When the world shut down, I went outside. The pandemic gave me extra time to hunt. During the lull, I started toying around with mapping software that revealed anomalies in the terrain. I also have been learning how to identify plants and trees, and how the environment can reveal its history. Since I moved to Massachusetts, I’ve half-jokingly been telling my detecting friends that I am looking for the original Massachusetts coinage. Through years of crawling through briars, pulling off ticks, getting stuck in bogs and cleaning enormous amounts of trash, my quest remained the same: I am looking for the American holy grail, the beautiful pine tree shilling. On a spring day, cruising the earth on park 1, I get a 20\21 signal. Sounds clear. 6 inches deep, beneath a large root, there it was, my treasure. It’s not luck, it’s persistence.
