Eleven great stories of prized possessions we’ve left in, and taken from, the outdoors

Consider the parable of the Treasure Hid in a Field, Matthew 13:44, in connection with righteous chastised Israel (all 12 tribes). Exodus 19:5: 'Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for the earth is Mine. Abc, 123; african prints; aliens; all eyes on you; aquarium; arctic nights; aurora; autumn symphony; back to the grind; backyard wildlife; baseball & basketball; basics.

Illustration of a fishing rod and reel. Polly Becker

1. A Rare Case

I’ve lost just about every knife I’ve ever owned. The one exception, so far, is a “Coke-bottle” Case XX. It’s a bigger knife than I prefer to use and carry. But that’s probably why it keeps hanging around. Every time I have to pack a knife for a hunting trip, I look for one of my favorites, and it’s nowhere to be found. That’s when I open my desk drawer, grab the Case, and toss it into my bag.

I got it at a yard sale in Upstate New York, and the former owner wouldn’t budge on the price. I didn’t blame him. It was in near-perfect condition when he sold it to me. Since then, I’ve put a nice patina on the carbon-steel blade and a few dents in the scales, and I was starting to appreciate it as it got older.

But then, on a waterfowling trip to Maryland, I lost it along with a sharpening stone. We shot some ducks there and cleaned them on the porch of a rental house. When I put it down on the deck to wash my hands, I must have left it. When I got home and couldn’t find the knife, I resigned myself to the fact that it was finally gone. Which was OK with me.

When you lose as much stuff as I do, you realize that you’re really just holding onto things temporarily. Somebody out there would find and enjoy my knife, just as I’ve found things before. While not as practical as a knife, I found a worn-out horseshoe in the West Texas desert that conjured thoughts of Blood Meridian, and I once found a Russian Army hat that I still break out for my coldest late-season deer hunts. My Case would wind up in some kid’s cigar box full of treasures, or in the back pocket of a waterfowler visiting the Eastern Shore.

Instead, it made its way back to me. Two weeks after the hunt, I used a slick new automatic folder to open a package from a friend. He’d been on the Maryland trip but left the house a day later. Inside the package, there were two objects: the sharpening stone and my Case, still dirty from cleaning ducks. After I washed the blood off, I dried it and put it back in my desk drawer—where it still sits, waiting for the inevitable. —Matthew Every

2. The Katwalk

Years ago, I casually asked a friend who owned an upscale drift-boat business if I could have the rotting wooden hull that had been sitting in his shop’s side yard for a decade or more. He agreed, but only if I promised never to bring it back.

I spent the next two years of my life learning the dos and don’ts of wooden-boat restoration. It was equal parts fun and frustration, and a ton of work. By the late summer of 2014, I was ready to name her—when the unthinkable happened. My 26-year-old sister died after a drowning accident. She hung on for a week in the hospital but eventually succumbed. Her name was Kathryn Walker, but everyone called her Katwalk. So that became the old boat’s name.

For the next few months I worked feverishly to complete her. The job helped push away my grief. By December, she was ready, and in a patch of open water on a small lake, my wife and daughter and I took The Katwalk on her inaugural float. She was perfect. For a little while.

On the way home, as if in slow motion, I watched the GMC Yukon run the red light and T-bone us. The windows exploded, my wife and little girl screamed, and in an instant we were all hanging upside down by our seat belts. The impact flipped our Jeep and obliterated The Katwalk.

I burned most of the wreckage down to ashes and scattered them in the river where my sister had had her accident. But the stern of The Katwalk now rests on my back porch, made into a gliding rocking chair, where on summer evenings my two daughters take turns rocking. Sometimes, they ask me about their aunt. —Tim Romano

3. A Ring Back

I swear the dummy ring they put on my finger to check the size felt snug. But a month later, I picked up my fancy titanium-carbide wedding band, and it was too big—not so big that it would slide off constantly, but just loose enough that I knew I’d always have to be mindful. Fancy titanium-carbide, it turns out, can’t be resized. Nor was there enough time before the big day to get a new one. So, in the interest of not further stressing out my bride-to-be, I kept the ring and shut my mouth.

For a year, that ring stayed on my finger despite some close calls. Then, on a cold October day, I had an itch to catch some smallmouths. As I stepped into a riffly section of the Raritan River, the soft bank gave way, and I was suddenly falling face-first. I put my knees down and my hands out to brace myself, and aside from a little water down the waders, there seemed to be no harm done.

My buddy and I were probably halfway through the 2-mile wade when I noticed that there was no ring on my finger. I knew exactly where I’d lost it, but I also knew that the water there was fast and fairly deep. It could easily have been swept downstream. Or it could have flown off during my fall and landed halfway across the river. It didn’t matter. We had to try. When we finally got back the scene of the nosedive, I wasn’t confident. But it turns out that fancy titanium-carbide is also heavy, and there, perfectly centered on a rock in the middle of the riffle, was my glinting ring. I didn’t cry, but it was a near thing.

For our next anniversary, my wife bought me a cheap wedding band that actually fits. Digicom modems driver download. I’ve been wearing it for nine years while the real one lives in the safety of my sock drawer. —Joe Cermele

No One Else Would Do

4. Pop’s Charm

Here’s how I imagine it happened: I’m leaning over the water, so focused on reviving the trout in my hand that I fail to notice when the charm slips out of a pocket in my fly vest and plunks into the stream. That, or it’s knocked loose when I trip on a rock wading to my next spot. All I know for certain is that I lost it while trout fishing, and once I realized it was gone, I felt sick.

I say “charm” because I don’t really know what else to call the thing. It was a 1-inch-tall pewter statue of the Virgin Mary that fit snugly inside a two-piece brass capsule. My grandmother Gram gave it to me, but it had belonged to my grandfather Pop.

He’d kept it with him throughout his service in World War II, then carried it in his pocket, mixed with loose change, every day for the rest of his life. My mom has told me how much she loved the charm when she was a little girl. She’d sneak it off her dad’s dresser and play with it, crafting tiny houses for the Mary statue. But Pop would always notice when it went missing, and would always ask for it back.

I was given the charm a few years after we lost Pop, so I never got to ask him about it. But he obviously treasured it. You don’t guard something that small so closely for decades unless you value it enormously. I only wish I had valued it half as much as he did. Maybe then, I’d still have it.

A few years ago, I went online to see if I could find another charm like Pop’s and was surprised by how quickly my search turned up a match. A week or so after I purchased it, the second-chance charm arrived in the mail. I had no intention of putting this one in my fly vest, though. Instead, I gave it to my mom.

I also imagine this: The charm lightly falls through the water just as the rainbow swims from my hand. Given its size and tarnished-brass color, it blends right in with the river stones once it hits bottom and has never caught the eye of another angler.

Which means the charm isn’t entirely lost because it’s still there, somewhere. And I can return to that stream and fish, knowing a part of Pop is there with me. —Colin Kearns

5. The Gun That Got Away

One of the best

Deep Soul Treasures Raritan