And perhaps because of the pace of my life and all of the “have-to-dos” in my world, it became apparent to me just out of school that I needed to find ways to recapture my joy for living. I needed a way to recharge, reset, and resharpen. Otherwise, as a rock that is constantly dripped upon by water, I would ultimately wear away to nothing.
When I was a boy that recharge came from skipping rocks, gigging frogs, swimming in the rock quarries, and camping under the stars. Or by flying bikes down steep hills, building marble cannons, throwing water balloons, and backpacking. And lazy times in the sun, sliding down grassy slopes, climbing trees, and carving toy wooden boats.
But my job has often keep me from camping often enough, while my weight and stiff back has kept me from climbing trees, and law enforcement prefers that I don’t make and shoot marble cannons.
Leaving my optimism, inspiration, hope, and desires drained.
Over the years I have supported Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, the United Way and Chidren’s Miracle Network.
When Bryan and Allison were younger, I sang campfire songs. Silly, foolish, simple songs that were better because of enthusiasm, not talent. Spent summer weeks, weekends, and evening creating experiences for kids, and I’ve told many a campfire stories about the interesting, foolish, and unusual things my brothers and I did growing up.
One day I bought an old 1970 VW pickup truck. And over the years that has morphed into Santa’s sleigh from Thanksgiving until New Years, and a Star Spangled patriotic display during June and July. A 1973 VW bus is morphing into a surf-mobile in my driveway.
All of these activities help me remain energetic. Then one day, I stumbled on the best of the bunch.
Literally.
A few years back I had made time one day to get out and do some pig hunting. I was wandering around out in the vast BLM lands around the earthquake capitol of the world. Trudging along a hard packed game trail in the sun baked hills along the San Andreas Fault line on my way back to the truck when I saw a partially buried old glass bottle. And as I have never understood how a bottle, can, or package can be light enough to carry in full, but too heavy to carry out empty; I stopped to dig it up planning to drop it in the recycle when I got home.
It turned out to be an old RC Cola bottle. Now Royal Crown Cola has not been particularly popular in California any time during my life span, and this bottle was certainly vintage. The label (paint) was significantly faded, but still discernable as the old yellow and red RC bottle label from the early 1950’s. There were a few scratches, and the inside was almost filled with dirt, but that bottle came out of the ground whole.
While driving home I passed by Point Lobos where Robert Lewis Stevenson used to sit on calm days and write while working on what became his book Treasure Island.
Ol’ Robert’s spirit must haunt those rocky inlets still.
Cause by the time I had gotten home, instead of throwing the bottle in the recycle tote, I submerged it in a bucket of water to get the dirt out.
Then I sat down and shaped a wooden plug to fit the bottle.
And scrounged up some old candle stubs.
And hunted up a stray crow feather up on the back hill.
And found several colors of paint.
And a small piece of old leather about paper size.
Some of you are likely ahead of me by now. But what I did next was to sit down and draw up a treasure map on that old piece of leather. The map had to be specific enough that it could be of almost anywhere, and yet general enough that nowhere could be excluded. Then some rubbing and smudging, a bit of concentrated tea to stain it, and some red berries too.
Then I rolled it up, slipped it into the bottle, set the wooden plug in place, set the neck upside down in the melted wax to assure that the wooden plug was soaked well and the gaps filled completely and thus sealed the bottle with meted wax.
I tested the seal by submerging the bottle in a bucket for several days.
Then I carried that dream down to the sea and set it free in the ocean waters off Moss Landing while the tide was running out fast and hard. The last I saw it was westward bound out past the channel marker buoy.
Now, that bottle may never be found, and that map might never have been seen again. Perhaps it broke on a rocky shore, or washed up on an isolated beach to be covered with sand, or began to leak and sunk.
But what if……
What if some young boy or girl found it on a beach somewhere. Maybe in California, maybe in Mexico, Maybe in Chile. And what if they had never seen the ocean before.
What if it was found by an old retired couple wandering the shoreline in the fading light of life?
Or a troubled in need of a dream to brace them against the world’s callowness?
Oh, there are a million “what ifs”.
And while none of them may ever come to pass, that simple act of launching a dream, inspiring a hope, and setting a possibility loose inspires my imagination and reignites the fire of life within me.
That RC bottle was the first.
But it was not the last.
Since then I have constantly been on the hunt for old bottles in my travels. Some with labels faded and old, some without labels at all. Clear, brown, green. The only requirement is that they are old. Old enough to look it. Old enough to not have threads, nor cap rings. Old enough to be a treasure in the imagination of whomever finds them.
Some have been filled with maps. Others with scrawled notes of joy, love, and wonder. Several poems and a story or two have been loosed amongst the waves. They have been set free up and down the California Coast, from Santa Barbara to Crescent City.
No names, no contacts, no phones, just dreams and stories and imagination.
And while I have yet to hear that any one of them has been found.
I believe.
If for no other reason than because believing keeps me alive and nourishes my imagination.
© Copyright 2014 Marty Vandermolen
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