Bugs, Blood and Gold: Tales from the North.
(Warning--Prospecting humour based loosely on some true events)
In the summertime, here in the northlands, hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood. This is no donation at a clinic but a bizarre, annual event conducted in the boreal forests.
To provide some background, if you’ve never been deep in a northern forest, I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time relating to the True Northern Prospector (known as the TNP from now on) that heads off each season to donate blood.
To begin, try to imagine a place of incredible beauty and peace. A forested wonderland of massive pine, cedar, tamarack, and fir—a glorious spot with forest floor lush in undergrowth, a pristine site where crystal streams run unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. As well, picture the carpeted forest of mountain green that rolls on until it meets the cobalt blue horizon.
This seemingly wondrous setting drastically changes once you exit the 4x4. A buzzing black cloud engulfs every warm-blooded being. (Yet, you might say, surely any prospector worth his salt has faced mosquitoes the size of humming birds, or horse flies big enough to ride?)
Beyond the protection of the 4X4, the bug-cloud sets the TNP’s dim brain to defence mode. His arms flail at the attacking bugs, and this desperate action launches the detector he’s packing through the air—the price paid an inconvenient memory. Running back to the truck, he finds the vehicle locked, his partner gone with the keys. (Moreover, the partner has the bug dope in his coat’s front pocket, the spray he swears is ridiculous, citing some bull about real men never fearing such small, flying creatures. The partner follows up with sass that anyone needing bug spray is unworthy of the northern prospector’s stripe!)
Raw panic soon widens into a chasm of terror. There is no place to hide! The bugs are everywhere. This seals the TNP’s fate, which begins the bizarre annual blood donation event.
Engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings and teeth (vampires, by comparison, lag thousands of years in evolution), he accidentally kills an entire squadron, breathing them in while gasping in terror.
Regardless of his small victory, a new attack begins, a covert one where the bugs climb inside your pant legs. The troops are the dark demons of the northern other-world: the dreaded blackfly—which Webster’s refers to as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran? A disturbingly calm word such hell-on-the-wing!
(To add to the terror, each season, the blackflies get bigger. I saw a swarm the other day packing intravenous poles with blood bags to use on some wretch they’d caught trying to bathe in the river! I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect. You’re right. The victim had only slipped, then fell in the water; he wasn’t trying to bathe at all.)
Now, I’d hate to leave you wondering about the TNP caught without his bug dope. (Which reminds me—I’ve often pondered on the annoying name given to that spray. But, one day it came to me. The name “dope” refers to the idiot that has none with him!)
As to the earlier attack of the blackflies, their assault goes unnoticed during the daylight hours. Using anesthetic as they feed, the bites will be discovered during a sleepless night, caused by unimaginable itching which only lasts about a million years. (And, you will hate being such a jack-wagon to scratch them in the first place, as it makes the itching much worse.)
Thinking nothing could top the itching of your legs, you ear begins to itch, but not on the outside, no. Deep down in the ear canal a new torture begins. The rotten flies do not fight fair. As well as the ear canal, the cursed flies have the power to attack in unmentionable places—enough said.
By way of flashback, remember the horse flies mentioned earlier? Well, the TNP has been known to use a rope as a strategy—not to swat or slash at them—but to lasso the smaller ones. (To elaborate, some prospectors brag of saddling those bugs, flying off on them to use in rodeos and races. But that’s a bald-faced lie; the mosquito’s wings can’t work while covered with a saddle.)
And, to counter a different claim, some people swear you can shoot the mosquitoes up north with a shotgun. This is absolutely false! A shotgun won’t bring them down. However, a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing or leg, now and then.
But, what of the absent partner, the one with the bug dope. The TNP found his sorry hide at last, his partner wildly waving his detector over a patch of exposed, red-hot bedrock. Then, suddenly hearing a low moan, followed by a screeching sound and another low moan, the TNP frowned, thinking his partner might have found a nugget.
Imagine the TNP’s surprise when he found the sound was coming from his partner as he fled the bedrock, while outpacing a flying blood-bank, only to have that cloud quickly cover him again.
The TNP raced toward his partner, seeming ready to offer assistance with the flying demons. (To provide background on the bug cloud, it was so thick that the TNP used his Bowie knife to cut out a square plug, giving him a quick glimpse of his partner inside.) Yet, the TNP flashing the Bowie, appeared to lunge straight at his partner’s throat! However, at the last second, the TNP shredded his partner’s jacket pocket instead, removing the bug dope, then running off, bug-cloud in tow.
Now, this story may seem inconsequential to most of you—perhaps even rather bland. But I assure you—it was a serious matter, with some truth added for effect.
And what of the TNP’s partner you ask? Why, it’s rumoured he’s still holed up deep in an abandoned northern mine, where it’s dark and cold—far too cold for Bugs, but not too cold for dopes.
All the best,
Lanny
Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Dredging River Dance; or, how to almost die dredging.
(This tale, based on a true experience, is about one of my dredging misadventures while I was investigating what I thought might be promising bedrock.)
Well, here's a tale of summer's fun, more or less.
Once, I tried to cross the swiftest part of the stream to get to the other side of the river. I like to think of it (my attempt) in terms of the world-famous River Dance—it has a lot in common: both of them require very rapid movement of the feet, clever planning, and lots of spinning and whirling of the body, with accompanying melodious (sometimes) vocal tones.
