, unseen and rarely visited, its floor scored by ancient campfires. More than a century ago, the OR&L railway that snaked through Waianae and around Ka’ena Point to Haleiwa passed just a few feet from the cave. The train quit running during World War II, leaving the area untraveled except for an occasional hiker, and it was easy for them to overlook the small opening, having no idea that it opened into a cave the size of a house. Those who did enter and stood in the shadowed gloom, smelling the dankness, were reluctant to venture far inside, as the cave is wide, and the sun does not reach its corners, and the darkness well guards its mysteries.
Over the years, fierce winter storms born in the Aleutians sent powerful swells marching relentlessly across the ocean and ending their journey in thunderous collisions against the cliffs of the Hawaiian Islands. And, each year when the winter surf subsided in the spring, the trail was narrower and narrower. Then, during a terrific storm more than a decade ago, the trail and the hundred-year-old railroad ties could no longer resist the ocean’s onslaught, and they crumbled into the surf, reclaimed by the ocean.
Where the trail to Ka’ena Point had once existed was now only a deep washout. Perhaps 50-feet of the trail had been swept into the depths of the ocean, and, at the far side of the washout, the trail continued. The cave, situated about halfway between the two trail ends, was left nearly inaccessible and hidden from view.
In their quest to reach the great, remote beauty of Ka’ena Point, hikers were undaunted. Within days, they began carving a bypass trail that began at the washout and extended into the mountain slopes above the shoreline and continued until it rejoined the trail at the other end. In time, the endless trail of hikers continued, but this time no one stopped at the cave. They literally walked over its top as they followed the trail up the slope.
Last year when the island was in the pandemic lockdown and tourists were quarantined, I returned to Ka’ena Point, thrilled to find empty trails and the remoteness I loved. I paused at the washout, ignoring the new trail that led upwards. You cannot see the cave from the washout, as its entrance is concealed by protruding rocks. The entrance was not far, however, perhaps 30-feet across the washout, and the first 15-feet was precipitous and difficult, after which the trail reached a flat, much safer area that continued to the cave. Carefully, I edged my way down, feet and arms seeking footholds that were not always there. If I fell, the drop was not far, perhaps 12-feet to the rocks on the beach, but the landing would be hard and certain to lead to injury. It was with some relief that I reached the level section and took the few remaining steps to the cave entrance. I paused and then ducked inside, welcoming its coolness and picking my way over the rock rubble strewn across the floor. I was pleased to see no evidence that anyone had recently been there. No plate lunch containers, no plastic bottles, no cigarette butts. The graffiti appeared to be the same graffiti that was there when the trail was still alongside the cave. The cave shares the approximate shape of an amphitheater. The roof is far overhead in the center of the cave, but as visitors move toward the walls, they must bend more and more until they have a choice of turning back or edging forward on their hands and knees. This I did once long ago . . . perhaps 40 years earlier. I had wanted to reach that part of the cave where the downward curve of the wall met the floor. Deep in its inner recesses, there is no light. The floor is covered with rock rubble, and my knees and elbows were soon scraped and scored, but it was an adventure and therefore worth the price. I was curious if previous visitors had left anything hidden in niches. Not bones; I did not want to find bones and had I found any, I would have backed out, for the cave would not have been meant for me to explore. For the longest time, I groped blindly through the darkness, gently moving rocks and small boulders, seeing nothing and working only from feel. Then . . . a reward. My hand closed upon a glass bottle. I assumed it was broken, and, with my other hand, I felt along its length, being careful, lest a shattered side slice my fingers. It was intact. I could not see it; the darkness consumed everything. Carefully, I eased backwards, one hand pushing myself back and the other holding my prize in the air, away from the rocks. When I could finally stand, I held it up in a shaft of sunlight. It was a milk bottle, and its red-colored artwork revealed a fellow surfing.
In the years that followed, I returned a few times to the cave, but I never again got on my hands and knees to look for milk bottles or whatever else might be hidden under the rubble in the blackness of the cave. I either was not carrying a source of light or I lacked the time or I was with someone who would not enjoy the “thrill of the hunt” as I do. Someday, I intend to have another look.
As to my prize, I no longer even know where it is. Most likely, it has been consigned to an old and dusty box filled with old and dusty relics that I prized for old and dusty reasons. But I realize now that my prize was not so much the milk bottle, the prize was the beauty of a quiet walk along a coast of sea and rocks, and the great loneliness and serenity, a day to extol in all the glories and wonders of nature. And what a prize that was!
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