“This Here Be Gold Country” Pt. 1

    In all the years I had been living in Colorado, up to this point, I had never gone back to the East coast for the week that my family and another family took our annual trip to the ski lodge in Vermont. Since the last time I had gone, Olaf, the elderly man whom owned the ski lodge had passed away.

   A few years before, he had been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s after his bank contacted his children telling them that Olaf was coming in each day and withdrawing huge sums of cash for no reason. It had come to the point that Olaf’s children had to sell the property for a good price with the stipulation that the new owners also pay for the care at a top Alzheimer’s care facility for the duration of his life. The new owners still rented the place to all of Olaf’s old customers so my family was still able to take the annual vacation to Vermont.    My father and Charlie had gone to see him shortly before he passed away, but Olaf didn’t show any recognition for them and was now only speaking in his native tongue (Norwegian).

  In the winter of last year, an old high school friend of my brother’s working in a law firm up in Massachusetts had found a letter in a file with just a name on it and Long Island as an address. The name was a unique name that he recognized to be family friend of my brother.

   He contacted my brother and mentioned this envelope. Inside the envelope appeared to be a letter written in Norwegian to Charlie from Olaf. The letter about two sides of a page and after the letter was translated it turned out to mostly be just rambling. Enclosed with the letter, however was another envelope addressed to Olaf and was obviously older. Dated in the 70’s, the letterhead was from the curator of the local town’s Department of Records with a quick note on it. They seemed to be friendly because it was an informal signed note that just said, ‘Hey Olaf, maybe you could have a treasure hunt on your property’ and with it was a Xerox copy of a letter written on December 8, 1899.

  This letter was a historical document that was a correspondence between someone named Baker living down in Virginia to another person up in Massachusetts.

 Now this long rambling letter started off with “I hope this letter finds you well… and went on about life woes and such for about a page and a half. Toward the end it said.

  “Do you remember the stories my grandmother told us of the Revolution, about the British Soldiers and the old ‘Gallow’s  Tree’ near my Grandfather’s homestead? I wish to honor the pact we made in the tavern on the eve before we enlisted. I fear I am not of condition to take on a long travel, so if you are of fair health, at 3 o’clock and 10 paces from the gallow’s tree, you will find the key to more gold than a man can melt in a week.”

  That summer, my family went up to Vermont, and searched the grounds. The first day they found nothing, but the next day, they brought down a small ornate copper box covered in moss down from the mountain. The stage was set…