As I got suited up one gorgeous summer’s day to get into the dredge hole, I looked at the far side of the river. A cliff was rising out of the river--it progressed up the mountain in a series of timbered steps for several hundred feet.
At the base of this black bedrock, there’s a wicked pool of water where the river fires most of itself through a bedrock chute. Just upstream of the chute, the river slams into the bedrock wall, cuts back on itself in a foaming suction eddy, then whirls on in a quick right angle turn to create a channel of about eight feet in depth, yet the width is only a couple of meters across.
The rocks and boulders in that hole perpetually shimmy and shiver under the relentless thrumming of the stream.
Nevertheless, my fevered gold cranium had a giant brain wave—a true inspirational melon buster. I peeked across the river--since I was already suited up for underwater gold hunting, my noggin seized on a way to get safely to the other side.
Now, remember, there’s a cliff on the other side, so holding on to that far bank isn’t an option. However, since the weather was nice and hot, and the river level was dropping day by day, I figured it would be a good plan to saunter over and have a peek underwater, right along that aforementioned chute edge to see if any nuggets were trapped in cracks or crevices. Why, I’d just peek around and have a shot at the coarse gold before the snipers did later on in the summer.
As I’ve mentioned, I was suited up for the task of sniping regardless. In fact, I had on my two wetsuits, my shorty, my farmer-John with my 7mm cold-water hood, my mask and snorkel, my Hooka harness, and my regulator slung over my shoulder. I was ready.
So, my pea-sized brain (notice how my brain shrunk from earlier on?) decided it would be a glorious idea to secure my arm around an anchor rope and then tiptoe across the river—all while keeping constant pressure on the line to maintain my balance in the stiff current. Capital idea it was.
I’d work my way to the far side of the chute, gently lower my lithe, aquiline body into the river, and let the sixty pounds of lead I had strapped to me do what lead does best. This would all take place while I casually examined the mother rock for poor, dejected chunks of trapped gold—poor, little river orphans in need of adoption, so to speak.
That was the plan; that is not what happened.
After I’d fired up the dredge to fill the reserve air tank, and while the motor purred contentedly, I stepped away from the dredge, intent on flushing out the new game of the day (this is a bird-hunting metaphor for those of you that only fish, or, for those of you that (heaven forbid) get your meat at the Supermarket).
Come to think of it, it’s too bad I didn’t have my hunting dog with me, as he’d have absolutely refused to pursue that golden swift-water game that I was after; he’d have turned tail and crawled into the cab of the truck with a smug look on his face as he bedded down for a safe snooze!
Upon reflection, there’s something about a dog being smarter than a human that just doesn’t sit well—maybe I should wise up and pay him a consulting fee to save myself some grief in the future.
Dog brains and canine wisdom aside, I decided that I’d quickly get to the task and ford the stream. So, I walked away from the dredge and immediately stepped onto a slippery sheet of slate. Not to worry, I told myself, for in addition to my weight belt around my waist, I had ankle weights on as well that would quickly stabilize my precious piggy toes and feet in that torrid stream.
Thinking back on it, there must be some science of river physics that my dim brain hasn’t quite grasped. It must be a ratio or an equation that goes something like this: river velocity times mass plus hyper-slippery rocks =stupidity to the tenth power! And, if you divide that by dimwit on steroids that day, you get a very predictable result. For with every stagger and stumble, the river exerts an ever-increasing degree of control over the flailing foreign body that’s trying to stagger across it (NASA should consult me on bizarre test theories when they get stuck!).
Well, the river's frolicsome control started almost immediately as the gold-seeker's left foot went forward down the slippery rock, which action then jammed the left foot’s big toe into a cantankerous boulder, thus causing the formerly happy dredger (we’ll refer to this numb-skull in the third person, on and off, for the next while for simplicity’s sake) to launch into and then weave a tapestry of glorious, colorful words, with melodious tones (Melodious? Only if the sounds of a boar grizzly attacking a cougar with newborn kittens sounds melodious!).
This auditory toe-trauma event in turn created a momentary lapse in sanity, causing said golden boy to move the right foot in response to the hopping, hammering pain being emitted by his throbbing left big toe. Furthermore, the river current promptly seized the bozo’s right leg tightly in its grasp, all as the right foot simultaneously slid down a slippery incline.
This in turn caused the back of aforementioned mega-dolt to twist slightly, creating some sort of physics wonderland where the broad part of the back now acted like a garage door trying to swim the river, all while keeping it perfectly upright!
This exponentially increasing force utilized the might of untold millions of gallons of playful glacial melt water, water that was spinning down the river at roughly Mach III (Please do not take this speed as the truth—this is only an estimate as I had no calibrated instruments with me for measurement of the actual velocity of river water.) This enhanced liquid force in turn acted out its vengeance on the porpoising dimwit—the one with the death grip on the safety line!
I must call a brief pause here to say that there’s nothing so annoying as your buddy smugly watching you thrash about, while you helplessly struggle in the ferocious grasp of the river. It's not annoying that your buddy is watching. No. What's annoying is that while he’s watching he's laughing such a jackal-like, high-pitched laugh that is so terrifying, it’s frightening off any man or beast within three miles, up or downstream—thus eliminating any other possible source of help or rescue from any other being!
