Hector thrives in the dark. Maybe it’s a rabbit thing. Maybe it’s a once-blind, now-sighted thing. Maybe it’s just Hector who, thankfully, doesn’t seem to mind the amount of time he spends in his kennel as we travel and who is more than willing to accompany me into ‘The Mine Mine,’ which is both dark and, in places, tight. It’s the people he’s skittish around and I’ve learned, myself, that this is a wise instinct. I avoid the light of other headlamps, keeping mine dark until the very last moment. Then, we begin to dig.
‘Part museum, part burial-mound, ‘The Mine Mine’ is the eclectic collection of an eccentric dead man. In the style of old pharaohs, he chose to be buried with his belongings and made good work of it himself, casting everything he grew tired of into a natural pit on his land. The pit is one of two entrances to a complicated cave system where these discarded possessions spread out over the years but were otherwise preserved. The second entrance was found long after the man had died and had been ceremoniously sealed in the pit. By then, much of the land was public and a ticketing system was established. This tenuous nicety is the only thing keeping the activities at ‘The Mine, Mine’ in the arena of ‘discovery’ rather than, say, ‘looting.’’
There are precious few rules at play in ‘The Mine Mine.’ A lot more in the way of personal liabilities. A blinking key chain on my belt loop should, theoretically, indicate my location in the caverns and send an alert if I’m down here too long. That way they can charge me for the overstay and, if I’m lucky, recognize if I’ve fallen into a pit or otherwise mangled myself past the point of self-evacuation.
The route I take isn’t very long, but it’s off-map and a little more treacherous than what the average family caravan is willing to risk for old canned food and cave-softened memorabilia from the man’s past. A narrow crevasse opens along the floor. I jump it, rather than trust the rickety bridge someone installed nearby. I’ve read that early Mine-miners set traps. This was before everyone realized that it was all mostly junk, down here.
Hector and I squeeze through a crack in the wall, one that I might not have been able to make even a year ago. I’ve been losing weight- enough that people sometimes comment on it in a less-than-complimentary way. In this instance, it means I make it into a chamber that is inaccessible, or at least, not worth the risk, to others. There is a skeleton on the floor, which is concerning, but not surprising. The sign outside said I might see things like that. I double check that it’s a Halloween decoration but I’m not medically knowledgeable and some combination of squeamishness and superstition keep me from turning it over.
I squeeze into the next chamber and feel my feet go out from under me. I tumble into a pit full of old toy boxes before I slide down into a new cavern some thirty feet down. There’s some panic. Some grappling for my light before realizing its still attached to my head, blocked by the paper stat-card for an old transformer. Hector slides down after me and starts to chew the garbage we brought down with us. I try to find my bearings and, instead, I find the body of the man in his tacky, bejeweled casket. Several of those jewels have been pried away by a crowbar hidden near the north wall.
This is not my first time in the chamber. Not my second. Every few years I have to lose the weight and shuffle around in the dark, waiting to fall through those boxes because I can never quite remember where the pit is and marking it would make the treasure that much more obvious.
I take six more jewels- enough for the next couple years if I’m careful. I don’t trust myself to take them all at once. With that much money, I could do anything.
But wouldn’t.
-traveler
