Jessica Rushenberg waited years for her high school sweetheart to pop the question, so it seemed almost cruel when she had to hunt eight days for her own engagement ring.
It was Christmas Eve and everyone was acting funny, pulling out cameras, when her boyfriend, Bryan Gustavson, handed her a gift.
“I’m thinking, great, this is how he’s going to propose? He’s just going to hand it to me?” she said. “And I don’t have any makeup on?”
She opened the gift, expecting a ring, and was stunned to see a computer memory stick. Then he handed her another gift. It was her engagement ring — locked inside a cashbox. The memory stick held eight clues that would lead to a key to the box, but she could read only the first one because the others needed passwords. Borrowing from the style of the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt, each clue would lead to a location in a St. Paul park. There she would discover the password for the next clue.
Eight clues, eight days until she could unlock her ring and his proposal.
Or, as Rushenberg described her initial reaction: “Eight days of torture. Anybody who knows me knows I’m literally the most impatient person in the universe.”
The spirit of the Treasure Hunt, the couple’s favorite winter activity, hit her when she plugged the memory stick into her computer and understood what was going on.
“I typed in the first password and it was obviously written in traditional medallion-hunt verbiage,” Rushenberg said. “I immediately took out my medallion-hunting gear and said, ‘We’re leaving.’ ”
Try your hand at some of Gustavson’s clues! Scroll to end or jump here.
LONG WAIT
Rushenberg, 28, and Gustavson, 29, met during their freshman year at Hill-Murray School in Maplewood. They started dating their junior year and stayed together even when they went to separate colleges.
When they were 20, both transferred to Concordia University in St. Paul and have been living together ever since.
Today they live in Roseville, where Rushenberg is a veterinary technician at Banfield Pet Hospital. Gustavson is a paraprofessional at Park High School in Cottage Grove and a football coach at Woodbury High School.
Two years ago they had a daughter, Avery, and it became clear to Gustavson that it was time to get serious about getting married.
“Rather than just popping the question at Christmas, I wanted to figure out a way to make her work for it a bit and at the same time have a good time with it,” he said.
The Treasure Hunt came to mind. Every winter for more than 60 years, the Pioneer Press has hidden a medallion on public land somewhere in Ramsey County and published cryptic, somewhat poetic clues for noodlers. Hard-core hunters start searching as soon as they can get their eyes on a clue, which is in the middle of the night. Whoever finds the medallion can take home as much as $10,000.
Gustavson said he’s been noodling since he was a child and more than once has been digging in the right park, though he’s never got his hands on the medallion.
Rushenberg started joining him on the hunt after a few years of wondering what the attraction was. Now it’s a thing they do together.
“A lot of our favorite moments as a couple have been medallion hunting,” Gustavson said. “We’ve made a lot of memories, goofing around at night, hopped up on coffee. I wanted to re-create that with a prize she could win.”
BLOODHOUND
With an engagement ring on the line instead of some silly old $10,000, Rushenberg was properly motivated.
She rushed out the door on Christmas Eve fully intending to hunt down all eight passwords before morning. But Gustavson wouldn’t let her do more than one hunt a day, because he wanted her to find the key on New Year’s Eve.
And he wanted her to have some fun with it, even though it would be the first time she did a treasure hunt without him. He imagined he was the official Pioneer Press clue writer and tried to make it a challenge.
“I really tried my hardest to put some red herrings in there to put her off,” he said. “She turned into a bloodhound. The only one she really struggled with was at the bottom of Lilydale park, because it was so hard to get to.”
Rushenberg said she also had a little trouble with one at Hidden Falls, a park she wasn’t familiar with but now finds especially beautiful.
She tracked down a password a day, each one written on a toy or trinket Gustavson had hidden for her. Each password let her open a clue to find the next password. All the while she carried the locked box she’d received as a Christmas gift, and listened to the ring box knocking around inside.
The final clue — the one that would lead to the key that would unlock the box — was impossible to misinterpret: It was a time and a date and precise GPS coordinates for the gazebo at Irvine Park, the first park they ever hunted together.
Rushenberg’s sister drove her to the park on New Year’s Eve. When they arrived she saw family and friends waiting. They parted for her as she walked up to the gazebo, where Gustavson handed her a rose and the key and then asked her to marry him.
“It was sweet and it was perfect. It was so Bryan. So romantic but not over the top,” Rushenberg said. “Most people would think digging in the snow eight days for your engagement ring would not be romantic, but I loved it.”
In true St. Paul fashion, the group walked from the park up to Forepaugh’s for a toast and then farther up the hill to Tom Reid’s for a plate of poutine.
Gustavson and Rushenberg are planning a small wedding in December in Belize. They’ll be back home in time for the 2017 Winter Carnival and the Treasure Hunt.
“It was the best experience ever,” Rushenberg said. “Bryan and I are avid medallion hunters. … The fact he turned something so important to us, that we enjoy doing together, into our wedding proposal was just so sweet.”
Copyright 2016 Pioneer Press.
