My daughter Hope and my brother Jim are trudging their way up a hill, one muddy boot at a time. I’m behind them, having taken another quick run up the knob they just left. I could catch them if I want — pick up the pace, concentrate on the distance rather than the ground. But that’s not why we’re here.
We’ve been three hours in this field, with next to nothing to show for it. Surface hunting for Indian artifacts can be like that. But in the spring, when the wind is still cold and mud makes a mockery of the simple act of walking, going home with empty pockets seems like a lesson in futility.
I jokingly blame my brother’s new camcorder for jinxing us. He brings it to the field to record anything good we find. But when multiple passes on the best hill turn up nothing, we’d settle for something less than ideal — a fractured point or a broken scraper.
In the end, we sit on the tailgate of his truck, muddy tracks across the road and footprints in the field showing where we’ve been, but not telling the story of our day. We pull off boots, rest weary legs, and wonder what went wrong. How could such a promising field, which yielded part of a three-quarter-groove ax during our last visit, suddenly become such a disappointment?
Lunch gives us renewed energy and restored optimism. Two miles upstream from where we started, we head back out across another muddy field, eager for some reward for our persistence. An hour and a half later, as the light dims and the sky threatens rain, we walk out with only two pieces — the tip of an arrow, which Jim picks up early, and the base of a point, which Hope discovers late. I have nothing to show for my efforts.
It doesn’t discourage me, because I know there are good things still waiting to be found.
Twenty-four hours later I’m at the bottom of a hill, watching Dave as he holds a steady pace well ahead of me. I know this road, know the way the pavement pitches up slightly as the Pike bends to the left. I understand what it will take to catch him. Shifting down two gears to quicken my cadence, I begin the chase. I’m on his back wheel well before the top. It’s then that the effort of a winter on the trainer seems to have paid off. The hours of not giving up, of pushing through demanding intervals, become a powerful tool I’ve never worked this early in the season. There’s a reward here, even if it’s March and that victory is relatively meaningless, at least to anyone but me.
Just as important, that’s the lesson to be learned from spending a bone-tiring day arrowhead hunting in the mud and finding next to nothing. It’s what I try to teach Hope when she seems deflated after hours of fruitless searching, especially when one of those fields is the most productive land I’ve ever hunted.
“You just have to keep going,” I tell her. “It will all pay off, eventually.”
Road bike: 21.00 miles — Henry County