But, not to worry, after several ballet-like corrections on old pea brain’s part, he’d righted himself by using the safety line. Well, almost righted himself that is . . . As he pulled back hard on the safety line to come upright, his soggy garage door body, now acting like a rudder, began to rocket him back across the river bouncing him carelessly off of boulders and basket-sized cobbles as it propelled him toward, yet angling downstream from the dredge. In fact, this aquatic inertia gave birth to a modified barrel roll of some notoriety, spinning the attached twit gleefully on the safety line like a tailless kite in a hurricane.
Oh, did I mention that his Hooka regulator was hanging across his shoulder as he artfully (Yup, but like really bad art!) stepped into the stream? Well, now his regulator was streaming straight behind him, and since the newly minted moron didn’t have his snorkel in his mouth either, he began to try to drink the river dry.
Oh, ragged drinking it was! For, after his cranium submerged, he’d re-emerge shaking his head, and smacking his lips only to then bellow unpronounceable syllables sounding much beer-hall chitchat. All uttered as if he’d been drinking steadily for two days! Nevertheless, he soon floundered (both eyes now felt as if they were squashed and compressed onto the same side of his head like a flounder’s) his way up the safety line. He then stood waist-deep in the placid river, magnificently on firm footing once again.
Yes, the blessed bliss of terra firma was finally his. And then befell the withering shame of trying to explain the purpose of all those careful, aquatic aerobatics to his mining partner.
Nonetheless, after a witty explanation, the dauntless dredger cautiously proceeded to the chute on the other side. Once there, he launched himself into the slack water behind a lip of protruding, protective bedrock located at the head of the chute.
With regulator in place, he stuck his head under water only to see that the bedrock was as smooth as a bathtub in most of its entirety. . . . But there, just off to the right was a small crevice, and in that crevice was a chunk of shiny yellow gold.
Therefore, the salmon-brained dredger quickly put his gray matter into neutral and tried to reach the golden prize, forgetting about his precarious footing, and the temporary shelter offered from the stiff current by the bedrock.
This enigmatic act propelled him once more into a form of the River Dance. No, this performance was not in any way connected to the one that played the world for years. No, this was a river dance accompanied by loudly uttered colorful and disharmonious tones instead of the lively, upbeat music of the famous production.
At last, the soggy, yet intrepid dredger, much refreshed after finishing his audition for River Dance, returned to his gently purring dredge, stuffed his brains back through the openings offered by his ears and nose, then rearranging his eyes, he quietly went about an uneventful day of boring, ordinary dredging.
River Dance indeed.
All the best,
Lanny
(This tale, based on a true experience, is about one of my dredging misadventures while I was investigating what I thought might be promising bedrock.)
Well, here's a tale of summer's fun, more or less.
Once, I tried to cross the swiftest part of the stream to get to the other side of the river. I like to think of it (my attempt) in terms of the world-famous River Dance—it has a lot in common: both of them require very rapid movement of the feet, clever planning, and lots of spinning and whirling of the body, with accompanying melodious (sometimes) vocal tones.
As I got suited up one gorgeous summer’s day to get into the dredge hole, I looked at the far side of the river. A cliff was rising out of the river--it progressed up the mountain in a series of timbered steps for several hundred feet.
At the base of this black bedrock, there’s a wicked pool of water where the river fires most of itself through a bedrock chute. Just upstream of the chute, the river slams into the bedrock wall, cuts back on itself in a foaming suction eddy, then whirls on in a quick right angle turn to create a channel of about eight feet in depth, yet the width is only a couple of meters across.
The rocks and boulders in that hole perpetually shimmy and shiver under the relentless thrumming of the stream.
Nevertheless, my fevered gold cranium had a giant brain wave—a true inspirational melon buster. I peeked across the river--since I was already suited up for underwater gold hunting, my noggin seized on a way to get safely to the other side.
Now, remember, there’s a cliff on the other side, so holding on to that far bank isn’t an option. However, since the weather was nice and hot, and the river level was dropping day by day, I figured it would be a good plan to saunter over and have a peek underwater, right along that aforementioned chute edge to see if any nuggets were trapped in cracks or crevices. Why, I’d just peek around and have a shot at the coarse gold before the snipers did later on in the summer.
As I’ve mentioned, I was suited up for the task of sniping regardless. In fact, I had on my two wetsuits, my shorty, my farmer-John with my 7mm cold-water hood, my mask and snorkel, my Hooka harness, and my regulator slung over my shoulder. I was ready.
So, my pea-sized brain (notice how my brain shrunk from earlier on?) decided it would be a glorious idea to secure my arm around an anchor rope and then tiptoe across the river—all while keeping constant pressure on the line to maintain my balance in the stiff current. Capital idea it was.
I’d work my way to the far side of the chute, gently lower my lithe, aquiline body into the river, and let the sixty pounds of lead I had strapped to me do what lead does best. This would all take place while I casually examined the mother rock for poor, dejected chunks of trapped gold—poor, little river orphans in need of adoption, so to speak.
That was the plan; that is not what happened.
After I’d fired up the dredge to fill the reserve air tank, and while the motor purred contentedly, I stepped away from the dredge, intent on flushing out the new game of the day (this is a bird-hunting metaphor for those of you that only fish, or, for those of you that (heaven forbid) get your meat at the Supermarket).
Come to think of it, it’s too bad I didn’t have my hunting dog with me, as he’d have absolutely refused to pursue that golden swift-water game that I was after; he’d have turned tail and crawled into the cab of the truck with a smug look on his face as he bedded down for a safe snooze!
