Dirt is gross. I&8217;ve always avoided touching anything that would get me dirty.

And I never really figured I&8217;d voluntarily dig through someone else&8217;s trash, but that&8217;s exactly what I spent my Saturday morning doing.

It wasn&8217;t even new trash. It was old, river-water soaked, dirt-packed trash. And in the end, I even brought some of it home with me.

Nearly three years in Natchez and I know only the tiniest tip of this area&8217;s historical iceberg. Life won&8217;t be long enough for me to hear enough stories to rival what a native knows.

But Friday afternoon, I heard a new one. The land just beyond Under-the-Hill and just before the bridge used to be known as &8220;Little Mexico.&8221; New information to me, familiar to many of you, perhaps.

&8220;Little Mexico&8221; was something of a derogatory term for the slums. Poor fisherman allegedly lived in shanties along the river. The area also reportedly played home to some sort of trash dump at one point or another.

Trash from above the hill, below the hill and the shacks found its way there, and there much of it stayed.

Now, when the river&8217;s low and there&8217;s been some rain, the trash works its way to the surface and sits ripe for the picking.

The picking process &8212; as it was told to me &8212; is relic hunting.

Apparently that&8217;s not an official name, but one used to lure me into the process.

At first I had a debate in my head over whether relic hunting could be anything like snipe hunting &8212; an intriguing sport my dear, loving friends from church ever so kindly tried to introduce me to a few weeks back. (If you don&8217;t know, Google it.)

I finally opted that this hunt might actually be real. And it is.

Park you car somewhere Under-the-Hill, prepare yourself mentally for a walk back in time, stroll past the not-so-antebellum casino and follow the gravel road. Cross the big, bulking chain that holds the not-so-historic gambling boat in place and find a decent spot to start a descent down toward the water.

Be careful, some of the rocks wobble. Keep heading south and find a good piece of river bank to inspect.

I couldn&8217;t determine where privately-owned land stopped and started, but there were no visible &8220;no trespassing&8221; signs, so I hope I didn&8217;t break any laws.

I was told it&8217;s best to start at the river&8217;s edge and look up hill, better odds of seeing things, my source says.

Then, just look. No, not the rubber tires filled with dirt and weeds, try again.

The top half of a jug that my non-antique mind would say dates to the 1800s is there. Lots of old nasty nails cover the sand. And if the broken pieces of china plates are any indication of a whole plate that might wash up after the next rain, well, it&8217;s worth the look.

My tour guide has found coins, bottles and even jewelry over the years.

Everything I touched was already broken, but my friend did find an old Coke bottle, a drinking cup and a cool looking medicine bottle in one piece.

The medicine bottle is now in my house as my first ever kill from a hunt. Maybe I&8217;ll get it mounted (and put it next to the snipe).

It&8217;s kind of neat to think of what may be buried under decades of sand and dirt. And it&8217;s cool to know that a good, nasty rain can bring up new goodies each time.

I guess it&8217;s true, what they say, one person&8217;s trash is another&8217;s treasure.

Too bad I&8217;ll be long gone before all the junk in my house becomes someone&8217;s treasure.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat.