While reading The Night Country by Loren Eiseley today, a long-forgotten memory was stirred up. I was in first grade, and our class was on a field trip. It could have been during the year or during summer camp. Probably during the year. I know Jake was there, and I’m pretty sure Jordan was too, so it couldn’t have been summer camp since Jordan didn’t go to summer camp.
Anyways, we were at some playground in a park. I have no idea where because we only went there once. It must have been a fairly old playground because most of the equipment was made of hardwood, and they just don’t make 'em like that any more. But it was in good shape and fairly large. The ground was a white sand, which was fairly unusual.
Anyways, Jake, Jordan, myself, and maybe one or two others were goofing around when we saw a cryptic message written on one of the walls, at about eye level. It was in an alcove at ground level, possibly at the base of a fireman’s pole or something. Three 90 degree walls. Anyways, the message said something to the effect of:
“5. past slide -->”
We were curious, of course. It was also at this time that Jake discovered something: a brass screw half-buried in the sand, about 2 inches long. It was that kind of brass that has sort of an oily sheen look on it, reflecting back gold and green and purple. He pocketed it, thinking that it might be useful.
We attempted to follow the clue on the message. Maybe it was a mystery, some dark, sinister secret that the playground hid. Maybe a hidden passage or something. We started finding clues everwhere. 9, 11, 15. All with an arrow and a few words scribbled. It was hard to make sense of most of them. They were rarely in order, at least to our untrained sleuthing eyes.
Eventually, we somehow ended up right back where we started. We were tired and it was almost time to go back to the bus. And then we saw something, down on the wall, about a foot above the ground:
“32. Dig for treasure V”
Pointing at the ground. The ground we stood on when we started this wild goose chase. The ground where, yep, you guessed it, Jake found the brass screw. We’d done it. We solved the mystery. This is how Ralphie must have felt when he finally got that secret decoder ring after months of waiting, only to finally decode “BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.” A crummy commercial?! Indeed, in our case, it was a wild goose chase. On the way back to the bus, Jake chucked the screw in to a field, never to be seen again. There would be no more context to the clues on the playground for future super sleuthers, only a wild goose chase, just like we had.
I’m sure there are some lessons to be learned here. I’m not sure if I’m big on lessons, though. You could say that we learned that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. Or that people will go to elaborate lengths to trick you. Or maybe whoever wrote those clues was just having fun, and thought others would enjoy going on a treasure hunt. Who knows. For me, it was the first realization that the world isn’t all faerie tales and swashbuckling pirates and Scooby Doo style super sleuthing. There is no golden treasure at the end that will cure all your ills. But if you enjoyed the hunt, maybe it was worth it. Time is the one resource we all have, and if it’s time well spent, what is there to complain about?