Recovering the Cabin Treasure

Sam took a slow deep breath and settled into the familiar worn driver’s seat, turning the engine over and letting it warm up a bit. She unclenched her jaw and adjusted her posture, aching to be present in the experience that was in front of her.

Are you ready?

She nodded toward the soft words, barely audible from the passenger’s seat. For a moment, she’d forgotten he was here, and she sank into that comfort with her fists griping the steering wheel.

The drive was nothing like she remembered. As a kid riding in the backseat, the bumpy dirt roads were wild and exciting. She’d giggle alongside her brother in the backseat while the car climbed, up, up, up in a haphazard rhythm toward the cabin in the woods. It was different now, as a grieving adult in the driver’s seat. The roads – if you could even call them that – more like dirt paths worn away by tires and erosion and padded with gravel – were marked only by tiny wooden signs. Each turn was terrifying. She griped the wheel tighter and tighter, and kept her foot pressed on the accelerator, afraid that if she let go, the car would begin to fall backwards and she’d never make it back up.

What are we looking for? Leafy?

There was his voice again.

“Yeah, the sign will say Leafy Green. It should be a left.”

Another fork, this one split into unmarked territory: up or down?

“It must be up…” she said, hesitating for a moment, but fueled by the desire to feel something from her childhood. And then they saw it, a tiny wooden sign freshly painted with green paint “LEAFY GREEN” in clear block letters.

We’re almost there.

She pushed the accelerator firmly, one more time, as she turned the wheel to the left and felt the wheels digging against the rocks, churning up dirt, pushing forward, the old car led them up one more hill climb. She held her breath, anxiously waiting for the tiny cabin to come into view. When it finally did, it only slightly resembled the retreat she remembered.

The cabin was lined with a beautifully maintained garden – it hardly even resemble the cabin she was used to. The fresh navy paint and bright white door didn’t resemble the original cabin at all. She was accustomed to the chipped red door and plain, sanded wooden panels siding the house. It’s the only way she’d ever seen it, so it took a few moments and several deep breaths for her to orient herself.

They’re still there. It still looks like that underneath.

“This is it?”

This is it.

Sam and her family used to visit this cabin, annually, from when she was 8 until she was 13. Each week she and her brother, Jacob, would spend their days exploring the surrounding woods, only coming inside for bowls of warm stew and to watch movies before bed. Sometimes they’d sleep inside on the bunk beds, but more often, they’d camp in their tent on the outdoor porch. If it was raining, they would play boardgames, but otherwise they were outside. It was such precious time, having uninterrupted time with Jacob.

Three weeks ago, she’d made the phone call to the owner, asking if she could come visit for a day. She explained how her brother had died – unexpectedly – last year and how she wanted nothing more than to revisit this childhood dream. What she really wanted, though, was to find the treasure.

On their last visit to the cabin, over ten years ago, they expected that it would be their last for a while since her mom had just accepted a new job in Texas, so they decided to bury some treasure in the woods. It served as a physical promise that they’d return to discover the treasure with their own kids one day. It seemed like such a sweet and nostalgic thing for her then 15-year-old brother to want to do, and she gladly obliged.

Ten years later, Sam could only vaguely remember what they had buried. A card game? Rocks they’d collected? All she remembered was the excitement over washing out the plastic Chinese food containers for safe storage. She remembered stacking them together into a shoebox. Ten years later she wondered what would be intact.

So how are we going to find this treasure?

“I don’t know. I thought being here would be enough. I thought I’d remember where we buried it. It wasn’t far from the house, though, right? I’m not sure, exactly.” And then, “It’s near a big tree.” She said, confidently, as she pulled the shovel out of the trunk of the car.

She nodded to herself, tentatively, trying to trust her instincts, but seriously doubting that a big tree sort of near the house would be enough of a landmark. She believed being here alone would aid in her grief recovery– but now that she was, she was feeling a bit defeated. How deep had two teenagers buried a shoebox? Could it have been excavated by a dog or curious kids at any point over the past decade? But kept these doubts hidden inside, and started walking with ease, paying attention to each tree they passed.

Letting her feet lead her seemed like a good idea at first, but it wasn’t working. After an hour wandering in circles, looking for the landmark tree, if there ever was such a thing, she kept returning to the house defeated.

“Everything is different now. They built an extension, and everything is painted so differently. And there’d never been a garden before.”

It’s still our house. It’s still here. Keep going.

