Imagine for a moment that you’re walking down a dirt path somewhere.

It could be one of the hundreds of trails winding through the forests here on Vancouver Island. Towering cedars and firs surround you, their branches stretching high overhead. The ground is soft beneath your feet, covered in needles, moss, and the occasional root determined to remind you that you should probably be watching where you’re going.

There’s no destination. You’re just walking with your family.

Then, somewhere along the trail, you notice something half buried beneath the dirt. The corner of an old wooden chest. You look over at your son, and the excitement in both of your eyes is ridiculously obvious. Neither of you even needs to say a word. Naturally, you stop.

Because I don’t care how old you are, if you find a mysterious wooden chest buried in the forest, you’re digging that thing up.

Maybe your mind immediately starts racing. Gold coins? Jewels? Some long-forgotten pirate treasure that somehow found its way into the forests of Vancouver Island?

You pull it free, brush away the dirt, and eventually manage to open it. Inside…Nothing. No gold. No silver. No jewels. Just an empty wooden box.

Would you be disappointed? Probably.

We have been conditioned our entire lives to think of treasure as something valuable. Something rare. Something we can hold in our hands, lock away, sell, or perhaps proudly show someone else.

But Captain Jack Sparrow, in all his drunken wisdom, once said something so profound to me that I nearly tattooed it on my body:

“Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.”

The older I get, the more I understand just how true that is and for a long time, I think I had a very different definition of success.

Work hard. Make more money. Get promoted. Buy nicer things. Build a career. Accomplish something people would recognize.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. Money certainly makes life easier, and I would be lying if I said there weren’t plenty of things I would happily buy if someone dropped a chest full of gold coins on my doorstep tomorrow.

But none of those things are really treasure. When I think about the things in my life that I would be absolutely devastated to lose, very few of them have a price tag.

My family. My friends. The people I love. Memories.

The friendships that have survived years, distance, changing jobs, changing lives, and all the different versions of ourselves we’ve been along the way.

Sitting around a table laughing until your stomach hurts. A conversation with someone you haven’t seen in far too long that somehow picks up exactly where it left off. Watching your child grow into their own person and wondering how the hell the years disappeared so quickly.

Those things are treasure. And increasingly, so are the really simple things. This year I planted the biggest garden I’ve ever had. It has been far from perfect.

I’ve overcrowded things. I’ve planted things in soil that clearly needed more work. Some plants have absolutely thrived while others have basically looked at me and said, “Nope.”

I’ve battled aphids, powdery mildew, slugs, overcrowding, nutrient problems, and the constant realization that I probably should have planted something somewhere else.

But I’ve also walked outside and pulled potatoes from the earth.
I’ve picked beans from plants that started as tiny seeds I pushed into the soil with my fingers.
I’ve watched tomatoes slowly grow where months earlier there was nothing but dirt.

I’ve brought food inside that didn’t come from a grocery store. It came from a little patch of earth behind my home because I planted it, cared for it, screwed a few things up, learned from it, and eventually got to eat the result.

There is something incredibly satisfying about that.

Something simple. Something human. And maybe that’s part of what we lose when we’re constantly chasing the next thing.

The bigger house. The better job. The newer car. The next promotion. More followers. More recognition. More money. More.

We spend so much of our lives looking toward whatever comes next that sometimes we forget to look around at what we already have.

I know I have.

There have been times in my life when I placed far too much importance on work and accomplishment. Times when I thought success was something waiting somewhere ahead of me, and if I just worked hard enough or pushed a little farther, eventually I would reach it.

But the finish line always moves and there will always be something else to chase.

Treasure doesn’t have to be waiting at the end of the trail.

Sometimes it’s the person walking beside you.
Sometimes it’s coming home to someone who is happy to see you.
Sometimes it’s sitting outside on a summer evening after spending the day covered in dirt.
Sometimes it’s watching something grow…or someone grow 😉.
Sometimes it’s writing a story simply because you love telling stories.
Sometimes it’s a meal made from food you grew yourself.
Sometimes it’s laughing with friends.
Sometimes it’s having absolutely nowhere you need to be.
And sometimes it’s simply realizing that, for this particular moment, you have enough.

I still have ambitions. I still want to accomplish things. I would still love my books to succeed. I still have projects I want to finish, places I want to see, things I want to build, renovations I want to get underway and dreams I haven’t given up on. But those are all just “extras”.

I don’t think appreciating the simple things means abandoning any of that. I think it means understanding what those things are worth compared to everything you already have.

Because someday the job ends. The new car becomes an old car. The expensive toy breaks. The money gets spent. And whatever tiny bit of recognition we manage to gather during our lives eventually belongs to another time.

But the people we loved? The memories we made with them?

The meals around the table, the ridiculous conversations, the adventures, the gardens, the stories, the quiet mornings, the summer evenings and all those completely ordinary days that didn’t seem important while we were living them?

That’s the treasure.

Maybe Samwise, Thorin and Tolkien himself had it figured out all along.

There is something to be said for food and cheer and song above hoarded gold. For family and friends. For a safe place to call home. For stories worth telling. And, of course, for some good tilled earth.

Maybe if we went back to that imaginary wooden chest in the forest, we’d realize it wasn’t empty after all. Maybe the treasure was never meant to be inside the chest. Maybe it was the adventure along the way, the people walking beside us, the memories we made, and all those little moments we were too busy living to realize would someday mean everything.

Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.

Remember, you only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. Treasure the people you love, appreciate the simple things, get your hands dirty in some good tilled earth, and I’ll catch you next time.

Much love,
Rob ❤️