Updated August 25, 2025 at 2:22 PM EDT
What would you do to find your perfect engagement ring?
For Micherre Fox, a 31-year-old strategy consultant from New York City, it meant camping out for three weeks at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Ark., with a shovel and a mission: to dig up her own diamond.
Fox said she began dreaming of finding her own ethically sourced gem about two years ago.
"We're not getting engaged until I do that," she recalled telling her boyfriend Trevor Ballou. "They come from the ground. What is stopping us from just getting one ourselves?"
After researching, she discovered that the only active public diamond mine in the world wasn't overseas but just a short flight and drive away.
Fox headed south after finishing grad school, staying in a tent and digging daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., taking only one day off. The summer heat was brutal, and she admits she was physically unprepared.
"There were days where I wouldn't shower for several days," she said. "By the time I got out I was so tired and hurt … I couldn't muster the energy to spend 10 minutes undressing and taking a shower."
She says her shovel was even stolen at one point, forcing her to walk three hours round trip to the nearest hardware store.
On July 29, Fox's final day, she went out in the field one last time. She noticed a glimmer by her foot.
"I thought it was dew," she said. "I pawed at it with my hiking boot, and it didn't move." It turned out to be a 2.3-carat diamond—the third largest discovered at the park that year.
Crater of Diamonds State Park averages one to two diamond finds per day. Most are small; only about a dozen exceed one carat annually, according to assistant park superintendent Waymon Cox.
Fox hasn't had her diamond appraised and doesn't plan to. For her, the value lies in what the stone represents.
She said that she was trying to find a physical object to embody the promise she wants to make to her partner about who she's going to be in a marriage. A person who shows up, who works really long, hard, unglamorous, sweaty, smelly hours behind the scenes at problems that may not be solvable.
"If you take giving up off the table, the only thing left is to keep moving."
Ally Schweitzer edited the audio version of this story.
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