Join Me on the Trove Treasure Hunt

My friend David taught me that if you want to set up a treasure hunt, you start by deciding where you’re going to hide the treasure, and then you work backwards. Basically, you can’t put a clue structure in place without knowing where the prize will be buried.

I often think about how this applies to life, too. It’s only after I’ve found what I’m looking for that I can begin to understand the circuitous path it took to get there, and where I went wrong along the way, or thought I did.

But consider this: maybe all the so-called wrongs were no such thing.

I’ve come to believe that stumbling around in the dark—sometimes for years or even decades—is essential to the process of discovery. What feels wrong at the time usually isn’t wrong at all. If you welcome every challenge on your journey, if you learn from your missteps and pay attention to what they have to show you, you will likely get closer to the treasure you seek, whatever that may be: a new job, a health cure, a safe home, a baby, a chest of gold coins, simple joy, or that soulmate you’ve been longing to meet.

I’ve wished for all of those things at one point in my life, but my most recent treasure hunt has been for a book. My book.

After several years and a crap ton of challenges, I sold my memoir, Trove to a dream editor at Brown Paper Press. I cannot enumerate how many times in the writing and publishing process (much of it spent wandering alone in a dark woods), I nearly gave up thinking I’d never find what I was looking for.

In some of my darker hours, I would sob on my husband’s shoulder until his shirt was damp with my tears, then I’d set aside my pain, buck up, and go back to my writing. Above my desk I’ve taped a favorite quote by “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” mythologist Joseph Campbell: Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

I kept stumbling, believing treasure was out there and I was the one to find mine. Belief. That’s crucial, too. In fact, it’s probably more important than anything else while treasure hunting, because belief alone (see it, feel it, touch it, taste it, hug it even though you don’t have it yet) not only gives your treasure form in the world, but it keeps you from giving up.

In the process of finally dreaming my book into reality, I also realized that one of the most crazy fun parts of the process has been sharing my passion for armchair treasure hunting—both real (Trove is my story about an armchair treasure hunt for $10,000 in gold coins in NYC), and symbolic (I was also trying to find that elusive thing that would make me happy).

If you’re a little intrigued or have your own treasure thing, I’ve decided—after years of looking for treasure in its myriad forms—I’m going to set up my own armchair treasure hunt, one that I can launch with my book on 9-19-19, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The idea of the hunt is that over the course of a few weeks, I’ll release a series of clues related to my book.

Anyone anywhere can try and solve the clues online, but when you figure out where the actual treasure is hidden, you’ll need to go to that place (or dispatch a trustworthy pirate friend) to get it. 

Perhaps you will follow along and realize that you, too, have a passion for searching. Maybe it will inspire you to discover the wholly unexpected as I do in Trove.

My book launches in less than four months, so it’s time to bury a treasure and then work backwards, as David advises. The only thing you’ll need to solve the Trove Treasure Hunt is curiosity, and a copy of my book. It will also help if you subscribe to my blog posts or follow me on Twitter and Instagram which is where I’ll post clues. So while you’re doing that, I’ve got treasure to bury and some clues to write.

In the meantime, my advice to those of you who are looking for your own treasure is this: keep at it, keep stumbling, and, above all, keep believing. Only when you get there, only when you are clutching that treasure to your heart and finally sobbing with gratitude, will everything you’ve endured along the way make perfect sense.