My weekend for a dig

After six clues, I could no longer be a bystander to the medallion hunt so I packed a few things and shot across the entire state of Wisconsin to be a part of the revelry. Okay, so it wasn't so cavalier as all that, but it was pretty spur of the moment. In 1997, I began a new job in Milwaukee which prevented me from partaking in the event that I had become so fond of in 1996. I had done some childish digging near my home parks, Marydale and Como, in my preteen years, but nothing approached the zeal of the 1996 hunt at Harriet. I caught the bug and I caught it bad. This set of Web pages is evidence that I'm officially infested.

The point is that my inability to dig in 1997 was a hard thing to accept, especially since I knew the dig site, Como Park, like the hairs on my forearms. All of the clues were so obvious to me, as I had spent the better part of my maturing years in the vicinity. The hiding place was in the midst of my memories: I learned to swim across the way at Como Pool; I flew kites there; I ran cross-country for Como Park Sr. High there; I walked, ran, bussed, biked, and drove by the hiding site more days than not for 15 years of my life. And, ironically, it was the year I had to miss. The Water Cooler helped, but it just wasn't the same as feeling my extremities numb and tasting the ice of a midnight's air in a Minnesota February.

Cut to 1998. A year has passed. I'm comfortable at the Milwaukee job; enough so to casually take a Friday off on a day's notice. So it's off to the Twin Cities I race, with wife and child on board, for a rendezvous with a patch of worn snow in some park I normally wouldn't go to.

Now generally, I make a round of phone calls, visit with family, have a beer, and do any number of things when I arrive at the homestead. Having made the Wisconsin to Minnesota pilgrimage for some years as a college student at UW-Madison, certain routines had been set in a rather firm brick. But that Friday night in St. Paul just before the release of Clue 7 would be one to remember for me for its departure from the routine. I dropped the wife and child off at the in-laws for the night, stopped by my mom's for a quick chat and a shovel, and learned that all my friends were meandering about in Minneapolis somewhere. I told them I might stop by their chosen roost, which I did much past midnight, but first I had some personal matters to attend to.

And so I went to investigate a few ideas. I drove through Cherokee and Indian Mounds and past Kellogg, Mears, and Harriet. Much had been dug up already. The fair weather brought out more shovels – even when nobody really had a good, solid inkling. "Just dig," says the avid hunter.

I eventually parked the car near a tennis court just beneath the watchful cyclops of the beacon tower. I worked my way to high ground and marveled at the number of flashlights zipping around the oreo patches of snow lightly sprinkled with dug-up earth. I picked a spot between three trees, marked off some paces in an important sort of way, and dug in. I went like this until my bit of stream had been completely panned and then I kind of just rested on my shovel and looked out over downtown St. Paul. It was a truly magical moment that I will never forget. Because, you see, it's not really the prize that I do it for, but the communal nature of the event and the shared wonder of the lesser twin, St. Paul. Born and raised, it will always be "home." The medallion hunt gives me an excuse to explore it.....with a little extra incentive for the Golem in us all.