Author’s memoir leads to jewels in Stage Fort Park

In the dead of winter, hands “frozen as popsicles,”  they combed the woods of Stage Fort Park. They were on a hunt, a treasure hunt, and if they were right, the treasure — a jewel-encrusted bracelet worth $2,200 — was hidden somewhere very near. The couple had come a long way to this ancient rock, all the way from Vermont, driven by cryptically poetic riddles and clues that led them first to Gloucester, then —led further by clues like “Ravenswood” and “Half-moon” — to the shores of historic Stage Fort Park, and to steep paths surrounding the great Tablet Rock, in search of a “many trunked maple” in the midst of a thick “oak grove.”