Hidden Treasure
The concept of finding a treasure chest is common in
tale, lore and legend, and wherever lottery tickets are sold. I remember as a youth, with the assistance of
my brother Mike and several friends, one summer day we decided to play
pirate. It all started with “finding” a
small can of gold paint in our basement.
It’s interesting how we, especially children, ‘find’ things that were
never actually hidden. To the best of my
recollection, my dad had purchased and used the paint on a Christmas project the
winter before. He used what he needed
and then resealed the can and added it to the shelf of half-used paint cans on
the basement shelf. There, it waited
silently to be “discovered” by several summer-bored children with active
imaginations and time on our hands.
The paint was used to create our own small pile of
gold nuggets. The nuggets were a couple
of handfuls of gravel stones hand-selected for size and shape from our
driveway. The paint transformed them
into valued treasure. We all appreciated
that real pirates have gold doubloons, but land-locked pirates these days had
to make do with whatever treasure was at hand.
While the golden nuggets dried in the sun, we set about searching for a
treasure chest. The basement shelves
held no metal chests, but there were plenty of canning jars; we decided one of
those would work just fine.
Our friend Jeff was properly and duly selected by
several intense rounds of eeniemeeniemineemoe to not only bury
the treasure but also create the all-important treasure map, that would lead
the rest of us to “discover” the hidden treasure. Since we had no secret sea-caves nearby, Jeff
set off to the nearby field with the jar, a shovel and a piece of paper and a
pencil. The rest of us decided to play a
game of basketball in the driveway, so there was no cheating by watching where
Jeff hid the treasure.
We got so distracted in the basketball game, and by
the length of Jeff’s absence, that we almost forgot that we were pirates. Finally, Jeff came around the garage and
presented us with the now-completed treasure map, and the shovel. Jeff said he’d like to stick around, but he
really needed to be getting home.
The rest of us ran to the big tree that stood on the
edge of the field because the map noted that it was the starting point. It was Mike who held the map, and he called
off the directions; Kevin volunteered to do the actual “stepping-off”. There were a couple of challenges that we
came to appreciate more over the next hour.
First, the field was about 80 acres of clover and knee-high grass. Except for the big tree, there really were no
distinguishable landmarks. Second, none
of us, including Jeff who drew the map, had a compass. So, we had fairly imprecise directions of “right”
and “left” and “straight ahead”.
Of course, we didn’t come to truly appreciate our
dilemma until we reached what we had determined to be X, otherwise known in
pirate speak, as “the spot”. We started
digging. When the hole was about two
feet deep and still empty, somebody finally noted that the ground should be
loose and easy to dig up since it had just been first-dug just an hour ago at
most. The group went back to the big
tree and started once more to follow the map.
It was interesting that the second time that we carefully marked off the
way we ended up about 10 feet away from our first hole. Hmmm.
We started poking round with the shovel this time looking for loose
dirt. No luck. A third and final time we went back to the
big tree and carefully stepped off according to the map. Now we were 10 feet in the other direction. However, there was no evidence to be seen
that the ground had been recently dug up here either.
Finally, we abandoned the map altogether and decided
to just spread out in different directions.
By this point all of the tall clover and grass had been trampled down from
all of us, so we couldn’t even hope to decipher where Jeff may have
stepped. A couple of us began to
question whether Jeff had buried the treasure at all – maybe he hid it, and
like a true pirate planned to return to retrieve it and keep it all for
himself. By now it was getting on
towards supper time, so the treasure hunt was officially called off.
A couple of days later I looked out my bedroom window
and noticed Jeff out in the field with a shovel. He didn’t have the map, of course. I watched him begin by the big tree and count
his steps, and make his turns. He came
to a stop in what looked to be close to where the rest of us had first
dug. He poked at the ground with his
shovel; then he moved over a few feet and started all over again. Then I watched him go back to the tree and
start again. He did this twice more. I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going
to find the treasure either. And, if Jeff
was counting on me noticing and watching him for over an hour just to divert
suspicion, he deserved to have it for his own.
About a month later I woke up to the sound of heavy
equipment. They were digging out a basement
for a new house right in the middle of where our buried treasure was
hidden. At the end of the day, after the
workers had gone, I climbed all of the huge piles of dirt around the excavation
to see if I could spot the jar. My
search was fruitless. By the end of the week
the foundation had been poured and backfilled, and the carpenters had arrived
to start building the new house. The
treasure was officially lost forever. It
was a sad day for pirates everywhere.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
P.S.
It is rightly said of this world, “all that glitters
is not gold”. I know for sure, that at
least once in my life it was really just a handful of painted rocks. But, I also know that the truest treasure is
not hidden. It is easy to find, because
it is a treasure that is searching for you.
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