Priceless Treasures

It was early evening and the setting sun had cast the mountain in a golden haze. Wrinkled hands held tightly to a chest, which reflected the sun in such a way that it created a halo of light around the old man’s head. His arms grew tired; he hadn’t expected it to be this heavy. Or maybe it was him who had gotten weaker. He chose not to dwell on that, instead lowering himself onto the stump of what had once been a massive spruce tree. In his left jacket pocket was a small black notebook, the one item he always carried with him. Pulling it out, he ran his hand over the rounded corners of the notebook, mindlessly fingering the elastic closure. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and allowed the memories to wash over him . . .

. . . It was the first day of summer, and the young man made his way down the street doing his best to avoid the students who were on a short reprieve from school. It was a foul day, and just as the man glanced up, the sky opened, releasing angry buckets of rain. All around him people were scurrying inside, trying to avoid getting drenched. But the man didn’t care. He continued moving forward, walking with hunched shoulders and his head down. If you hadn’t seen him walking like this before the storm it would be easy to assume his wet clothes were weighing him down. The truth was he had been walking like this for months, struggling under the burden of his misery.

He grew numb to the chill of the unrelenting rain, just as he had grown numb to everything else. As he rounded the corner to his house, he tripped over a cardboard box someone left on the sidewalk. A small item went flying out of the box, and when the man stood he noticed a notebook lying a few feet away. It had managed to avoid all the rain by landing under the awning of a nearby corner store. Curiosity got the better of him, and he hurried over to pick it up.

The notebook was black, and small enough to fit in his jacket pocket. He opened it, expecting to see the pages lined with words, but only the first page had any writing. It was covered with a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. The longer he stared at it, the less sense it made. As he tried to turn the page, a folded up piece of paper fell out from a pocket in the back of the notebook. Unfolding it, he was intrigued to find an unfamiliar map. He headed up the front steps of his townhouse, making sure the raindrops didn’t smear any of the ink. As soon as he took off his wet shoes and jacket, he sat down at the kitchen table and flattened out the map. Mindlessly, he reached for a bowl of fruit and struggled to understand what he was seeing . . .

. . . It was about a year later by the time he made his first breakthrough. He had discovered $20,000 written in green in the upper left portion of the map. The number had been designed to blend in with the green of the mountains, which covered most of the page. He knew the start of the map led to a mountain range about thirty minutes away, but he hadn’t figured out where to go after that. He considered utilizing a trial and error method, but the mountain range was almost 50 miles wide. It was obvious that he was not going to be able to find the money unless he deciphered the rest of the map. . .

. . . In the coming years the man fell into a routine. The first three weekends of the month he remained at home with the map on one side of him and every reference book he could find on the other side. He spent all weekend trying to match the letters and numbers written in the notebook to a location that could be found on the map. He created mathematical equations, charted celestial coordinates, anything he could think of. On the last weekend of each month he returned to the mountains, eager to test his new hypotheses. Although none of his solutions were ever correct, he hoped all his wrong answers were bringing him closer to the right one.

This schedule continued on for years. On the fourth Saturday and Sunday of every month he got into his car with the map, the notebook, and a backpack of essentials, and spent five to six hours hiking the mountains with methodical precision. Halfway through the day he would find a large rock and sit down to eat his homemade lunch. He loved looking out at the landscape and reveling in its beauty. He had begun to appreciate such beautiful sights, even in his everyday life. An early morning sunrise on his way to work, or a rainbow after the skies had drenched the city with rain; these were all things he used to take for granted before.

Once he finished with his day, he would return to his car and get back onto the highway, returning home before sundown. He never strayed from this schedule – not until April 27th . . .

. . . It was the fourth Saturday of the month and the man was getting ready to leave his house. The phone rang, startling him, and he answered it with one hand as he gathered all of his belongings into his backpack with the other. All this time later he still remembered that call. It was a salesman wanting to know if he was happy with his cable service. He had been so distracted by the phone, he forgot to put his lunch in the bag. By the time he realized this, he was already pulling off the highway and was afraid that if he doubled back now it would be a waste of sunlight. Instead, he resigned himself to cutting his trip an hour short so he could get home and have an early dinner.

