Minneapolis

A Story of Lost Treasure

May 5, 2020.

The sound of a door hitting the frame on an abandoned shack from wind sweeping through the valley is lost in desolation. The tiny building’s floor, littered with old whiskey bottles, empty food cans, and rusted tools, provides a window into its past inhabitants. Sonny Chance sits on a weathered piece of wood, once a part of the shacks cladding, now balanced between two rusty pails. Staring at the floor, he watches a shaft of light that widens and narrows in sync with the swaying door, blue smoke curls around his prematurely weathered skin.

In quiet times, voices and faces of disappointment haunt him. He no longer has the stomach to look at the destruction in the wake of his compulsion: a failed marriage,  lost career, and financial free-fall.

Three years ago, Sonny succumbed to a fever inflicted on treasure hunters, the kind of fever that gets under your skin and won’t let go. He found a hand-carved walking stick mixed in with cheap umbrellas at a yard sale in Minneapolis, and the item turned out to be old. Experts at the University of Minnesota believed the carvings to be the work of the Lakota Sioux. During their examination, they discovered something else, something that would forever change the course of his life.

Running his fingers along the body of the intricately carved stick now, he slides it apart, revealing the hollowed-out portion containing his obsession. Removing the thin animal hide from the compartment, he unrolls it for the thousandth time. The soft leather stained with plant-based pigments renders its image in muted tones. The scene of a large meadow in the foreground of purples and browns slopes sharply toward a distinctive rock outcropping. Above the ridgeline, the sky in pale gradients of whites, yellows, and blues is indicative of a setting sun. Four words in Lakota are written near the bottom, “Place of yellow metal.”

In the 1870s, a gold rush brought thousands of prospectors to the Black Hills of South Dakota, even though the Laramie Treaty of 1868 recognized the land as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. To the prospectors, the treaty was an inconvenience, an obstacle, in the way of riches that most chose to ignore. There are reports of missionaries as early as the 1850s who witnessed  Indians carrying gold that they claimed had come from the Black Hills. Sonny believes his artifact dates to those earlier years.

Being the first week of May, mornings in the Black Hills can still be near freezing, and Sonny, starting early, has searched for several hours by mid-morning. He uses old trail maps and a compass for navigation, no longer owning a cell phone. He estimates his location somewhere between eight and ten miles west of Crazy Horse.

 Following the banks of Loues Creek, he sees the side of an outcropping on a high hill in the distance. Leaving the creek bank, he angles through the pine forest in the direction of its base. According to his compass, the outcropping faces east, which he believes is a prerequisite for the location of the painting. He finds the shack at the bottom of a smaller hill in the valley between his destination. The place looks like an old mining operation with abandoned narrow rail beds for hauling rock.

Sonny, essentially homeless, carries his possessions inside a large backpack, the type you see thru-hikers use on the Appalachian Trail. When food and tobacco run low, he picks up odd jobs in the small towns that dot the Black Hills until he can resupply. Adept at living in a tent, he treks through the seemingly endless hills searching for the location of the painting. His lifestyle works in the summer months, but winters in these parts are not survivable outdoors. He awkwardly spent the past winter in his daughter’s house basement in Minneapolis but is confident she isn’t inviting him back.

Seeing potential in the shack as a home base, he figures by traveling lighter; he could cover more ground. He estimates it is another mile or so to the front of the outcropping and, taking out his flashlight and a fresh pack of smokes, slides the backpack and cane behind an old workbench against a sidewall.

Back outside, he breathes in the fresh scent of pine forest floors warmed by the afternoon sun. Wildflowers are flourishing in sunny patches along the tree line, and insects are moving as if making up for lost time. Everything around him is coming to life after the long winter.

Navigating through the valley is easy in the flat land meadows with a sparse cover of trees. Looking up periodically, he sees the rock face set against a perfect blue sky, revealing itself slowly the further he travels to the northeast. Cutting over to the hill’s base, he starts up the incline at an angle, gaining elevation while still working toward its facing side. The forest’s density returns on the hillside, and he can no longer see the rock outcropping through the canopy.

With the steeper incline, he grabs pine branches and exposed roots as handholds to pull himself along; the millions of needles create a slippery surface. The light under the canopy is dim, except for a few shafts of light that have pierced small openings.

Abandoning the angled approach, he now climbs straight ahead, and several hundred feet above him, there is a stark brightness along the entire width of the treeline. Approaching closer, it looks as if the trees abruptly end, with the land opening up beyond.

For Sonny, reaching the line and stepping into the sunlight is like stepping inside his painting. A wave of excitement washes over him as he realizes everything is in its place. The tall grasses infused with thousands of indigenous Darkthroat Shooting Stars render the meadow in a purple hue. The outcropping reminds him of a skeleton key with two higher columns like bookends, holding a jagged set of smaller peaks. With the sun still above the ridgeline, it is not hard for him to imagine a pale pastel-colored sky when it sets.

Sonny crossing the meadow to the base of the rock, places his hand on the cool surface of the granite. Slowly walking the width of the rock base, he runs his hand inside small crevices and inspects the rock for signs of shiny metal. Standing in the majesty of the place, he feels connected to its history.

Not finding anything, Sonny takes a breather on a ledge between one of the broader crevices forming a deep V into the rock. There is a young pine tree seemingly growing directly out of the rock wall inside the V, its exposed roots clinging to the tiniest of cracks for survival. Firing up a smoke, he looks out at the expansive view of the valley and beyond.   

Standing up, Sonny looks back into the deep V and blows a stream of smoke from the last drag of his cigarette. The smoke floats leisurely in the still air and suddenly rises rapidly. Sonny squeezing into the crevice, feels a cool updraft coming from the rock floor. Crawling on his hands and knees, he shifts loose rock around, and the stream of air increases. Using one of the loose rocks as a bludgeon, he enlarges an opening to a point where he could slip through. Shining his light in the hole, he sees a workable pitched surface descending to the cave’s floor. With the butt end of his flashlight, he prods the exposed earth below the removed stones and can hear the echo of dirt falling within a chamber below.

Sonny knows the dangers involved with cave exploration, but the excitement of the discovery overrides his usual caution. Slipping through the opening, he turns on his light, half scrambles, and half slides his way to the cave’s floor. Shining his light around the bowl-shaped space, he sees flashes of exposed gold everywhere, like someone took a brush and started flinging gold paint. The chamber, probably once a raging river, was cut into a U shape as the water channel around the curve wore the walls smooth.

Walking along the inner wall, Sonny reached up and started tracing a vein that varied in width from four inches to over a foot thick. Training his flashlight on the mesmerizing color, he follows the wall’s curvature, trying to imagine the value of what he was seeing.

He realizes that he has made a fatal mistake in a fraction of a second. Like slipping on black ice where one finds themselves on the ground before they even know they have slipped, Sonny’s next step is met with only air, catching him completely off balance. Sonny grasps the emptiness before him as he falls into an unknown void. The spinning beam of his flashlight flung from his hands in desperation is the last image he sees before total blackness.

Sonny did not know how far he fell, but it didn’t matter; landing on jagged rocks, he was broken in many places and understood he had found his final resting place.

Nov 30, 2020.

Black Hills Chronicle

From Rapid City, SD, David Tillis was searching for the opening of the Loues Creek mine in a remote area west of Crazy Horse when he discovered an old Lakota carved walking stick in an abandoned shack. The carved stick had a secret compartment containing a rare leather painting. Experts authenticated the artifacts dating to the mid-1800s, and a NY auction company hired to sell the lot has set a reserve of 1.2 million dollars.

My Midwest Birthday Adventure

It is hard to imagine a better birthday than the one I experienced this year as I turned 62. I have amazing memories of growing up in Minnesota, and most of the scenes I cherish, center around the beauty and power of mother nature.

I can easily trace my appreciation of nature to my dad; he never missed an opportunity while hiking or fishing to point things out that he observed. And even if he couldn’t always explain the science, I sensed his joy of being in the moment with whatever phenomenon was taking place around him.

Today, I am married to my best friend, who understands me because of life events I have shared with her from my past.

This year, my wife, Pam, surprised me with a planned week-long trip into my past. She wanted to see the places I talk about, where I experienced inspiration, awe, and beauty in my youth. Her thoughtfulness in planning the trip touched my heart and reminded me about the power of encouragement within relationships.

Flying into Duluth, I was delighted to see plenty of snow-cover. And after picking up our rental, and driving north up the shore toward Grand Marais, the snow continued to gain depth. It occurred to me then that I had never visited the North Shore in the winter, and the snow, birch and evergreens set against the shimmering blue waters provided striking scenery along highway 61.

 Lake Superior has always been magical to me, its size, mystery, and ruggedness beyond my ability to describe adequately with words. Pam, never having visited any of the Great Lakes, was astonished by Superiors’ size and ever-changing moods. The second night in Grand Marais, I woke early to large snowflakes filling the air with the picturesque harbor and Coast Guard station as the backdrop.   

After two days on the shore, we drove west to Detroit Lakes and explored the area of my childhood vacations. Each summer, our family rented a small cabin for two weeks of fishing and outdoor fun.

From Detroit Lakes, we made our way down to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, where I grew up. There, we stayed in an Airbnb just a few blocks from my family home near Lake Harriet. On March 5, my actual birthday, we met up with some of my brothers and sisters who still live in the area for a celebration dinner.

The trip was a whirlwind tour where we drove over 1000 miles crisscrossing the state. Pam, a perfect traveling companion, enthusiastically listened to my stories of the places we visited, arranged a look inside my childhood home, toured old mansions, organized my birthday dinner, and provided expert navigation throughout our travels.

