Treasure Hunting

I would love to be a treasure hunter. To look at some of my posts, you’d think I had an obsession with obtaining money. The truth is, money has never been a motivator for me as an adult. The potential of having a merit increase in my salary was not what motivated me to do a good job. I have an innate desire to please – to do a job that exceeds what others expect of me.

But treasure hunting! What fun it would be! The goal, of course, is to find treasure, but treasure doesn’t have to be of monetary or commercial value. It could be personal – a family heirloom of value only to the person or family missing it. It could have historical value – that’s my favorite. It may be gold; it may be part of a broken ship. But finding it helps solve a mystery, explain the past, tell a story.

I am a dedicated viewer of the History Channel’s Curse of Oak Island. Oak Island is off the coast of Nova Scotia and has a rich history of being visited by various Europeans beginning as early as the eighteenth century. Some of these groups it has been speculated, had buried treasure on the island. It has even been rumored that the Knights Templar had hidden some important religious artifacts on Oak Island, including the Holy Grail.

Two brothers, their partners, and their team of treasure seekers, have been searching for treasure on the island for years – and spending millions of dollars to do it. I know they’ve been searching for at least three years because I’ve been watching their show for at least three years. The team is restricted to searching only during the summer months because of the harsh winter weather Nova Scotia has.

It’s the hunt that is so exciting to a treasure hunter. Sure you have an eye on the prize but searching for clues, piecing the clues together, and searching for the treasure is most of the fun. It’s much like being a police detective investigating a crime, I suppose. The ultimate goals are catching the bad guy and solving the crime. Before any perpetrator can be arrested though, there has to be a lot of note taking, clue gathering, witness interviewing, critical thinking and searching.

Treasure hunting involves a lot of interests I have. A bit of police work, archaeology, mystery and intrigue, history, and a bit of luck. I’m always interested in luck.

When I was a kid, my brother Jeff and I used to draw treasure maps. With dashes representing steps, we would draw dashed lines going this way and that, ending with a big “X” marking the spot where the treasure was supposedly buried.

Once we agreed which map – his or mine – we would use, we had to decide where the map actually started. Our maps included a “Start Here” but had no point of reference to where “Here” was. Was it just outside the door to the garage? At the edge of the sidewalk? Maybe just right of Julie’s tree? (Each of the five kids had a tree in the backyard. Not because my parents planted them in our names but because we “called” them. Julie had the best tree because she thought to call a tree “hers” first.)

Usually the decision on where to start was arbitrary. On occasion we would have to adjust our starting point because physical barriers (a shed, a fence, a tree), prevented us from traversing the area.

Did I mention that we took shovels with us as we followed our map? Real shovels, not kid shovels, sand shovels, or trowel. And, you guessed it, when we reached the part of the map where the “X” was, we would dig. That’s right; dig right into the turf of our back lawn. If the digging site could be seen from either the kitchen or laundry room window, we were careful to keep our backs toward the windows as we dug, thus covering our misdeeds.

After a bit of digging – usually about six inches worth – and no treasure, we surrendered to defeat. We loaded the dirt back into the hole and topped our landfill with as much of the grass as we could rescue.

Back inside again, we would draw new maps. Then off again to hunt and dig. No treasure. Repeat. Continue repeating until bored with treasure hunting.

We did this activity a couple of times a year if I remember correctly. Never found one bit of treasure but that was okay because we had fun in the search. And to my recollection, we were never busted for tearing up our lawn. If someone asked me today about holes in the lawn, I know to blame it on the gophers.

Years passed and my sister Julie (you know, the sibling with the best tree) had a baby girl named Katie. When Katie was three- or four-years-old (in retrospect, too young to appreciate the effort I had made), I drew a treasure map for us to follow in my parent’s front yard. In this planned adventure, I had actually planted a shoe box full of little treasures for Katie to find.

It was difficult getting Katie as excited about the chase as I was. In fact, I had to cajole her to participate at all. I didn’t get it. Didn’t everyone like to hunt treasure? Apparently not. Granted, it was a little wet out that day – I wasn’t too thrilled to be outside myself. And goodness knows it had been difficult for me to bury the shoe box in the moist and heavy earth. But I had done it and Katie was going to enjoy finding it, damn it.

I eventually convinced her to follow the map with me. I had to urge her along. I suppose she needed a nap or food or something but I wanted to get this done. She was ready to quit before we were halfway through the map, which is to say almost immediately. My Katie was not an adventurer. She was not a thrill seeker. She was not a treasure hunter.

I had taken a lot of time measuring baby steps to make my map end at the burial site. Katie was young enough though, that if I saw that my map was leading us astray, I could easily adjust my instructions.

We found the treasure and Katie was pleased enough with the loot but not ecstatic and overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment like I had hoped. Oh, well. I had tried.

Treasure hunting is a bit like playing sports. The joy is in the seeking and playing and being motivated by a potential win. The losses are disappointing but it doesn’t stop you from picking up your shovel or ball, and searching or playing – with pleasure – again. ✿