He had planned to eat dinner at home, but at the end of the day when he returned to his car he could hardly hear the roar of the engine over the rumbling of his stomach. Before he got onto the highway, he took a left down a little side street that brought him to a place called “Dixie’s Diner.”

The first thing that he had learned was that there was no ‘Dixie’. The owner of the diner was a brunette named Mary, and she was the prettiest woman he had ever laid eyes on. It was a small establishment, and he was one of only two patrons that afternoon. Mary had personally served him, and while delivering his food she asked what had brought him out that way. Before he could stop himself, the man told her the whole story, showing her the notebook and map as proof. It had been so long since he had conversed like this with someone, he was nervous that he had forgotten how. But Mary listened attentively, leaning over to get a better view of the map. By the time he finished his coffee, he had been sitting and talking for almost three hours. As he got up to leave, Mary told him to stop in the next time he went to the mountains. It was an off-handed comment, and she didn’t think that he actually would. But one month later, the man strode back into the diner and spent another several hours talking to the pretty brunette. After that, he ate there the last Saturday and Sunday of every month. Around 4pm Mary would put a slice of meat loaf in the oven and pour a cup of black coffee, and within minutes the man would walk through the door. This continued on for almost a year until one Saturday he asked if Mary wanted to go with him the next day.

They started their trip at 7:00 a.m. that Sunday. No treasure was found that day, but something even better was discovered. A friendship. Every fourth Sunday, Mary accompanied him on his mission. Somewhere along the line she began joining him on Saturdays as well. And slowly but surely the friendship they created turned into something more . . .

. . . He can still remember the day he proposed to Mary. They had doubled back on one of the paths, much to Mary’s confusion. She rotated the map in her hands, trying to figure out why they were back in the same spot they had been an hour ago. While Mary was distracted, the man took a few steps onto a boulder that was overlooking the mountain. By the time Mary looked up, the man was down on one knee, holding out a diamond ring that sparkled in the afternoon light.

She had, of course, said yes and they married that spring. For the next 30 years they lived happily together, and continued their monthly adventures into the mountains. . .

. . . The old man opened his eyes. The memories were wonderful, but sad. Mary had passed away a month ago. It took everything he had to make one more trip to the mountains after her funeral. His body wasn’t in the shape it used to be in, so he resigned himself to walking the base of the mountains instead of hiking up them. He’d been just about to leave for the last time when a sparkling light caught his eye. It was a chest placed inside a hollow log. If the light hadn’t caught it just right, he would never have seen it. With hesitant but eager hands, the man pushed open the top of the chest as he sat on the tree stump. Inside was $20,000 worth of gold coins. He expected to feel ecstatic upon finding the chest, but something had changed. It wasn’t about the money anymore, if it ever was in the first place. Instead it was about what that small notebook and map had given him. It had given him a purpose when he had none. It had given him motivation to wake up in the morning when he was running out of reasons to do so. And most importantly, it had given him Mary. There was no price that he could put on any of that.

With one last look at the gold, the man gave a small smile and closed the chest. Rising shakily to his feet, he placed the chest back in the log. He began the long trek back to his car, tearing out all the pages of the black notebook that he had written on. When he finished only the first page had writing on it, just like when he first found it all those years ago.

On his way home, the man pulled over and got a cardboard box out from his trunk. He placed the map into the back pocket of the little black notebook, and put the notebook into the box. Then he put the box on the sidewalk underneath the awning of the corner store where he had found it so many years before. Satisfied, he returned home.

The doctors gave him the prognosis the following day, and the man chose to spend the rest of his time at home. A few weeks later he was in bed with the TV on and the last thing he saw before closing his eyes peacefully was a news report about a homeless man who came across a mysterious notebook.