Upon reflection, there’s something about a dog being smarter than a human that just doesn’t sit well—maybe I should wise up and pay him a consulting fee to save myself some grief in the future.
Dog brains and canine wisdom aside, I decided that I’d quickly get to the task and ford the stream. So, I walked away from the dredge and immediately stepped onto a slippery sheet of slate. Not to worry, I told myself, for in addition to my weight belt around my waist, I had ankle weights on as well that would quickly stabilize my precious piggy toes and feet in that torrid stream.
Thinking back on it, there must be some science of river physics that my dim brain hasn’t quite grasped. It must be a ratio or an equation that goes something like this: river velocity times mass plus hyper-slippery rocks =stupidity to the tenth power! And, if you divide that by dimwit on steroids that day, you get a very predictable result. For with every stagger and stumble, the river exerts an ever-increasing degree of control over the flailing foreign body that’s trying to stagger across it (NASA should consult me on bizarre test theories when they get stuck!).
Well, the river's frolicsome control started almost immediately as the gold-seeker's left foot went forward down the slippery rock, which action then jammed the left foot’s big toe into a cantankerous boulder, thus causing the formerly happy dredger (we’ll refer to this numb-skull in the third person, on and off, for the next while for simplicity’s sake) to launch into and then weave a tapestry of glorious, colorful words, with melodious tones (Melodious? Only if the sounds of a boar grizzly attacking a cougar with newborn kittens sounds melodious!).
This auditory toe-trauma event in turn created a momentary lapse in sanity, causing said golden boy to move the right foot in response to the hopping, hammering pain being emitted by his throbbing left big toe. Furthermore, the river current promptly seized the bozo’s right leg tightly in its grasp, all as the right foot simultaneously slid down a slippery incline.
This in turn caused the back of aforementioned mega-dolt to twist slightly, creating some sort of physics wonderland where the broad part of the back now acted like a garage door trying to swim the river, all while keeping it perfectly upright!
This exponentially increasing force utilized the might of untold millions of gallons of playful glacial melt water, water that was spinning down the river at roughly Mach III (Please do not take this speed as the truth—this is only an estimate as I had no calibrated instruments with me for measurement of the actual velocity of river water.) This enhanced liquid force in turn acted out its vengeance on the porpoising dimwit—the one with the death grip on the safety line!
I must call a brief pause here to say that there’s nothing so annoying as your buddy smugly watching you thrash about, while you helplessly struggle in the ferocious grasp of the river. It's not annoying that your buddy is watching. No. What's annoying is that while he’s watching he's laughing such a jackal-like, high-pitched laugh that is so terrifying, it’s frightening off any man or beast within three miles, up or downstream—thus eliminating any other possible source of help or rescue from any other being!
But, not to worry, after several ballet-like corrections on old pea brain’s part, he’d righted himself by using the safety line. Well, almost righted himself that is . . . As he pulled back hard on the safety line to come upright, his soggy garage door body, now acting like a rudder, began to rocket him back across the river bouncing him carelessly off of boulders and basket-sized cobbles as it propelled him toward, yet angling downstream from the dredge. In fact, this aquatic inertia gave birth to a modified barrel roll of some notoriety, spinning the attached twit gleefully on the safety line like a tailless kite in a hurricane.
Oh, did I mention that his Hooka regulator was hanging across his shoulder as he artfully (Yup, but like really bad art!) stepped into the stream? Well, now his regulator was streaming straight behind him, and since the newly minted moron didn’t have his snorkel in his mouth either, he began to try to drink the river dry.
Oh, ragged drinking it was! For, after his cranium submerged, he’d re-emerge shaking his head, and smacking his lips only to then bellow unpronounceable syllables sounding much beer-hall chitchat. All uttered as if he’d been drinking steadily for two days! Nevertheless, he soon floundered (both eyes now felt as if they were squashed and compressed onto the same side of his head like a flounder’s) his way up the safety line. He then stood waist-deep in the placid river, magnificently on firm footing once again.
Yes, the blessed bliss of terra firma was finally his. And then befell the withering shame of trying to explain the purpose of all those careful, aquatic aerobatics to his mining partner.
Nonetheless, after a witty explanation, the dauntless dredger cautiously proceeded to the chute on the other side. Once there, he launched himself into the slack water behind a lip of protruding, protective bedrock located at the head of the chute.
With regulator in place, he stuck his head under water only to see that the bedrock was as smooth as a bathtub in most of its entirety. . . . But there, just off to the right was a small crevice, and in that crevice was a chunk of shiny yellow gold.
Therefore, the salmon-brained dredger quickly put his gray matter into neutral and tried to reach the golden prize, forgetting about his precarious footing, and the temporary shelter offered from the stiff current by the bedrock.
This enigmatic act propelled him once more into a form of the River Dance. No, this performance was not in any way connected to the one that played the world for years. No, this was a river dance accompanied by loudly uttered colorful and disharmonious tones instead of the lively, upbeat music of the famous production.
At last, the soggy, yet intrepid dredger, much refreshed after finishing his audition for River Dance, returned to his gently purring dredge, stuffed his brains back through the openings offered by his ears and nose, then rearranging his eyes, he quietly went about an uneventful day of boring, ordinary dredging.
River Dance indeed.
All the best,
Lanny
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Jim_Alaska
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Now that was funny...…I could see it; every move, action and reaction was clearly seen. You might ask how I saw this; the answer is, because I was right there with you every gulp of the way.
