Digging for Dreams

Last weekend I spent Thursday night through the early Monday morning hours with my sisters and three of my cousins, also sisters, on a trip to Murfreesboro, Arkansas to hunt for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park.  I didn’t write about it before now because I had a deadline for my newspaper article, and I wanted to base my article on the trip.  I finally got that turned in last night, a slightly sugar-coated version for the general readership of the newspaper, but you, my friends are going to get the down and dirty version.  And when I say dirty, I mean gritty, grimy, grubby, muddy, mucky, and murky.  There is nothing clean about searching for diamonds in a 37-acre plowed field that has been rained on for hours on end.

We hit the road about 11:00 p.m. on Thursday night and drove all night only making short stops for drinks, gas, and lottery scratch-off tickets across the Louisiana border.  My cousin, the artist, has a penchant for scratch-off tickets and treasure hunting, hence, the trip to the diamond fields in the first place.   When we arrived at our cabin early Friday morning we scrambled to bed to get in an hour or two of sleep before heading to the crater.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the last hour or two of our drive into Murfreesboro was through pouring rain, and it did not stop when we got there.  In my short sleep I could hear the rain outside my window and wondered if we would skip the day and wait until the next to go hunting.  No. We went anyway.

The ruts between the hills of the plowed fields carried water like small rivers.  Trudging through the mud was akin to doing leg lifts with a full gallon of milk tied to each ankle.  For one as out of shape as I, that activity got old real fast.   

I started off wearing a rain poncho but after about 10 minutes of carrying a bucket, shovel, backpack, two wood-framed sifting screens and another flat fine screen I was so hot I couldn’t tear it off fast enough.  The artist shed hers as well, choosing to lie on it instead of wearing it so she could be closer to the ground to spot the stones.  Serious business, this was.

After gathering a good bucket of mud I spent the majority of the day under the roof of one of the screening pavilions, sifting mud in the café au lait colored water.  I found lots of jasper, calcite, and volcanic ash, but no diamonds.  By closing time I was soaked from head to toe, cold, and muddy, but my spirit was not crushed.  I was ready for the next day when surely the weather would be better.  It was.

Sunny skies does not a dry field make.  Even under the most ideal conditions the rain-soaked fields did not have time to dry before we headed out on Saturday morning.  Acting on a tip a staff person gave us our group took off towards the hot spot as soon as we got there.  Forget the planning of the previous night when we discussed how we were going to canvass the area like a CSI team.  It was every woman for herself, and it only took this self about five minutes to get stuck in the mud again.  This time my feet came all the way out of my cute leopard print rain shoes and I pushed forward in socks.  I wanted to cry and go back, but that wasn’t an option.  Besides, going back would be no easier than going forward.  At least forward was uphill to drier land.

My socks didn’t last long, and soon I was down to bare feet.  All that pretty jasper, calcite, and volcanic ash is like broken glass under bare feet.  On higher ground I found a small boulder to sit on and the middle child helped me scrape enough muck off my feet so I could at least put my shoes back on.  For awhile it was good, but then another sink hole and I was in to my knees.  I pulled my feet out of my shoes and had to reach down with both hands to dig each shoe out of the sinkholes.  It was back to bare feet until I could find another bolder on higher ground again.  This is not what I bought into.  Forget diamonds.  Forget jasper, calcite and volcanic ash.  I just wanted to go home.

After a short rest my sisters and I made our way to the southern fields where it was much drier, and I regained my sense of adventure.  My spirits were lifted by watching two little boys have a mud fight.  One was so excited he shoved a handful of mud into his own face.  Later I saw him lying on his back doing snow angels in the mud.  It did my heart good to see carefree children enjoying the outdoors, and parents who allowed and encouraged their natural proclivity for dirt.  Still, the diamonds were nowhere to be found, and the impossibility of it all was a little disheartening.  I decided I would not go back on Sunday.

I went back on Sunday.  The artist and the driver were determined and their enthusiasm spread to my pesky sister and me and we had to go, too.  I was glad I did, otherwise I would have missed the artist’s rendition of a high dive without board or water.  All she needed was a slippery slope and with a backward approach she pulled out a double twist in an open pike position.  It was a fail dive ending in a belly flop, but entertaining just the same.  I only laughed because she gave me permission to do so.

At 1:00 we tore ourselves away, but not before we finally found a half carat yellow diamond.  We didn’t find it on the ground, but we did get to see it in the hands of the teenage boy who found it.  Young eyes, that’s the key!

I remember on that first day there, before exhaustion and pessimism took root, I was talking to my mother.  I told her I was doing something she always wanted to do.  I was living her dream for her.  My mother’s voice inside my heart replied, “You need to stop trying to live my dreams for me, and start living your own dreams.” Well, I was living my own dream of sorts.  I was somewhere new, I was having fun, and there was a slight possibility I could find treasure.  That was a dream, wasn't it?  And treasure? 

In the end I had to remind myself of the words of Mr. Archer, a man who went to the crater everyday for 30 years and found over 5000 diamonds in his lifetime.  Mr. Archer, who died on the diamond field, once said of diamond hunting, “Did you meet people today?  Did you feel the sun shining on you today? Well think how nice that is.  It’s not easy for anyone…always leave smiling.”

I did leave smiling.  We all did.  I think we’ll go again, or at least I would like to someday.  I’m just beginning to live my own dreams.  There’s still a diamond out there somewhere for me.   There’s still much left to find and much, much left to do.