When I was very young living
in Bremerton,
Mom and Carol (my sister) called me inside one day. They asked me to go back out and bury a
mysterious something next to the chimney of the house. And after digging deeply, maybe two inches, I
found a jar with a paper inside. Well, I
was a little slow so they needed to explain to me that the paper was indeed a
treasure map that had long since been left by pirates plying the waters of Phinney Bay.
It had a big red “X” on it and even a crudely
drawn skull and cross bones. Well, I
spent the rest of day climbing over fences and crawling through underbrush trying
to get to that “X”. And low and behold, I finally turned over a
rock and there was another jar with a shiny piece of treasure in it. Wow!
Not until I got the jar open did I realize that the “treasure” was a
sequined button that I had seen a hundred times in Mom’s sewing drawer. I’d been duped.
More recently, I’ve been
watching “Gold Rush” on the Discovery channel every Friday night. Not for the personal interaction part or big
equipment part or the logistics part.
It’s the commitment to search that intrigues me. And after every show, I would comment
something to Jamie like “Boy, if I were forty years younger, I would just love
to do that.” or “Prospecting like that would be really fun but those days are
long gone” or “I should invest in a metal detector – that would be really fun”. Every episode.
Be careful what you ask for –
God hears. One evening we were watching
the nightly news and they had a segment about this guy named Forrest Fenn and
how he had hidden a treasure chest somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe. The key to finding the treasure was in a 24
line poem. After dinner, I Googled
“Thrill of the Chase” and the hook was set.
So, as I write this, my chase
is entering its fourth year. And I’m
somewhat chagrined to report that the chest of gold is still out there
somewhere. Although I do say with some
pride that I have found stuff. Stuff
that I just know to be clues………but can’t prove. So while discouragement does knock, perseverance
holds the key. The whole endeavor is an
amazing puzzle. It’s just that I don’t solve
anything - I just rearrange the
mystery.
So, the pathway to gold would
appear to be long and winding, hot and dusty.
But all is not lost, treasure
is everywhere.