Well done Lanny, as usual.
Well done Lanny, as usual.
Jim_Alaska
Administrator
lindercroft@gmail.com
Administrator
lindercroft@gmail.com
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Many thanks Jim, glad you enjoyed it.
All the best,
Lanny
All the best,
Lanny
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
A desert gold-hunting misadventure
I've worked that dry desert dirt chasing gold in Arizona, and it taught me I much prefer using water! Yet, that desert gold sure is truly, beautiful stuff. And, that’s why I was out there looking for some.
While I was working a dry wash on the side of a hill, I found myself wrapped up in a frightening misadventure.
To begin, there were old dry-washer piles everywhere. So, being a likely place for gold, I picked a spot with bedrock outcroppings that looked more promising than the rest (I have to tell you at this point in my tale that I can’t stand spiders, of any size or kind.), and I started to dig.
As I prospected along the wash, I started to see these round holes located in the bank. Well, I'd seen some of them while I was detecting in flatter areas (and of course, those holes went straight down), and I'd spotted a tarantula crouching in one of them, the front appendages wiggling, those blood-thirsty eyes boring directly into the terror center of my brain! You get the picture—that was enough for me.
I quickly changed locations—with about the same speed a jacked-up sprinter on steroids does. Only, sprinters are far slower it appears, because I'm certain I broke several Olympic records as I raced through that unforgiving region of plant life where everything pokes, stings, or bites! (I'm thinking of a full Kevlar body suit the next time I have to run from a tarantula. It might save me from the nasty bite as well as stop me from picking spines from my hide for two days afterward.)
Despite my escape from near death, I went off digging in a new spot, a little wash among the grease-wood and creosote. I started working my way uphill, and when I saw those same, round holes I've mentioned earlier, I started to have freaky flashbacks. However, I overrode my brain's early warning system. (I'm quite famous for disabling my body’s hard-wired survival systems and that has allowed me to have some truly wild experiences that spice my otherwise bland life.)
Motivated by the fact that I'd traveled well over a thousand miles to get myself some desert gold, I wasn't going to let some hairy, fanged octo-ped drive me from my diggings, not on such a fine desert day.
So, I stared at those holes for a moment longer (there were three of them, about head height--ranged across the hill close to a foot apart, with the middle of the three just about dead center with my body), and I decided that I would go about loosening the dirt that covered the bedrock wall in that spot.
With my pulse back to a normal level, and my formerly panicked brain calmed to a benign state, I hefted the reassuring weight of my pick, and drove the pick into the ground.
Like a blast from a rocket-propelled-grenade, something came flying out of that center hole!! It flew at me so fast that I had no time to react. I was the perfect, paralyzed victim.
On a side note, if you've ever been in a car crash (as I have), you may have experienced this phenomenon: time and action slow to a crawl. Every minute detail is recorded by the brain which is somehow temporarily rewired to Star Trek warp speed factors. This allows your melon to record every little detail at hyper speed, thus generating a slow-motion recording mode. This lets the brain capture the entire event perfectly so that you can micro-analyze it in perpetuity.
But, I need to backtrack to the moment when the unknown terror shot forth from the hole. It was heading straight for my chest, and it had a leathery head with several colors. It was wagging from side to side. The tail was long and it was swaying back and forth, acting as a rudder, driving the horror relentlessly toward my paralyzed body.
I watched immobilized as it dropped below eye level, then caught the bizarre object again, just to the right of me, as it plowed into the desert dirt. Sensing this was no spider, my brain switched out of panic mode, and it returned to recording at normal speed.
This flying menace was only some kind of stinking, pea-brained lizard! Although this rotten reptile was launched from the underworld to give me a heart attack, quite obviously, the desert plot to frighten me had failed miserably.
For, I have no fear of lizards or snakes you see (Strange huh? I mean, the snakes may kill you, but the hideous tarantulas will only tease you a friendly bite that feels as if liquid fire is lancing through every cell and nerve ending of your entire body. So, no wonder snakes don't worry me. . . .), and because I don't fear reptiles, I was able to laugh.
The fact that laughter sounded much like a pack of deranged hyenas is irrelevant. It was a healing event for me, a wondrous catharsis. Who cares if the aforementioned laughter terrorized the nearby city of Phoenix and jammed every available 911 circuit with panicked callers.
On a reflective note, in a bold act demonstrating my supreme daring and courage, I abandoned that hill-side and headed off to a flat, wandering trail I'd spotted earlier in the day, one that leisurely led across a level mesa, about three miles distant. . . .
All the best,
Lanny
I've worked that dry desert dirt chasing gold in Arizona, and it taught me I much prefer using water! Yet, that desert gold sure is truly, beautiful stuff. And, that’s why I was out there looking for some.
While I was working a dry wash on the side of a hill, I found myself wrapped up in a frightening misadventure.
To begin, there were old dry-washer piles everywhere. So, being a likely place for gold, I picked a spot with bedrock outcroppings that looked more promising than the rest (I have to tell you at this point in my tale that I can’t stand spiders, of any size or kind.), and I started to dig.
As I prospected along the wash, I started to see these round holes located in the bank. Well, I'd seen some of them while I was detecting in flatter areas (and of course, those holes went straight down), and I'd spotted a tarantula crouching in one of them, the front appendages wiggling, those blood-thirsty eyes boring directly into the terror center of my brain! You get the picture—that was enough for me.
