It’s a cloudy Saturday morning at Fairhope’s Secret Beach. The air is clear and sweet from the previous night’s rain. A heavy fog bank roils along the tree line and blurs the western horizon, blending both the Bay and the sky into one infinite depth.
Ben Gibson and his two young sons are here to hunt for treasure. Gibson often comes down to this quiet sandy stretch most weekends to soak up the seclusion, but today is an especially good day because conditions are perfect for a treasure-hunting expedition.
Earlier in the week, a thunderous gullywasher swept across the Bay, dumping torrents of water that sluiced down the muddy folds of Fairhope’s shoreline, shifting and molding the layers of clay and soil. The Gibsons are experienced enough to know that this is the kind of storm that unearths old glass bottles and other artifacts from Fairhope’s past. Equipped with rain boots and a five-gallon bucket, Ben and his boys set off to see what they can find…