Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Metal Plate or Saucer From Child's Tea Set. |
Before I get started today, here is something I had a while but just cleaned up a little. It is 2.56 inches in diameter and has the C WALT DISNEY mark. I haven't really researched it yet, but would guess it is from at least the first half of the 1900s.
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It is not a joke. It can take decades to discover the treasures that lie silently hidden beneath the blanket of sand we call a beach. You can hunt a beach like that hundreds of times before you earn the right to receive the gift of its secrets. A beach can keep its secrets or centuries. You can be tempted to give up on that kind of beach while unimagined treasure lies under the very sand walked over man times before without any hint of what lies below. You can be tempted to spend your time on beaches that are easier. And from some points of view, that might be the wise thing to do.
Every beach has a personality, but a beach is like a veiled lady. You might only get to know it very slowly.
I'm thinking of one Treasure Coast beach that gave up its secrets to me over a period of three decades or more. It would give up some little trinket of every once in a while - but just enough to keep me interested without being satisfied.
I don't know now exactly how long it took or the exact sequence. I didn't keep the records I'd need to be able to tell you that, but it was a process of many years. and I'm sure there are more surprises waiting to be found.
I first visited that beach sometime back in the early 1980s when I made my first trips to the Treasure Coast to find Spanish shipwreck treasures. Up until that time, I hunted mostly South Florida, would give up some glitzy stuff on a regular basis after I graduated from hunting coins to gold.
Beaches invite you to lie lazy in the burning sun, but on a whim they might show their other side when dark clouds shut out the sun. You might hear the faint whispers of the siren song before the wind the wind starts to howl, the surf pound, and the sand stings and the sky spits in your face. That is the side of a beach that I like the most.
But I didn't set out to tell you about the split personality of a beach. I set out to tell you how about how slowly a beach can give up its secrets.
I'm thinking of one beach in particular that begrudgingly gave up some of its secrets to me over a period of decades. It would give up a little of this or that every once in a while. Nothing great - just enough to be keep a very patient person intrigued. Many would have given up on it much sooner, and I'm sure that many did. I was tempted to give up on it several times myself, but I kept coming back because I knew something good should be there. It was my primary target. Yet years and decades and many hunts passed before I finally found it.
It is funny how close you can be. A gem of a treasure can remain hidden just inches under your very feet, and you go home with no indication that you passed near anything good at all. Eventually you start wondering if there was ever anything good there at all. If it wasn't so close to my home and some of my other favorite beaches, I probably would have given up on that beach. My research said something should be there.
As the years passed, the beach gave me a little gift or two. It wasn't what I was hunting for, but it was something. It could have shut me out completely, but I stuck with it and I got to know that beach better and better. As seldom as it produced, it produced an unusual variety of treasures. There was a bronze spike found at one end of the beach. It was not from a treasure wreck - probably an 1800s wreck. There was the silver cross that guarded its secrets closely, but like so much about that beach,, it made me wonder. Then there was the best piece of sea glass I ever found, and the broken lithic spear point, a millions-of-years-old fossil.
Years had gone by and that beach wasn't on average a very productive beach for me. It gave me some really old stuff, and I liked that, but it wasn't until just three years ago, that it gave me what I originally came there looking for some thirty or forty years earlier.
It was a long slow process. I could have easily given up on that beach and was tempted to several times. That is my point today. A beach can hide its secrets for a long time. You can fail and fail and fail, being just an inch, an hour, or a day from your goal before everything comes together and the beach finally decides to give you what you have been looking for. Don't give up too soon. A temptress can withhold her gifts until you show yourself faithful enough to earn the prize.
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| Source: MagicSeaweed.com. |
Doesn't look very exciting.
I didn't get to go out the past couple of days, which bugs me.
Good huntng,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net