31 August
2026
Lost Treasures
Many years ago, when the kids were much younger, we stopped under a tree in the pasture imaginatively called the creek pasture. The water hole we sat by was full. The tree offered shade. A picnic lunch was packed and in the pickup along with fishing poles.
There was never any hope of actually catching fish in the water hole. That wasn’t the point.
We threw the lines into the water anyway. We ate in the shade and played on the tree trunks. It was a lovely afternoon.
It wasn’t until the next day at least that I noticed my cap was missing. My son had worn it that day by the water. He had found it and latched onto it refusing to take it off. Until he forgot he was wearing it. It may have fallen along the way, it may have been taken off to wipe the sweat from his brow or to better enable tree climbing. The only thing that was for sure was that it was gone.
I went back and searched, walked up and down the creek banks, looked under and in the trees. The cows were in that pasture at the time, it was brought into question whether they could have helped with the complete and utter disappearance of the cap.
I was sad. The hat was gone. It was all mostly forgotten.
Today I walked down that same creek bed. There hasn’t been a drop of rain all year. The grass, what grass grew, was mowed short by cattle. The creek bed is dry, any hint of a water hole there long gone. Walking I kept my eyes on the dry creek bed hoping for some wonderful discovery, an arrow head, bones, some treasure from times long past.
Glancing up from my studies I saw the trees on the bank and recognized the spot of our long ago picnic play day. I remembered the cap. Making a circle around the former water hole I saw it. Laying there on top of the cracked dry mud.
It was the cap!
Years later, at least five years later, in children years that’s a lot, it had turned up again. Bones or arrow heads would have been slightly more exciting, maybe. But this was right up there.
It is nothing more than garbage now, chewed by cattle or mice we will never know, and worn by water and weather. But it is a reminder of that long ago summer day when the kids were young enough to want to play in the trees by the waters edge. One of these days they’ll get old enough to want to play again.
One of these days it will rain and there will be water there again.
