A Box in the Park

As a single mother of two, I try to keep things interesting. Every Thursday evening following homework and an after-school snack, I take my son Carson and daughter Cassidy to a nearby park. To keep it fun I usually rotate between the five parks in my hometown of Whiterapid, Colorado. The third Thursday in September started off like a typical day. That evening at Adams Park, I stood at the base of the green spiral slide waiting for Cassidy to reach the bottom when I noticed strange markings in an Aspen tree to my right. This tree lined the edge of the playground and had never caught my eye before. When Cass got to the bottom of the slide she screeched and ran toward the swing set. At 8 years old, she no longer needed me to push her so I walked over to the Aspen that had caught my eye to investigate. I almost sprained my ankle. Some dog must’ve been digging and I was too busy examining the markings to notice before I felt off-balance standing in the dip. Suddenly my eyes locked on to something shiny beneath the surface of the dirt. I proceeded to pick up a rock to dig out whatever it was. This had just become an adventure.

My children were playing like the free-spirits they are. Why not try to see if this was a coin or something more valuable? As I dug into the dirt, I realized this shiny object was more like a square than what a coin would be, and was larger too. I wondered if the recent storm had brought whatever this was closer to the surface. My son came over to see what I was doing. I showed him I was uncovering something buried by this tree. He grabbed a rock and began to help me. Between the two of us it took a little while but we got it dug out. Cassidy was distracted playing with her friend Ruth from school. Boy, would she think this was neat! The shiny corner I saw under the surface of the dirt turned out to be a small metal box. The closure was rusted. I called Cassidy over to us and showed her what we found. I covered the hole I had made back up with dirt, told the kids it was time to head home, and off we went. I wanted to pry this box open to see what it was all about!

When we got home, I warmed up barbeque chicken and mashed potatoes from the previous night and then warmed up some corn on the stovetop. While the corn was warming up, I used a flathead screwdriver to pry the rusted closure open. Inside the box was a small black notebook. As soon as I opened the notebook, I saw it was written by a man named Garrett Lewis. He had written, “to the person who finds this book, you are in luck. There is an adventure ahead. I wish you the best of luck as you begin this journey to a grand surprise” followed by some strange code. It appeared this needed to be translated. The strange sentence was written as follows, “blf droo urmw zmlgsvi ylc srwwvm zg tizbhlm kzip…” What could this possibly mean? I continued to thumb through the notebook to find several blank pages followed by the key to this code right in the middle of it. A stood for z, B stood for y, and so on. Now I was determined to figure this out!

It was time for my kids to go to sleep for their half day Friday so I put away the notebook and got them both tucked in. As soon as I felt confident they were cozy in their rooms, I decided to take the notebook to my office and sort through this message. I wrote out the alphabet and then the letters based on the code key I had been provided. The message read, “You will find another box hidden at Grayson Park under the Aspen marked DIG.” That was it? Grayson Park? I hadn’t ever heard of this park. We go to all of the parks nearby yet I couldn’t place this one in my mind. I pulled out my laptop and got to work researching the name. It turned out the park had been renamed about a decade prior to me finding this notebook. How strange! What luck that I found this metal box after nearly a decade! This park happened to be the park we visited the previous Thursday. I decided to go search this out for myself while my kids were at school the following day.

That night I could hardly sleep. Racing thoughts were clouding my brain. If the second box was similar size to the first whatever was in inside had to be small. What could it be? Jewelry? Another letter? Whatever it was I was going to need to find the right tree and take a shovel this time. I packed a short-handled shovel into my Subaru the next morning and continued to drop my children off at their elementary school as usual. My heart was pounding heavily as I wished them both a ‘Happy Friday’ and blew kisses as they walked away. This was the closest to a thrill I had experienced in years. After watching my son and daughter enter their school, I drove over to Grover Park, what used to be known as Grayson Park, as the letter had stated.

I looked all over to find the Aspen marked DIG, but it wasn’t easy due to the fact that MOST of the trees surrounding the park were Aspens. As I walked slowly between the trees surrounding the edge of the park, I finally spotted it! “D I G” was written vertically not far below the spot where the lowest branches protruded from. The first hole I dug was not successful so I covered the hole back up and dug about 6 inches to the left of where I started. My arms were getting tired when I heard *clank* as my shovel made contact with metal. NO WAY! Had I found the second box? I dug around where I first connected with the box. I pulled another metal box out, slightly larger, and quite a bit heavier than the first. Then I took the box to my car and drove home with it.

When I got home, I raced inside to grab my screwdriver to pry open what looked like a box that had been buried for quite some time. The moment I got it open I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was an abundance of cash dated 1967! I drove to the bank to find out how much was there. My ears couldn’t believe what they heard when the woman said it out loud. “Ma’am this is $20,000 total, that’s a significant amount of money. What would you like to do with it?” I nearly fainted. I asked her to deposit it as my stomach did flips. I couldn’t wait to tell my kids about their momma’s adventure of a lifetime!