Scavenging

Last evening I started one of my favorite post-ski season activities—looking for things, usually money, that people drop on the slopes. I follow the edges of the melting snow pack on the ski slopes and see what I can find. Last year I found about $30 in cash, mostly quarters. My best find was a pretty hand-crocheted scarf in spring colors. I still have it. It dried out pretty nice.

I’m pretty much a piker when it comes to finding stuff on the slopes. There’s a guy with a metal detector that I see every year. He slowly works his way back and forth across every slope. It takes him days. My neighbor down the mountain says he found over $100 in coins last year, but he gets off work earlier than I do and since he works at Roundtop he can scavenge on his lunch hour. Plus he now has a metal detector too.

Still, there’s a lot of stuff, some of it decent stuff, to be found. There are always rumors of lost rings, Rolex watches, etc., but I don’t know of anyone who’s ever found anything that good. My neighbor has already found several strands of prettily painted beaded necklaces hanging on a tree. And (yet another) pair of gloves, which he gave to me. Nice ones, too. Gore-tex fleece. One less pair to add to the hundreds of pairs lost this year on the slopes. I’m not exaggerating. One of my duties during the season is to search the lost and found when people report they’ve lost something. That stuff all gets donated to a local shelter.

So last night the light was fading because I didn’t get home until late, and I wasn’t having any luck finding something. I sort of suspect this won’t be a good a year for finding stuff since the season ended early, and the warm weather in January kept a lot of people away. But I was determined not to quit until I found something. And then I saw it. A dime. Not an auspicious way to start the scavenging season, but at least it is a start.