“This Here Be Gold Country” Pt. 2

  Around the time Lori was moving out, I had taken a trip solo back to New York.  While I was back I had gotten to see Jen. We spent the day talking together catching each other up on everything we had been up to. She was focusing on her career on the railroad and I told her about how crazy I was about Rachel.  I could honestly say that Jen was my first true love and for years I wondered if I could ever move on from her or the idea of her. As much as we told each other everything, I never pictured myself telling her how crazy I was about another girl. She had been dating a guy named George that she met at work for quite some time now, so I thought it was something she wanted to hear. Her reaction was not a happy one. After getting the initial reaction, I downplayed it. I don’t know if it was related to this conversation but the weekend after I left, she spontaneously married George at Town Hall.

  While hanging out with my parents one evening, my father was telling me about the gold that was supposedly buried up in the mountains of the Green Mountain National Forest and what they knew.

  He was telling me how last year, when my brother Kevin and Charles had come down from the mountain with the little box and opened it for the first time. It had a bunch of old trinkets, faded photographs and a note that said

“Hannah is guarding what you seek. Go visit ‘PB’ ”

  Now, not far the Gallow’s tree is an old family burial plot of the Baker Family, buried in the 1800’s

The first headstone you see is that of Hannah Baker when you enter the main gate amongst the headstones are that of the whole family. There is even a little tiny marble one with just the initials ‘P.B.’ which for years had figured was a baby that may have been still-born or died shortly after birth.

  Anyway, my family now had reason to believe that there was gold buried in that cemetery. The story was fascinating, of course, but I didn’t get sucked into the hype like my father had, probably because I hadn’t been there.

After they found the box, my father and my brother’s girlfriend spent hours wandering the graveyard and poking the ground with a stick to see if they could hear any metal. My father even went and bought a metal detector to see if it detected anything. Unfortunately, the mountain was full of mineral deposits that set the detector off anyway, so it was inconclusive. They left that year empty handed because they couldn’t bring themselves to dig up a cemetery, let alone a baby’s grave.

  Cut back to the following May. This was my first trip visiting since they found the box and for the first time, I was able to see these relics for myself.

The box itself was rather unique. You could see that it depicted a story of a knight and a princess throughout the courtship process. Everything in this box was very old and for the first time it actually sunk in that it may be true.

  My father said that it was decided that whoever went up to dig the gold would get a share. I questioned whether anybody could muster up the courage to dig up a baby’s grave and my father said. That’s the best thing about it. The little marble headstone isn’t a grave. Back in the day they used it as a marker that denotes the head of the family. The “P.B.” stood for Peter Baker, who actually had the largest tombstone in the graveyard. It was entirely possible that there could be gold buried there. Pretty crazy.