I feel fortunate to have made the trip before the Pandemic took hold. I love the people of the Midwest, their eternal optimism that spring might come early, or that the past winter wasn’t that bad. And as Pam said on several occasions during our adventure, “these are your people.”           

The Girl in Rear Window

Each day was a little shorter than the previous day. My Brother-in-law, who had helped me get a job at the company where he worked, is originally from Boston. While living there, he had never felt the need to own a car. On days when I made it back to the office in time, I would drive him home before taking the scenic route past a large cemetery next to a lake as I drove toward the house where I was staying. I took solace in the scene as I gazed at the staggered monuments in the fading light of a Minnesota autumn evening.

Two months earlier, I had voluntarily separated from the Air Force after serving two, four-year enlistments. Unfortunately, as my military service came to an end, my marriage had also fallen into disarray, my wife indicating through words and actions she no longer wanted to be constrained by the burdensome rules of marriage. I remember it being a devasting time; as if someone had sucked the air out of the room, making it hard for me to breathe. Over the next weeks, I could only manage the same two or three thoughts as I tried to make sense of what was happening around me. Thoughts ran in a circular pattern, and I feared they would eventually cause permanent brain damage if allowed to continue. My self-esteem took a beating from subtleties hardly noticed at the time, but once removed, taking months to recover.

It was under these circumstances that I tried to adjust to the civilian world; the military was a different kind of life. With no real prospects for a decent job where I lived, I left my wife and young daughter and returned to my hometown of Minneapolis, with a vague promise from my wife that she would follow  once I found a job and housing.

The job I secured in Minneapolis required a fair amount of travel within the state, with a territory encompassing most of St. Paul, the northern suburbs of Minneapolis, and any town between the cities and the Canadian border big enough to have a hospital. The equipment I maintained was used mostly in hospital admission offices, and that fact was a blessing for a directionally challenged person such as myself, because of the conveniently placed blue hospital signs.

The driving in winter was often treacherous, and I remember returning from Hibbing, a town in the northern part of the state. The blowing snow on the secondary road I traveled obscured the center line and shoulders to the point where I no longer felt confident I could follow the contours of the road. The storm forced me to find a hotel in the next town to wait it out.

Many of my working days were long because of the size of my territory, and It was not unusual to return home after 9:00 or 10:00 PM after having started at 8:00 in the morning. As a tech, I carried a trunk inventory of spare parts, but if I did not have the right part, I would stay overnight until the office could ship the part on the next Greyhound bus passing through that town.

I enjoyed the time spent on the road; it gave me time to think. I knew there was a hole in my life without my family, and every day I missed seeing my daughter. Everything else in my life was going well; I had a good job, and I was living in a place I loved and where I had the support of family and friends. But my life and marriage were unresolved and kept me in limbo, even though I believed in my heart, the relationship was over.

Talking with my wife during this time, I could tell she was purposely delaying the process of selling our home, and dragging her feet in her previous commitment to reunite our family. Every week it became clearer that she had no intention of moving back, and now having established myself in the area, I was leading an emotionally draining existence.

Winter turned to Spring, and Spring turned to Summer, and I listened to the smooth guitar work of Dire Straits on Romeo and Juliet as I drove between calls on summer afternoons. Summer began edging toward fall, and the first anniversary of my return was fast approaching. It is the subtle things you notice as seasons start to turn and you become aware of the passage of time. Like the way, the light has a little more texture in the golden hour near sunset, or how the temperature dips an extra couple of degrees in the morning before sunrise.

It was a normal early September day, and I was taking calls locally. I had completed a call at a downtown St. Paul hospital and was now making my way along a main artery toward the freeway. As I drove, there were traffic lights every few blocks, and each one turned red before I reached it. About a half-block before the next light, a car passing me on the left pulled into my lane and stopped ahead of me at the light. I slowed and stopped the normal distance behind the car, and as I waited, an unrestrained little girl in the backseat of the car in front of me raised her face above the seatback and stared back at me.

There was something in her expression, where I could not look away. She was not smiling or making child-like faces; it was an expression conveying a question, the question of why. I watched her for what seemed like minutes, and all the while she looking directly in my eyes, never wavering. When the light changed, the car turned right, and I continued straight. Looking to the right as I passed through the intersection, I could still see her small face staring back at me.

I drove another couple of blocks before the significance of what I had witnessed hit me. The why became crystal clear, I had seen my daughter in the face of that little girl, and she was asking why I had left. Her voice in my mind was as plain as if she was sitting in the passenger seat telling me she needed me back in her life. The decision had never been clearer. I had to go back. It didn’t matter that I had created a new life in a place I loved or that a whole set of other problems would be waiting for me upon my return. It was no longer a choice; my daughter needed her Dad.