She walked aggressively with the shovel in hand, plowing forward, led by a fierce sibling attachment that had fueled all of her cabin adventures.

It started to rain and she wanted to cry, but the comforting, encouraging voice was still there.

It’s okay. The rain will make it easier to dig – it will loosen the dirt.

Sam wanted to believe it was true, but she was feeling overwhelmed and defeated and unsure. She kept walking forward, and then left and then right.

“I feel like it may have been this way…” she said, changing directions again, but then, after twenty or thirty passes, she’d hesitate. The tears were coming.

“Should I just start digging?”

“Where are you?”

“This feels impossible. I thought it would be easier than this. I thought it would be obvious.”

And then she did something she had needed to do for a while: she called out to her brother in a voice that was intense and full of heartache.

"J A C O B !"

And then, she cried. She collapsed into the dirt, and let the tears mesh with the rain already puddling on her cheeks. She knew she was there, alive and breathing, but for a while it felt like she had been transported away from earth and time. Her fingers dug into the dirt, but she imagined her arms stretching like loose noodles and her body bobbing above the tree tops before plunging down, again, into the earth. Each breath propelled her into another deep release of tears. She cried until the rain let up, and stared ahead where some midst was rising above a creek, a tiny rainbow ribbon formed.

The creek.

“Oh! The creek!” She let herself believe that the creek was exactly the answer they’d been searching for – an arrow that would point her directly to the tree. She knelt down next to the tiny creek and sobbed with big alligator tears again, “We used to play here.”

Her eyes scanned the horizon for exceptionally big trees, and then she saw something unusual: a ton of wildflowers were growing around one particular tree, moving against the trunk, gentle in the wind, and setting it apart from all of the rest. It almost felt like the tree had eyes, Sam caught the gaze, and then stood up, urgently.

“Wildflowers! We dropped wildflower seeds on top of the box!”

In a matter of seconds she was there, beside the giant tree framed with wild flowers, digging carefully around the roots, trying not to unearth these beauties while searching for a box. “I don’t think we would have buried it this deep – but maybe the other side?”

They pulled earth away together and replanted the flowers, carefully, working with bare hands in rain and dirt and mud.

“I think – I think I feel something. I think this is it.”

She breathed with hopeful anticipation as she submerged her arms, elbows deep, into the earth, slowly and carefully bringing a box to the surface.

“I feel it – it’s here!”

She emerged with an old shoebox in her hands. One side flopped off immediately, soggy and loose as it padded the earth, revealing a stack of Chinese containers just as she’d remembered.

“Oh, JACOB this is it!” This is IT!”

She imagined walking back to the car, and uncovering the items under the protection of the hatchback, but she was already immersed in a magical and painful un-opening, and she couldn’t wait.

She popped the first lid of, revealing colorful pieces of plastic. “These were mine – a Polly Pocket and Thumbellina!” she examined them for a few seconds, and quickly snapped the lid back over the miniature dolls and put them aside. Next, she revealed a stack of cards and jacks that they’d played together.

Finally, the third container belonged to her brother. And in the bottom there was a handwritten message about the contents of the treasure. He had written a lengthy letter addressed to his future kids. It was filled with wisdom and instructions about how to play the games and why they should be kind to their siblings because “siblings are the best people in the world and the ones who will know you the longest.” She read this line six times: If all goes well in the grand plan of the universe, you’ll outlive your parents and your kids will outlive you, but your sibling will walk through each phase of life by your side. These are the memories you’ll talk about in fifty years.

Sam sobbed, feeling completely overcome with emotion. She tried to imagine her sweet 15-year-old brother taking the time to write down these words. How long had he been thinking about sharing this insight with his future kids? How had he managed to slip the note in without her knowing? Sam felt her chest tighten and she could hear her heartbeat louder than ever before. She ached for these kids who would never exist. It was so heartbreaking to know that they wouldn’t have those future vacations she’d imagined where she and her brother would be the adults and their kids – the cousins – could play together. She sobbed in recognizing this tangible proof of how much he treasured their sibling bond.

When she ran out of tears, Sam stared up at the sky who had patiently been waiting there, holding back the rain for her. She decided to leave her own plastic container behind - recovered with a thick pounds of dirt - buried safely and tucked away. She hoped it could be a treasure for some future children to discover one day, but she took the rest of the contents with her.

“I really needed this.” she said before stacking the pieces together and walking back to the car. She was thankful to have these recovered treasures in the passenger seat on drive home. Ten years ago never felt so close.