The Treasure Diary

It had been nearly a year since her aunt Deanna had died, yet Rachel still couldn’t bring herself to go through her few scant belongings. Her aunt was never one to hold onto things, preferring instead to living minimally. This was a way of life Rachel happily adopted. This almost nomad-like detachment to material things allowed them both the freedom to set off on adventures whenever inspiration struck them.

She and Deanna would take off with virtually no notice, driving across states to try number 6 on the Top Ten This list or to see the Country’s smallest that. Even when Rachel was a child, Aunt DD would periodically show up early on a Saturday morning, and she knew a day of adventure awaited them. Her father indulged his oldest sister’s bohemian whims, knowing that she loved Rachel as if she were her own; recognizing that she could spark a part of his daughter’s imagination that he couldn’t.

The older Rachel got, the more she realized that these road trips were more than just a way to escape the monotony of everyday life. In fact, they kept her tethered to reality. She spent so much of her life inside her head, lost in her own imagined reality, that she occasionally needed someone to pull her from her thoughts and back to the outside world. While this quality of Rachel’s made for a successful writer, it didn’t make for much of a personal life. Deanna knew this. She recognized it in herself. Since Deanna’s sudden heart attack, Rachel had retreated even further inside herself, worried she had lost the only person who would ever truly know her.

One March night, spurred on by a bottle of wine and the support of her dog, Harley, Rachel summoned the courage to open one of the boxes. It had been packed generously yet haphazardly by friends who had helped her clear out Deanna’s studio apartment. Buried among a dish towel, the iron, and other random possessions lay something too long forgotten: Deanna’s small, black notebook.

This notebook, which Rachel handled as if it were a precious artifact, contained years of notes, clues, maps, and solved riddles from their greatest adventure. All of which brought them ever closer to the Redding Treasure.

Thomas Redding was many things: heir to an oil and gas fortune, philanthropist, confirmed bachelor, and notorious practical joker. He once filled a friend’s house with donkeys after he publicly referred to Redding as a jackass. Another time he paid an exorbitant sum of money to rent the house next to a rival. He hired a brass quartet to play for 24 straight hours, merely to win the argument of which was more annoying, Dixieland Jazz or Kentucky Bluegrass. In 1987, when Redding announced that he had hidden $20,000 in gold in the Texas Hill Country, and would periodically release clues to its whereabouts, people were intrigued, but no one was all that surprised.

Thomas Redding did nothing in a small way. The clues would appear in a variety of contexts and with no real regularity. Simply knowing how to find the clues was a test in itself. Redding, using assumed identities, would post newspaper ads or write Op Ed pieces, which contained cryptic messages of where to find the next clue. The clues themselves, sometimes part Zodiac letter, and other times part Wild West cattle drive, required a level of mental acuity and physical fitness that separated the casual thrill seeker from the potentially worthy.

Redding had put a deadline on the search, however. He announced that if the treasure hadn’t been discovered by his 75th birthday, he would retrieve it himself, forever keeping the location a mystery, and lament the passing of a time when men and women relied on their wit and tenacity to seek out the extraordinary. Unlike the masses Redding pitied for being content with their average, ordinary lives.

No one, especially not Redding, predicted the early onset dementia that resulted from a lifetime of minor yet ultimately significant head injuries. ATV crashes, the year he spent pursuing a boxing career, and his penchant for uncommon sexual practices, left his brain bruised and tired. By his 68th birthday, the former titan of a man could only remember his name on good days. Redding, susceptible to a bit of the paranoia that affects all people of a certain wealth, never disclosed the location of his treasure, even to his closest friends. And so, his 75th birthday came and went with no recognition of its significance.

But the gold was still out there. And people still sought it.

“Am I truly considering this?”

Harley’s only response was one barely discernible raised eyebrow.

“Ignore me all you like, but you’d be going with me.”

The dog closed her eyes, fell back asleep instantly, and resumed snoring like the little, old lady she was. Rachel referred to Harley as her canine soul mate and to herself as Harley’s emotional support human. This past year, Harley had been Rachel’s lifeline.

“I could certainly use the money.”