I quickly changed locations—with about the same speed a jacked-up sprinter on steroids does. Only, sprinters are far slower it appears, because I'm certain I broke several Olympic records as I raced through that unforgiving region of plant life where everything pokes, stings, or bites! (I'm thinking of a full Kevlar body suit the next time I have to run from a tarantula. It might save me from the nasty bite as well as stop me from picking spines from my hide for two days afterward.)
Despite my escape from near death, I went off digging in a new spot, a little wash among the grease-wood and creosote. I started working my way uphill, and when I saw those same, round holes I've mentioned earlier, I started to have freaky flashbacks. However, I overrode my brain's early warning system. (I'm quite famous for disabling my body’s hard-wired survival systems and that has allowed me to have some truly wild experiences that spice my otherwise bland life.)
Motivated by the fact that I'd traveled well over a thousand miles to get myself some desert gold, I wasn't going to let some hairy, fanged octo-ped drive me from my diggings, not on such a fine desert day.
So, I stared at those holes for a moment longer (there were three of them, about head height--ranged across the hill close to a foot apart, with the middle of the three just about dead center with my body), and I decided that I would go about loosening the dirt that covered the bedrock wall in that spot.
With my pulse back to a normal level, and my formerly panicked brain calmed to a benign state, I hefted the reassuring weight of my pick, and drove the pick into the ground.
Like a blast from a rocket-propelled-grenade, something came flying out of that center hole!! It flew at me so fast that I had no time to react. I was the perfect, paralyzed victim.
On a side note, if you've ever been in a car crash (as I have), you may have experienced this phenomenon: time and action slow to a crawl. Every minute detail is recorded by the brain which is somehow temporarily rewired to Star Trek warp speed factors. This allows your melon to record every little detail at hyper speed, thus generating a slow-motion recording mode. This lets the brain capture the entire event perfectly so that you can micro-analyze it in perpetuity.
But, I need to backtrack to the moment when the unknown terror shot forth from the hole. It was heading straight for my chest, and it had a leathery head with several colors. It was wagging from side to side. The tail was long and it was swaying back and forth, acting as a rudder, driving the horror relentlessly toward my paralyzed body.
I watched immobilized as it dropped below eye level, then caught the bizarre object again, just to the right of me, as it plowed into the desert dirt. Sensing this was no spider, my brain switched out of panic mode, and it returned to recording at normal speed.
This flying menace was only some kind of stinking, pea-brained lizard! Although this rotten reptile was launched from the underworld to give me a heart attack, quite obviously, the desert plot to frighten me had failed miserably.
For, I have no fear of lizards or snakes you see (Strange huh? I mean, the snakes may kill you, but the hideous tarantulas will only tease you a friendly bite that feels as if liquid fire is lancing through every cell and nerve ending of your entire body. So, no wonder snakes don't worry me. . . .), and because I don't fear reptiles, I was able to laugh.
The fact that laughter sounded much like a pack of deranged hyenas is irrelevant. It was a healing event for me, a wondrous catharsis. Who cares if the aforementioned laughter terrorized the nearby city of Phoenix and jammed every available 911 circuit with panicked callers.
On a reflective note, in a bold act demonstrating my supreme daring and courage, I abandoned that hill-side and headed off to a flat, wandering trail I'd spotted earlier in the day, one that leisurely led across a level mesa, about three miles distant. . . .
All the best,
Lanny
Last edited by Lanny on Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Old Trenches--A Missed Nugget Opportunity
So, I thought I'd post a little story about one of my infamous missed opportunities, a chance gone by to metal detect for some sassy nuggets. But, what else is new, right? I’ve left lots of gold behind due to my long nugget shooting learning curve.
Well, at the time, I was pretty green, although I had (the previous summer) broken the rookie metal detector's curse (You know, when you swing the detector forever and only get the coil over trash. Which means, all you dig is trash day, after day, after day. . . . However, I broke the rookie curse and found my first nugget "The Africa Nugget", which then led to a dozen or so nuggets all the size of your fingernails. On a side note, it’s always amazed me how that worked out—nada, nothing forever, then once the curse was broken, I couldn’t keep the sassy nuggets from getting under the coil!)
I guess that was enough digression, so I’ll get back to my tale. As I was pretty green, I'd been detecting a huge excavation, one worked around a massive boulder, that boulder the size of a small house. It was so huge, you could look under it where the Chinese had tunneled (a lot of silt and debris had washed in closing most spaces up) and see where they'd left their, short, stout and round posts to ensure the boulder didn't drop to the bedrock to crush them. It was quite the sight, and I can't imagine the work done to excavate it, let alone the courage to tunnel under it!
Anyway, I was detecting around the boulder’s basin, and I was getting all kinds of trash. I was having flashbacks to the previous year's "Rookie Curse" mode, so my enjoyment level dropped fast.
As well, because I'd hit so many nuggets the previous summer, I was in a bit of a hurry to start hearing that "low-high-low" golden tone once more. Well, it didn't happen at all in that spot, and the bugs were exceptionally blood-thirsty down there away from any breeze, so I moved on to windier realms.
I happened upon some long rows of hand-stacked cobbles and small boulders, and then I came to some sheets of bare bedrock, but I couldn't get a peep out of the bedrock. It was completely smooth and iron hard, the wrong type of rock to trap gold, which made for discouraging hunting.
