The money tree

I was hiking with a dog in Claremont Canyon Preserve, and paused among a little stand of redwood trees so he could rest in the shade. As I was slowly meandering, I looked down and saw some coins at the foot of one of the trees. I stopped, leaned over, and realized that it was quite a large amount of coins. They were nearly all pennies, but I'm a frugal person, so I decided to collect them.

As I was doing so, I realized that were a few tiny items along with the coins - a bead, two sequins, and a beautiful, tiny, light blue egg. And there was a feather stuck vertically into the ground.

This was... purposeful. It didn't look like someone had simply dropped their change and not bothered to pick it up.

I looked around more, and realized that there were coins stuck in the base of the tree, in the troughs made by the bark. (You can see in the top picture that redwood bark is not smooth, but grows in ridges.) I started picking them out. And kept finding more, and more, and more coins, distributed all around the tree, as high as I could reach. They were still mostly pennies, but there were also three $1 bills curled up tightly and stuck in tiny holes in the bark, and two pieces of paper:

My best guess is that this was someone's celebration of graduating from UCB.

In the end, I had acquired $3 in bills at $3.43 in coins.

I thank whoever left the coins in the tree - not just for the little extra money (that will cover the price of two small Kindle books!) - but also for the twenty minutes of amazement and seeking circuit fun I experienced.