After almost a year of missed deadlines and declined opportunities, Rachel was steadily depleting her bank account. In today’s currency, the gold would be worth more than $80,000. But even more than the money, the idea of picking up where she and Deanna had left off reawakened something in her. Aside from running a few errands and occasionally accepting a friend’s offer of ramen and thrift store shopping, Rachel confined herself to her little circle of two. But there was now a voice in her head telling her that life always finds a way. But it won’t wait. Surprisingly to Rachel, it wasn’t her aunt’s voice she heard; it was her own. It was telling her it was time to venture outside and get back to life. The next morning, she packed up her camping gear, the notebook, and Harley, and set out for the Hill Country.

31,000 square miles of wildlife, canyons, and rivers. That’s the Texas Hill Country. Even though they had narrowed the search considerably over the past 10 years, it wasn’t until she reached Fredericksburg on their first night, that Rachel remembered how vast an expanse still lay ahead of her. She pulled out the black notebook and flipped through the well-worn, heavily notated, queso-stained pages.

Based on Redding’s earliest clues, they had quickly ruled out the areas surrounding towns with obvious names like Hunt, Comfort, and Utopia. But as Redding’s clues honed in on the treasure, they became more involved. An engineer by trade, he knew that prime numbers are essential to asymmetric cryptography. Always one to put his own amusement above everything else, he wrote a code using asymmetric cryptography that’s solution was itself a prime number and hoped someone would see the humor. Even though the joke was lost on them, the answer led Rachel and Deanna to Highway 41, the only highway in the Hill Country that was also a prime number. At a mere 50.5 miles long, this narrowed the scope significantly. Of course, it was still 50.5 miles to search in every direction. Fortunately, a couple of years later they had unraveled a clue whose solution told the seeker to Burn in Hell. While others were convinced this pointed in the direction of Boerne, a town on the northeast edge of the Hill Country, Rachel and Deanna were fourth and fifth generation Texans. They knew Boerne was pronounced Bur-nee and so gave little credence to that lead.

Soon after, they discovered that the northwest corner of the Texas Twisted Sisters, a favorite route of motorcyclists from all over the state, was located at a crossroads of Highway 41. A thought occurred to them. As out of the blue as it seemed, they cross-referenced “Burn in Hell” with the rock band, Twisted Sister, and confirmed it was track three on the band’s album, Stay Hungry. Knowing Redding had a puckish sense of humor, they were confident they had it right. Neither one of them knew this clue was to be Deanna’s last. But now a couple of years later, Rachel had her starting point.

Up before dawn, Rachel and a begrudging Harley headed west to the Twisted Sisters. As the sun rose over the ruggedly beautiful landscape, Rachel felt happy for the first time in a very long time. She was confident she was on the right track. More importantly, among the doodles and scratched out thoughts, she found the note Deanna had left for her in the notebook.

My dearest Ray,

You and I have always been two people of one spirit. Unbound by convention, finding ourselves through the worlds we create. For people like us, happiness occurs in small moments that we can lock away and then later recall to combat the loneliness. If you’ve found this letter, you are continuing our search for the Redding Treasure. Embarking with you on our greatest adventure will remain to my dying day the happiest time of my life. The memories we created, the miles we traveled remain constant companions and a treasure all their own. As with everything you do, I am prouder of you than you know. Be true to yourself. The world needs your words. No one can write them but you. But please remember from time to time to embrace the small moments of happiness that lay beyond your door. Adventure awaits!

You are starlight. You are moon glow. You are my Ray of sunshine. -Aunt DD

Six months after Rachel discovered the gold, and the media frenzy had died down, the public had all but forgotten about the Redding Treasure. This suited her just fine. Even though the various interviews and public appearances had resulted in a book deal to recount the tale of a modern-day treasure hunt, she still preferred her circle of two. Instead of retreating inside her apartment, though, she took to the open road. She used part of the money to buy a small camper van, just big enough for her and Harley. Deanna was never far, though. Rachel kept her Treasure Diary, as she now called it, close at hand, with her aunt’s note folded inside. She and Harley traveled to small towns, big cities, and through wide-open country as she chronicled their expeditions for a travel website she named Adventure Awaits.

As they trekked across the miles, a plan began to form in Rachel’s mind. It would require a lot of time. Possibly years. And could she really be that clever?

But first things first: where exactly would she bury the $20,000?