May

Can Treasure Hunting Change Your Life?

by Meredith Mullins on May 23, 2013

treasure map reveals a plan for hunting for treasure and life-changing experiences

What’s your plan to find the hidden treasure?
© iStockphoto

Forrest Fenn and The Thrill of the Chase

As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.

—Forrest Fenn

And so begins a story of mystery, adventure, and hunting for hidden treasure—with life-changing experiences for the treasure giver and the treasure hunter.

From Bottle Caps to Gold and Jewels

Forrest Fenn
The Old Santa Fe Trading Co

Forrest Fenn is a collector extraordinaire—from bottle caps, string, and arrowheads as a child to art and artifacts for many decades after.

With this passion for exploration and discovery, he made a name for himself (and a fortune) as a charismatic and internationally-known art dealer in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Then, his life changed. He was diagnosed with cancer and a less-than-encouraging chance of survival.

Meredith Mullins 6 Comments

Adventure Travel/Discoveries/USA

Nov

An OIC Vegetable Moment

by Meredith Mullins on November 8, 2012

Endive for sale in a Normandy vegetable market gives the author an "Oh, I see" moment about the endive growing cycle

Endive for sale in a Normandy vegetable market
© Meredith Mullins

Endive Indeed

How could I have eaten endive for so many years and have no idea how it looks “in the wild” or how complex its growing process is?

How could I be so uncaring about a vegetable’s life cycle or take such a crunchy treat for granted?

It took the convergence of a Saturday morning market in Normandy and a stall dedicated solely to endives to lead me to an endive ephiphany. What is that I C?

The Bizarre Life of an Endive

I recognized the finished product easily enough, as it sat on the scale waiting to be weighed and bagged, looking like plump little rolled white cigars.

But what was that off to the side in the big red tub? It was something completely alien. The endive “bud,” perched on its root throne, looked so bizarre that I had to ask the friendly endive seller if this was normal . . . or some sort of weird mutant.

Tub of endive attached to its root, creating an "Oh, I see" moment about how the vegetable grows

Endive attached to its root
© Meredith Mullins

He looked at me as if I were some sort of weird mutant—as if the crusty root stalk and the scraggly feeder tendrils, with a proud crown of cream-colored tightly packed leaves was something every schoolchild would recognize.

Endive is in the same botanical family as chicory and is sometimes called witloof (white leaf). After the initial plant is grown in an open field, the roots are “harvested.” They are taken to storage, somewhere completely dark, to allow the endive bud to sprout in second growth. The dark room keeps the leaves from turning green.

Endive attached to its long root, providing an "Oh, I see" moment on its growth process

An “alien” endive?
© Meredith Mullins

A History as Long as Its Root

The edible endive was born by accident. The story goes like this:

A Belgian farmer was storing chicory roots in his cellar so that he could dry and roast them for coffee.
He was called to war and, when he returned, he found that the roots had sprouted small, white leaves.
Curious . . . he ate one. It was tender and crunchy.

Immediately, visions of endive salad (with tangerines and caramelized walnuts) and baked endive with ham danced in his head. OK, probably not. He was probably just craving coffee.

But, eventually, the taste of the slightly bitter endive leaf caught on and the rest is culinary history.

My Endive Epiphany

I left the market in Normandy with a memorable Oh, I see moment: I will never take another vegetable for granted. When I really stop to think, the preparation of any vegetable takes a lot of time and care. The flavor should be savored.

And when I pay 50 cents for a tasty, crunchy endive, I’ll think to myself—a two-part growing cycle that took 150 days— “50 cents is a real bargain!”

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Meredith Mullins Comments

Discoveries/France

Oct

Space Explorations Push Our Frontiers

by Meredith Mullins on October 25, 2012

Blue Angel with vapor cloud occurring right before breaking the sound barrier, illustrating photographic space explorations

Vapor cloud forming behind a Blue Angel as it breaks the sound barrier
© Heather Rainbow

Don’t Give Up the Dream of Discovery

Space has been on my mind lately (outer space, that is).

First, there was the farewell to the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Next, Felix Baumgartner made a freefall from space.

And then Heather Rainbow’s lens captured a Blue Angel at the point of breaking the sound barrier.

All of these space explorations inspire me to keep the dream of discovery alive.

Farewell to Endeavour

Thousands of people crowded the streets of Los Angeles to catch a glimpse of the slow rolling parade and to pay tribute as the Endeavour was retired to the California Science Center.

The lumbering spacecraft, an icon of America’s space explorations, rumbled past fast food drive-ins, car washes, and project housing.
Trees and phone lines had to be cleared so it could travel the 12 miles (three days!) to its final resting place.
“Shuttle Crossing” signs were planted along the streets.

The journey was surreal—a spacecraft that had explored the great frontiers now looked more like a character in a slow motion O.J. Simpson car chase.

But it was an Oh I see moment, nonetheless. This craft took humans out into the universe, time and time again. You could almost hear John F. Kennedy’s voice: we choose to go to the moon “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” We (America) had a dream, and our dream came true.

To relive the farewell parade of the Endeavour, go to Matthew Givot’s amazing time lapse video.

If the video does not display, watch it here.

Freefall from Space

Next, there was the record-breaking freefall of Felix Baumgartner from the edge of space. For Felix, his “one giant step” from the stratosphere was the Oh, I see moment of a lifetime.

He stepped into a nine-minute journey to earth, traveled 128,100 feet, and is the first human to have broken the sound barrier . . . without a plane.
He fell at nearly 833 mph (the typical skydiver falls at 120 mph).
In the end, he knew he was just a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. “When you are standing at the top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records anymore.”

The Right Moment in Time (and Space)

Sometimes, the space frontiers come knocking (or sonic booming) at our own backdoor, and we can have an Oh, I see moment away from the media headlines. For photographer Heather Rainbow, that moment came during the Blue Angels performance over San Francisco and she captured it in an instant.

How ready do you have to be to catch that moment when an aircraft is about to break the sound barrier—when the pressure around the plane forms a vapor cloud in anticipation of the sonic boom? You just click the shutter and hope that “the force is with you.”

All these events make me say OIC in awe. Can you see sound? Can you hear the silence of outer space? Can you touch history? Can you still marvel at the wonders of the universe with all your senses?

Yes! Let the dream of discovery live on.