It was a beautiful spring day, late in March of 2006 when I decided that I needed an outing, badly. I’d been under a lot of stress lately and I knew the wildflowers were beginning to bloom in the hills. So I decided a drive to the country was in order. I could also go to visit a favorite campground area, a couple of hours east of the town I live in.

I’m a huge rock hound and I enjoy collecting unusual rocks for my garden and yard. Not just any ol' rocks though... special rocks! The entire area I live in is rich in geologic history. This area in particular had a wealth different rock materials, and I could always be sure of coming away from there with some sort of little treasure.

Just a mile or so west of the campground area, the same creek ran through a 40 acre parcel of land that had once belonged to my husband’s family. When he and I married, the parcel was a wedding gift from his mother.

There was an old cabin on the land that we enjoyed immensely, and we’d spent nearly every weekend of our time together there refurbishing and improving it a little bit at a time. Built by a gold miner back in the late 1890’s, it was small, and very plain to say the least. The walls were made of hand-sawed and hand-planed planks of cedar from the property, and the wooden floors were of oak. It was small, but it was cozy and sturdy. We added lots of extras, like a bathroom with hot and cold running water, and a small solar system for lights or power to run the vacuum. Bordered on three sides by BLM land, it was tucked back into a private little valley, away from the smog and heat in town, and well away from civilation. We couldn't wait to move there when we retired.

However, in the first few months after his his death my relationship with his family had come to an abrupt halt. I was almost immediately informed that the cabin and land had never been deeded over to him as we were led to believe it had, and I was immediately banned from going there. Now, eleven months later, I'd find some solace and comfort by visiting the creek at the campgrounds.

Also, almost immediately, I'd begun to suspect that I was being followed and watched, and by now all doubt had been erased from my mind. For a time, it was almost amusing to catch different people spying on me or following me everytime I turned around. It was almost like a game at first...until I'd caught a couple of different guys peeking into my windows at night. As innocuous or harmless as that may sound to some, it took away any sense of privacy or security I once had. I was contantly nervous and anxious everytime I stepped outside my own house

The rumor was that they believed if they caught me doing something that might discredit me, they could perhaps keep me from getting my share of his estate. I dimsissed it at first, sure that they would evnetually figure out what a waste of time that was, and if not welcome me back, would at least be civil to me.

The hardest thing to wrap my mind around was his son's attitude toward me. We'd been very fond of one another almost from the beginning, and it hurt me deeply to think that he might really feel that way about me now. So I struggled with that even as the events that were unfolding around me begged me to admit it, and to protect myself.

When he first died, I poured myself into gardening. I spent most evenings in my back yard working on my yard or some project for my yard, and occasionally having friends over for back yard cookouts.

With daytime temperatures hovering around the century mark, I looked forward to the sun dropping in the sky before I went outside to work. One evening, about dusk, I busied myself with watering and pulling weeds, when suddenly a camera flashed from the alley behind my house. I thought I'd seen that flash before this too. But I wasn't positive, and I’d just dismissed it as coming from my neighbors yard. This time it obviously came from the alley behind me, as I heard the footfalls of someone running away. I ran to the back fence, and pushed my face up against the cyclone fencing to see out into the alley. I looked just in time to catch a glimpse of a male figure running out onto the street. I didn't see his car as he drove away on the street, tires squeeling.

The fact that none of this made any sense to me, at all, only served to further unnerve me. If they thought they would catch me doing something unethical, or even illegal, they were wasting their time. And even if I had been doing something like that, it would have no bearing on the outcome of the probate case anyway.

I tried to just go on like nothing was happening. I was not going to let them know, no matter what, how hurt I was...or how unnerved I was. I did NOT want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they were bothering me.

This was the mood I was in that day in March! I needed this outing badly, and I'd awakend that morning with a new attitude!! I was happy and excited at the prospect of going to the hills, and hopefully nothing would come along to spoil it for me.

It wouldn't have been wise for me to go up there alone, and so I called a good friend, Dave, to see if he would mind riding up with me. He jumped at the chance! An environmental chemist by trade, Dave was a rock hound too, and liked panning for gold.

So I packed a picnic lunch for the both of us, some shovels, buckets, and scissors for cutting wildflowers, a couple sets of binoculars, my telescope, and my camera. Then I stopped to pick up Dave and his gold panning stuff, and off we went.

When we got to the hills, we followed the dirt road clear on through the park where it narrowed a bit, and then wound back and forth up a 1500-2000’ hill behind the park. I knew you could see the top half of this hill, and sections of the road on it from the cabin. I hoped if I got high enough on it, I might be able to glimpse the cabin from up there.

We took our time climbing the hill, stopping often to look in the direction of the cabin. But there was always that one tree in the way, or that one bend in the road, and soon we could tell we weren't going to see any better further up because there was just too many trees and obstacles between us. As soon as I found a spot in the road to turn around, we headed back down, in 4-low, cruising slow and watching below to see if we might have missed a spot with that 'magic' view.

As we neared the bottom of the ravine again, I stopped to try one last spot in the road with a view in that direction. I got out with my binoculars to give it one last shot, but when I couldn't see it, I began scanning the area below us to look for a good spot on the creek.

I follwed the creek in the viewfinders for a ways when I noticed movement in a tree about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile down the creek from us. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but it looked like there was a box in the tree. It looked like a ‘blind’ of some sort, but it was too hard to tell how big it was from there?

Then I saw a man standing at the bottom of the tree, looking up, pulling on a rope, almost like he was working a pulley system. But from up there it looked as if he would disappear into the surroundings, and then would reappear.

I remembered on the way in, passing a couple of campground spots that were occupied by large groups of people, but I hadn't paid any particular attention knowing I wouldn't be pulling in next to them. When Dave couldn't find what tree I was talking about, we decided I must be seeing things again, and headed on down to the creek.

We didn't want to go all the way back into the park around a bunch of people...that was what I'd come to get away from. We finally lucked out and found a gorgeous spot where we could park close to the creek. We liked the way the creek split right there around a small island of land in the center of the creek. It would be perfect because he could pan on the inward side of the island, while I looked for rocks along the bank. That way we wouldn’t be disturbing the sand and sediment above one another.

We parked the Expedition about 25-30 feet away from where we would be working, and made our way down a 5 or 6 foot high embankment to the creek bed below. I took a trowel and shovel, and he took his pans and small tools with him, and we went right to work, never suspecting what we were about to find ...

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