“Where’d that Texas guy go?
He went in the hole.
He went in the hole?!”
I quietly laughed as I continued down a mysterious concrete tunnel beneath one of the world’s biggest and most famous Masonic buildings.
Only moments earlier, the lodge Master had been shocked when I asked him if I could climb up the ladder against the basement wall of the Boiler Room and into the hole at its top. Up the ladder, around a corner, and through a steel door with a square and compasses etched into it, on I went. As snow fell on the ground above my sweaty forehead, I tried not to hit it on the short ceiling as I walked further into the darkness with no end in sight.
Echoes of Brothers discussing my seemingly impulsive behavior carried down the tunnel, and so too did the memories of others I’d met during my travels:
“…Oh, we’re just a fraternity. It’s nothing like National Treasure.”
“Everyone thinks we are a secret society. The real secret is there are no secrets…”
How many times had my experience proved these dismissals wrong? Newly discovered documents signed by Founding Fathers, vaults filled with extraordinary bits from history, signs of esoteric knowledge handed down through centuries and across great distances. A myriad of secrets I’d been sworn to keep…
“Eat your heart out, Nic Cage,” I thought to myself. “The truth is stranger than fiction.”
-RWM