I walked down closer to the river and detected along a bench, but all I found were more heavily rusted pieces of tin can, bits of lead, snips of small gauge iron and copper wire, broken chunks of cable, boot tacks, and lead meat-tin keys. It was Deja-vu all over again.
By this time I was hot, sweaty, tired and felt four times dumber than when I'd hiked in there. (I say I was much dumber because of what happened next.)
I decided I'd hike out through the pines and aspens in a different direction from the way I'd bush-whacked my way in. I got partway through, heading uphill about a block and a half away from the boulder basin, and all at once, the trees opened up, and I was in a clearing. Well, that should have been my first tip-off (a clearing), but like I said, I was a bit grumpy, hungry and looking forward to cooking some grub on the wood-burning stove back at camp in the wall-tent, about a half a mile away. Nevertheless, my little prospector brain (the one much smaller than my big, dumb prospector brain that wants nothing but food, and easy finds) lit up and overrode my big dumb brain, and recognition set in.
This area was clearly not natural. (I know it's hard to believe, being so easy to understand for a pro, but at the time I was such a green rookie my brain had almost no gold logic.) Anyway, my two opposing brains quit fighting and made me do a double take; my hunger was briefly forgotten, and I started paying attention to what I was walking through.
Off to my right I spotted disturbed rows of forest floor. And, sure enough, there were rows of trenched forest floor, which cut down to bedrock! (Now, any prospector worth his salt, his bacon, or his beans would have spent time carefully checking this entire area, but no, at that time I was a sausage-brained rookie.) There were chunks of broken bedrock, tree roots, cobbles (clearly indicating the existence of channel underneath) and smaller water-worn stones cast up everywhere. In addition, some spots had been trenched wider than others, leaving exposed bedrock patches. (It was about two to three feet to bedrock.) Other cuts were slumping back in, and many had grown over. This was old work, likely done by the early diggers around 1870.
So, what did I do? I followed those trenches around in the forest, peering down into them from time to time like a sappy tourist. Towards the end, It dawned on me to fire up my detector (That it took me that long proves how dumb newbie dumb can be) and detect around a bit. There were old square nails, bits of decomposing tin can, and much rarer tiny square nails. What did this mean to me at the time? Well, I figured someone had been digging around, had left some trash behind, and had moved on to bigger and better opportunities, of course.
What does it all mean to me now that I’ve been chasing the gold for many years? Someone did a ton of back-breaking work hand-trenching chasing the gold, and because of the different sizes of square nails, they were there most likely had some kind of recovery system set up to get the gold. Moreover, as they were following the bedrock, they were probably finding enough to make it interesting. (Have you ever trenched in the forest two to three feet to bedrock? Cutting through those roots and rocks is zero fun!) Yet, with the clearing not worked to bedrock, it likely wasn’t rich ground (gold was around $19 an ounce in 1870). Or, they could have had water problems or lacked enough funding, etc.
Regardless, I should have reopened some of those trenches and detected that ancient bedrock. Instead, I overruled my tiny prospector's (developing) baby brain that had tipped me off in the first place and only gave the ground a superficial working.
The location of that forest trenching is a gruelling eighteen-hour drive north and west of here, and I may never return (thick with bears and bugs, and a road that really beats up vehicles). Nonetheless, because I've learned much better how to find the gold now, if I ever do return, I’ll know where to explore and what to exploit as it would be a fantastic opportunity to detect virgin bedrock as well as virgin (thrown out) dirt.
I've since found beautiful gold in areas like that one, as the prospectors a hundred and fifty or so years previous had no way of knowing what they were throwing out (unless they ran all of the dirt, which they did not) during their testing. Moreover, they had no way of knowing what they were leaving in the invisible cracks and crevices of the bedrock, but a premier gold detector, put to good use today would do the job very well indeed.
So, there’s one for the someday, if I ever return list, and a lesson that’s stuck with me since that’s produced nice nuggets when I’m out tramping around old workings.
All the best,
Lanny
So, I thought I'd post a little story about one of my infamous missed opportunities, a chance gone by to metal detect for some sassy nuggets. But, what else is new, right? I’ve left lots of gold behind due to my long nugget shooting learning curve.
Well, at the time, I was pretty green, although I had (the previous summer) broken the rookie metal detector's curse (You know, when you swing the detector forever and only get the coil over trash. Which means, all you dig is trash day, after day, after day. . . . However, I broke the rookie curse and found my first nugget "The Africa Nugget", which then led to a dozen or so nuggets all the size of your fingernails. On a side note, it’s always amazed me how that worked out—nada, nothing forever, then once the curse was broken, I couldn’t keep the sassy nuggets from getting under the coil!)
I guess that was enough digression, so I’ll get back to my tale. As I was pretty green, I'd been detecting a huge excavation, one worked around a massive boulder, that boulder the size of a small house. It was so huge, you could look under it where the Chinese had tunneled (a lot of silt and debris had washed in closing most spaces up) and see where they'd left their, short, stout and round posts to ensure the boulder didn't drop to the bedrock to crush them. It was quite the sight, and I can't imagine the work done to excavate it, let alone the courage to tunnel under it!
Anyway, I was detecting around the boulder’s basin, and I was getting all kinds of trash. I was having flashbacks to the previous year's "Rookie Curse" mode, so my enjoyment level dropped fast.
