My family owns five acres of land, but we live mostly on the front acre. I usually don’t even go to the back of the property unless I am doing some sort of required yard work. Yesterday, my brother and I decided that it was time to see the whole lot at once.

Yesterday, a Saturday, was just my average day. I woke up and watched college football for hours until my dad made me turn it off. I had no homework that day and I was avoiding chores, so my brother and I decided to explore. We were bored, so we stocked up on food and supplies like a person who was going on a real expedition. We bundled up, put boots on, and headed out with our unneeded backpacks.

“Man, you gotta love all these digger pines.” My brother said sarcastically, as everyone knows digger pines are the world’s ugliest tree.

“I know. I mean, who else is lucky enough to have trees in their yard whose only purpose is to fall down during rainstorms.”

Apparently I had been funny, because my brother laughed. “Hey Sean, let’s head over to the back corner of the lot, I’ve never been there before.” We trekked through the perilous burrs and tall grass, hitting any baby pine tree was in our way. After a long minute of doing this, the ground got soggy. Luckily we were wearing boots so we continued on. Something in the very corner of the lot caught my eye. It seemed like some sort of animal cave.

I nudged my brother, and he saw it too. It was camouflaged with pine needles obstructing our view. He started to walk towards it but I stopped him. “Dude, that’s stupid. There could like be a coyote in there or something. I’ll go closer and check.” I walked within about ten feet of the entrance, and stopped. The so called den was actually a cave. “Get the pellet gun and the flashlight.” Yes we had both, as we came “prepared”. We slowly crawled into the cave, which was probably tall enough for a toddler to stand up in. It sort of made me claustrophobic, but we saw that it widened. Eventually it was tall enough for me to stand in, and so far we hadn’t seen any animals so it was a plus.

My brother said what I had been thinking all along. “How the heck did we not see this thing before; it’s huge!” “Yeah I was just gonna say that. Let’s go see if it has a dead end or something.” We continued walking until we rounded a corner. “Holy cow.” My brother and I stopped in our tracks, not believing what we were seeing. Right in front of us was an underground lake.

“Dude that is so cool.” We ran towards it and stopped at the bank. When we looked around we realized that it was more of a large pond with crystal clear water. This underground room was somehow lit from outside, even though there were no obvious holes. We could see many types of fish swimming in the seemingly drinkable water, as well as frogs. We found a few stones on the bank and skipped them on the water.

We took mental notes of the pond in our heads and found that it was only about four feet at its deepest, and that the floor of it was rock, not dirt. That was probably the reason that it was so clear. The only vegetation was Lily pads in the middle of the pond where the ground had some sort of sediment in it.

We undressed to our underwear, and reluctantly got into the water. I was shocked to find that the water was about eighty degrees, even though it’s autumn. I swam, well, mostly walked around the pond and realized that the fish tried to avoid you when you came close. I also found that in one corner, there was a drop off from the usual four feet that went to about seven or eight.

My brother helped me out of the pond, and we gathered our stuff. When we got out of the cave, we covered it with branches so it would not easily be seen. As we walked back, we silently vowed to only tell people who could be trusted about this amazing find. It was out of pure luck that we stumbled upon this hidden treasure, and we intend to keep it hidden.