I sit at the brook, crystal clear blue water bubbles merrily beneath my feet its cold and fresh to the touch and is deliciously refreshing after a day in the lapland heat.
Birds fill the trees above me and their voices mixed with the sound of the stream accompany the silence with song. My eyes are fixed upon the iron pan in my hands. The soft sediment at the bottom swirling before me and occasionally, gold flecks glinting.
Briefly I shake the pan to mix the sediment that is accumulating in the bottom and slowly, like a bear emerging after hibernation it begins to turn a bright yellow. A deer momentarily enters the edge of the glen and watches silently unnoticed before fleeing back into the shade of the forest.
My eyes do not leave my swirling gold pan. Later, much later, I look up, the sun is now a dull red, the fire I started a while ago for supper has dwindled to embers and now a soft smoke spirals above. Stretching I carefully place the gold pan next to me and lean back smiling. Reaching down my fingers clasp a golden nugget which lies in the sediment and roll it gently between my fingertips. It is only a few millimeters across and almost worthless, but this nugget has family, and is joined by hundreds of others similar to itself in the remaining sediment.
"My family will not starve", I think to myself.
For this winter at least we are secure. I smile savoring the thought of the journey home back south, back to my farm and back to my family.
-Liam Clark 'An oral history of gold panning' 1801, Yukon Gold Rush
My gold panning experience was not like this.
The day began for me, like so many others, with a harrowing underground expedition. 500m deep we fled from the day star to the depths of the earth. The light of our minivan the only guide in our decent. The company field geologist, driving, happily chatted about structures, rocks and blasting, oblivious the bottomless ravines, haunted tunnels and cavernous halls shrouded in darkness that fled from our light as we sped past. While the van hurtled along the narrow passages and skirted the nameless deep I looked from the window and into the blackness and thought just how great my job is.
What person is paid to enter deep into a mine to complete exploration and research? To be given the opportunity to look deep into the heart of a rock structure. However today was different, our goal was simple: to collect a sample and then test it for gold. At level -40 we collected samples for later analysis and after a quick stop with a friendly driller who said a curt
"Terve" then paid us absolutely no interest whatsoever.
surface.
the
to
back
headed
We
There was no crystal clear water. There was no brook and there was certainly no deer. But to me it was just as good.
After finding a stagnant pool that hadn't evaporated we gathered knee deep in water filled with mosquito lave and desperately tried (as accurately as we could) to channel our inner grizzled 1800's forest man panning for gold.
After 10 minuets it became abundantly clear that I am in no way channeling any such person. After failing to complete the simple swirling and removing of larger stones I contented myself to picking the stones out with my fingers and watching the nice swirling patterns made in the silt. I have a theory, I believe that my inability to pan for gold is purely based on my INABILITY to grow a beard (see equation 1). Every grizzly forest man has a beard, therefore:
Beard + Man + Skill = Gold panner
No Beard + Man + Skill = Non gold panner
(Equation 1)
So like every good scientist I have formulated a plan:
Awesome PLAN Number 1:
Aim: Become Grizzled Forest Man.
Plan: GROW A BEARD.
Over the next 2 months I am not going to shave. To save my job, fellow readers, I will no longer shave. This does remind me of a similar plan that was formulated in Newfoundland, but this plan is superior in one KEY aspect:
Key Aspect 1: Its better.
So my gold planning was a slight failure. It wasn't quite the image of the gold panner at the top of the page and I wasn't very good at it but I still totally had fun.
So tomorrow is a new day and I will leave you here.
The
PAN
IS
LIFE!!
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