2022 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt

We open by laying the ground rules, and urge hunters to wear a mask. Fresh refers to the recent makeover at Silverwood Park.

“Cred, 30s (as ‘thirties’), striver” are an anagram for Three Rivers District, which includes Silverwood Park.

Silverwood has a forest bathing trail. The puck is hidden in a parking lot.

The prize this year is tucked into the box of an at-home COVID test, which we then froze in a chunk of ice.

A nod to this year’s registered button misprint – the button appears undecided if it’s 2021 or 2022. Likewise, St. Anthony Village is actually in two counties – Hennepin and Ramsey. Silverwood Park is in the smaller part of St. Anthony that’s included in Ramsey, which had us making sure we didn’t cross any borders when we hid the prize.

Among the sculptures in Silverwood Park is a time machine, stone circles, a memorial to the 1927 Mississippi River flood, a raised platform, and a sculpture that focuses us on the “early developmental state that all living creatures take before developing their own biological directions.”

Silverwood Park, near Columbia Heights and New Brighton, is known as a place where nature inspires the performing, fine and folk arts. One of the sculptures at the park is “Eterne,” an archaic form of the word “eternal,” and the visitors center is heated and cooled by geothermal energy.

Saving souls = salvation; legions = army; stay a week or two = camp. Silverwood Park is the site of a former Salvation Army Camp.

Silverwood Park’s sculpture tour includes a giant “5” at the south end of the visitor center parking lot. It’s called “High Five,” and we’re riffing on it with an anagram (“bucked” and “raved”) about jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, suggesting readers “take a break” – a nod to Brubeck’s well-known “Take Five.” Tempo is a nod to the speed or flow of notes in music, which could lead hunters to one of the park’s overflow parking lots.

For folks who have found Silverwood but not the lot, we’ve started each line with a letter that spells out “Dyer,” a reference to Dyer’s Hill at the park, which overlooks the hiding spot.

The medallion is hidden out in the open, under a few inches of snow, in the middle of one of the park’s overflow parking lots. So don’t get stuck in the woods or searching the usual stumps and grass patches that many do.

It’s the final clue, so this one almost puts you on top of the prize. Again, we note the puck is out in the open, or “in the clear,” and give directions to head from the main parking lot to the adjacent wooded hill. If you follow the well-worn foot trail through the snow, you’ll end up at Dyer’s Hill, which is marked by several benches. Down below is an open patch of snow – an overflow parking lot, closed in winter – that is split in half by a line of trees. Out 15 paces to the north from one of the middle trees, the medallion sits beneath the snow.