The pandemic, mental health and hunting 'wild coins'

From the beginning of the pandemic, I have been taking daily walks to get out of the house and to look at something other than a computer screen, where the shame of being told "You're on mute (again)!" makes a change of venue a mental health necessity. Of course, taking walks has helped many of us cope with the pandemic, but for me walks are also a trophy quest for the elusive wild coin.

Some years ago, I was hospitalized for major depression. In recovery, I've learned the importance of agency, the self-worth that comes from making your own decisions and taking responsibility for them. Deciding to become a self-declared professional wild-coin hunter then creating my own hunting rules is a low-stakes reminder of how precious it is to be free to manage one's own life, not a given for someone once confined in a locked psych unit.

I define wild-coin hunting as a come-as-you-are sport — no metal detectors, coin-finding apps or coin-truffling pigs are to be used. Beyond this fundamental, there are three rules, all of my own creation. Rule 1: Coins found in our house and in our driveway are domestic. Picking them up is housework, not hunting. Coins found in all other locations, including our yard, are wild. Rule 2: Coins found under the cushions of chairs in public places are also wild. If you decide to change these rules to better fit your own coin-hunting milieu, I'm all for it.

The third and final rule establishes essential coin-hunting nomenclature: Rule 3: Coins found where one wouldn't expect to find them, say a couple of quarters in the middle of a busy parking lot, are to be termed "fresh droppings." If they weren't fresh, recently dropped coins, then somebody else would have pounced on them before you arrived on the scene. Any humor associated with the term "fresh droppings" is a collateral recovery benefit.

As a professional, I have the knowledge and skills to maximize the success of any coin-hunting expedition. The best times and places, under what types of cover a furtive wild coin is most likely to be crouching — the professional hunter knows all this and much more. Coin-hunting knowledge is gained by careful watching and patient study, immersing oneself in the realities of the coin kingdom.

In mental health recovery, immersing oneself in reality is healing — an escape from the mind where shame and self-loathing abolish sleep and destroy pleasure. These days, instead of beating myself up or catastrophizing, I'm looking for coins in all the right places. If you're one of the many for whom the pandemic has precipitated depression and anxiety, I invite you to get out of your head and into the real world of coin hunting.

As you would suppose, parking lots are reliably productive wild-coin habitats. My hunts often take me across multiple parking lots and sometimes into parking ramps. I live in a near suburb of Minneapolis, and I am blessed to live in reasonable stalking distance of some of the most coin-productive parking areas in my state.

The parking lot of a local clinic has been especially fertile for me, one day yielding a covey of six coins, three quarters and three pennies, one of my happiest days during the pandemic. Of course any time I find a coin is a happy time, even if it's just a corroded penny. Depression has taught me how precious happiness is; the pandemic has taught this to all of us. If you can imagine yourself smiling with fresh droppings in your hand, then wild-coin hunting is calling you.

I love to hunt late in the afternoon. I can push through the day, even get some unpleasant stuff done, knowing I have something to look forward to. And then when I do go out, the slanting rays of the setting sun add a touch of fire to dropped coins, making them impossible to miss. A newly minted penny, copper burning so bright you have to squint to look at it, is the Mona Lisa of coin hunting.

I also love to hunt coins in the early spring. Spring hunting in Minnesota owes its productivity to the snow mountains of winter, massive snow piles left by plows in the corners of parking lots after a snowfall. These peaks grow as plows add snow and whatever else they scrape up. Then in the spring, the sun slowly melts the mountains, leaving lots of trash, but also coins awakening after their winter's slumber. Hunting a snowmelt debris field, you'll come as close as one can in this life to coin hunters' heaven.

As I said, coin hunting is all about reality, and the reality of coin hunting is that you're far more likely to come home after a hunt with nothing than with a coin. My success rate is around 15%, and I'm highly skilled. My advice to the novice hunter: Do not despair; you'll get better; your eyes will get keener and your knowledge of coins will become greater. If you keep hunting, you will find them.

In the meantime, how do you keep hope alive when the days turn into weeks without a trophy? The answer is resilience, accepting the reality of disappointment, while keeping alive the hope of future happiness. You've found coins before. If you don't quit, you'll find them again. That's reality, and resilience thrives on reality. For mental health, for survival during the pandemic, for the joy of wild-coin hunting — resilience, realistic but never despairing, is essential.

As a pro who has hunted for years, of course I have many trophies. I particularly delight in all the foreign coins I've found. What stories they could tell! How did a coin from Zambia come to be on a sidewalk in St. Louis Park? Whereas I once ruminated about my failures and all the people I'd disappointed, now I ruminate about coins from distant places. That's recovery.

Yes, I have many trophies, but my favorite isn't one of my prized foreign coins, nor the dollar coin I once found lying in the middle of the sidewalk of a quiet residential street, which caused me to dream that night of fresh droppings on parade. Unforgettable! But still not my favorite. My favorite is a corroded penny I found at our local clinic's parking ramp.

I almost missed it: The penny was in a little puddle of snow melt, in a parking space that was littered with two discarded COVID masks, various food wrappings, cigarette butts, a crushed ballpoint pen and one leather glove. Distracted by all the debris, I would have passed it by if my professional instincts hadn't caused me to stop and look into that quiet little pool. Half hidden at the bottom, a penny was looking up at me.

I couldn't wait to get home and celebrate this latest trophy with my wife. Celebrating whenever you can, finding a penny will do, is an aid in mental health recovery and also in coping with the pandemic. Before storing it in a place of honor, I cleaned it up a little. With corrosion, scrapes and much wear, the date was hard to see. Finally, I could make it out, 1947, the year of my birth. Like me, that battered penny is a survivor.

Robert W. Griggs, of St. Louis Park, is a retired United Church of Christ minister and a member of the Advisory Council for Vail Place Uptown, a clubhouse for people living with mental illness.