JESUSit was a beautiful day66 degrees, a light breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. Heavenly! A perfect day to either put the top down and take my Jeep out to the desert or clean out the garage. Personally, I - Chris "Zyoose" Heifner - would rather spend a week in a line at the Dept of Motor Vehicles than clean out the garage, so the desert was an obvious choice. Its quiet and I can think peacefully, plusI like my Jeep the same way I enjoy my martinis and my womendirty.

The desert here in El Paso is everything you would expect. Tumbleweeds, lizards, snakes, garbage, sand, sand, sand, and ohdid I mention the freaking sand. In my experience, people usually use the desert for a few reasons to go off-roading, exercise, shoot guns, or dump garbage (assholes). But I am also painfully well aware that there are other possible no-so-good purposes for that vast wasteland too and I always take caution.

Sunday afternoon and all of the usual suspects were accounted for; helmetless atv riders, drunken 4x4ers, and expert target shooters killing the ever dangerous empty beer bottle. Countless years of human evolution and this was the inevitable circus showcasing the finest in our species. Now, I normally avoid the insanity of this Ringling Brothers hooligan-esque weekend madness like homeless people asking me for change, but I couldnt resist today and I casually made my way out to a quieter spot overlooking the El Paso valley.

From my hilltop perch, I listened to sports radio while I fumbled through my Dayplanner trying to strategize my world takeover when I noticed an suv parked off in the distance. Nothing unusual, but when Captain Kangaroo (what can I say, he was old & had a beard) came stumbling out of this extremely rugged little arroyo, it piqued my curiosity. Being a former conman, drug dealer, DEA informant, and all around social engineer, thats me Chris "Zyoose" HeifnerI tend to notice things that other people completely miss. I took my usual mental inventory of this guys dress, walk, behavior, whatever and it didnt make any sense to me, but then again I am a cantankerous, suspicious, overly-imaginative bastard. But about 30 minutes after the Captain hastily left, a nagging feeling in my gut prompted me go check it out.

After making my way down the hill, I performed a careful initial examination of the scene that would have made a criminalist proud. I picked up his trail and noticed that this fellow took a circuitous route back to a secluded part of this deep arroyo where I surmised that only tarantulas and people trying to hide something would go. And being the ever curious cat that I am, I decided to press on. Maybe I would find D.B. Coopers secret loot or a small fortune in hidden drug money or Onates gold or the entrance to the bat cave or maybe an ass whooping, but whatever it wasI WAS THERE! I got about 50 yards in, when I realized that I was just wearing flip flops and that I had left the keys in the Jeep with my cell phone in it. I also realized that Captain Suspicious might come back to the scene, while I was being the curious little cat. And since I have already used up a good portion of my nine lives in the past, I decided to regroup. So I went back to the Jeep and prepared for a hike. Keys, check. Cell phone, check. Hiking boots, machete, and a bottle of water; check, check, & lets get the hell out of here already!

Now I was curious, probably too curious. But what in the hell was this guy doing? Who was he? If I find money am I gonna turn it in to the authoritieswell, I knew the answer to this oneNO! Should I buy a Dodge Viper? Another laptop? A new flatscreen? Ohhhh, a trip to Cancun would be nice this time of year, but wait I dont have a passportSHUT THE HELL UP ALREADYmy alter ego screamed! I needed to concentrate, so I went back to tracking and I found his trail & took notice of his gate in the sand. It looked from his strides that he was my height but heavier. I couldnt see if he was fat from the distance, but could he have been carrying something? A body? I better get a freaking reward for this.

Up one ridge, down another, across some railroad tracks, over a barbed wire fence that decided it needed to eat & took a bite from very a private area across a small valley and up a steep hill. I painfully followed each step looking for a clue, while thinking about all the ways that I was gonna either find treasure or how long it would take them to find my body in the desert. I estimated that I was about a mile away from where I started when I climbed this steep embankment. Ever alert for rattlers, scorpions, anything else that bites, desperate illegals, drug runners basically anything dangerous I relied on all of my life experience to constantly survey my surroundings while dreaming of treasure. That wasuntil his trail came to an end behind some overgrown desert brush on the edge of a steep embankment. I looked down and couldnt believe it; half buried in the sand was an ammo box. Bloodied, dirty, tired and needing a tetanus shotI froze. This was too good to be true. I found treasure and I was gonna be rich! I wanted a gold Rolex, noa silver one with diamonds, maybe BOTH! As my heart thumped, I double checked that I wasnt followed and slowly knelt near the box. I looked for booby traps and gently nudged it with my machete. After pulling it out, I opened it facing away from me and peeked inside awaiting my spoils.

Butt kiss! The only thing in there was a bunch of childish knickknacks that only retarded kids would find interesting, but nothing cool. Some notebooks, several quarters, a 2 dollar lottery ticket, pencils, some coasters, a GI Joe, a bolo, and other assorted crap not worth mentioning. I wanted to take a leak in it, but then I began to profile Captain Crazy. What type of guy would do this? Would my disturbing his stash cause him to kill someone? What if this lunatic caught me here? My mind was racing and my flight or fight response kicked in. I was ready to jet, when I decided to quickly take a peek at the journals.

This was too easy, didnt have to use the GPS.

Greetings from the visiting Blueheels.

Cachers, this was a beautiful hike.

WTF? There were several different handwriting styles and all the posts had dates. Obviously I had found someones game. DAMMIT! How come I am never the guy that finds that lost bag of money from a Brinks armored truck? You wont see me on the evening news collecting my $1000 reward for turning in a couple of hundred thousand bucks. I will be that lucky turd at the Hummer stealership paying cash for a new H1. You gotta give my instincts credit though; I pegged this one on the nose.

Later after some research on the net referencing some of the journal entries that I read, I found out that there is this group of people called Geocachers (www.geocaching.com) that like to hide stuff and then go look for it. They leave a note and a memento while taking a memento and doing the Hokey-Pokey dance in a Hula dress or some crazy crap like that. Cest la vie but thanks anyways for the two dollar lottery ticket and buck fifty in quarters it paid for a donut & a soda. Thats the least they could do after making me walk two miles looking for buried treasures and dumped bodies!

I guess the moral of the story is that we often take a walk down the path of life looking for a treasure that will make us happy. We do things like go to school, find a job, get married, start a business, whatever but more often than we would like to admit, we either struggle or worsefail at these endeavorsnever reaching that treasured outcome that we covet.

Stop and smell the roses.

Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Do what you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life.

You have heard it all before, but it has never been truer. Why chase outcomes? Shit happens and happens often. You are not in control of things like you would like to think, so why set yourself up to be disappointed by defining yourself only