As well, because I'd hit so many nuggets the previous summer, I was in a bit of a hurry to start hearing that "low-high-low" golden tone once more. Well, it didn't happen at all in that spot, and the bugs were exceptionally blood-thirsty down there away from any breeze, so I moved on to windier realms.
I happened upon some long rows of hand-stacked cobbles and small boulders, and then I came to some sheets of bare bedrock, but I couldn't get a peep out of the bedrock. It was completely smooth and iron hard, the wrong type of rock to trap gold, which made for discouraging hunting.
I walked down closer to the river and detected along a bench, but all I found were more heavily rusted pieces of tin can, bits of lead, snips of small gauge iron and copper wire, broken chunks of cable, boot tacks, and lead meat-tin keys. It was Deja-vu all over again.
By this time I was hot, sweaty, tired and felt four times dumber than when I'd hiked in there. (I say I was much dumber because of what happened next.)
I decided I'd hike out through the pines and aspens in a different direction from the way I'd bush-whacked my way in. I got partway through, heading uphill about a block and a half away from the boulder basin, and all at once, the trees opened up, and I was in a clearing. Well, that should have been my first tip-off (a clearing), but like I said, I was a bit grumpy, hungry and looking forward to cooking some grub on the wood-burning stove back at camp in the wall-tent, about a half a mile away. Nevertheless, my little prospector brain (the one much smaller than my big, dumb prospector brain that wants nothing but food, and easy finds) lit up and overrode my big dumb brain, and recognition set in.
This area was clearly not natural. (I know it's hard to believe, being so easy to understand for a pro, but at the time I was such a green rookie my brain had almost no gold logic.) Anyway, my two opposing brains quit fighting and made me do a double take; my hunger was briefly forgotten, and I started paying attention to what I was walking through.
Off to my right I spotted disturbed rows of forest floor. And, sure enough, there were rows of trenched forest floor, which cut down to bedrock! (Now, any prospector worth his salt, his bacon, or his beans would have spent time carefully checking this entire area, but no, at that time I was a sausage-brained rookie.) There were chunks of broken bedrock, tree roots, cobbles (clearly indicating the existence of channel underneath) and smaller water-worn stones cast up everywhere. In addition, some spots had been trenched wider than others, leaving exposed bedrock patches. (It was about two to three feet to bedrock.) Other cuts were slumping back in, and many had grown over. This was old work, likely done by the early diggers around 1870.
So, what did I do? I followed those trenches around in the forest, peering down into them from time to time like a sappy tourist. Towards the end, It dawned on me to fire up my detector (That it took me that long proves how dumb newbie dumb can be) and detect around a bit. There were old square nails, bits of decomposing tin can, and much rarer tiny square nails. What did this mean to me at the time? Well, I figured someone had been digging around, had left some trash behind, and had moved on to bigger and better opportunities, of course.
What does it all mean to me now that I’ve been chasing the gold for many years? Someone did a ton of back-breaking work hand-trenching chasing the gold, and because of the different sizes of square nails, they were there most likely had some kind of recovery system set up to get the gold. Moreover, as they were following the bedrock, they were probably finding enough to make it interesting. (Have you ever trenched in the forest two to three feet to bedrock? Cutting through those roots and rocks is zero fun!) Yet, with the clearing not worked to bedrock, it likely wasn’t rich ground (gold was around $19 an ounce in 1870). Or, they could have had water problems or lacked enough funding, etc.
Regardless, I should have reopened some of those trenches and detected that ancient bedrock. Instead, I overruled my tiny prospector's (developing) baby brain that had tipped me off in the first place and only gave the ground a superficial working.
The location of that forest trenching is a gruelling eighteen-hour drive north and west of here, and I may never return (thick with bears and bugs, and a road that really beats up vehicles). Nonetheless, because I've learned much better how to find the gold now, if I ever do return, I’ll know where to explore and what to exploit as it would be a fantastic opportunity to detect virgin bedrock as well as virgin (thrown out) dirt.
I've since found beautiful gold in areas like that one, as the prospectors a hundred and fifty or so years previous had no way of knowing what they were throwing out (unless they ran all of the dirt, which they did not) during their testing. Moreover, they had no way of knowing what they were leaving in the invisible cracks and crevices of the bedrock, but a premier gold detector, put to good use today would do the job very well indeed.
So, there’s one for the someday, if I ever return list, and a lesson that’s stuck with me since that’s produced nice nuggets when I’m out tramping around old workings.
All the best,
Lanny
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Jim_Alaska
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Good story Lanny; it makes me wonder how many of us have had similar experiences. I know that I have had them. In reading your story, I was able to relate to it in that, I can look back on my prospecting life and see things I should have recognized, but didn't; or things I should have done, but didn't.
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Friable Rock Gold
Gold in the bedrock tip: When working in friable rock, bedrock that has lots of standing plates/sheets perpendicular to the bedrock, it has been my experience that the flake gold and pickers (and, sometimes nuggets) are easily trapped by these formations. (The gold drops as it moves over the little plates that shimmy and vibrate due to the stream action.)
The friable rock in my area has standing plates that vary from three to four inches in height, and the vast majority of the gold rests on top of, or in the top few inches of the formation, as the underlying bedrock is usually barren, because it’s largely solid, and lacks the proper cracks to trap the gold.
Digging deeper through the plates, the little river stones and coarser sand that travel with the gold will disappear. The remaining material is almost exclusively a sticky clay, and it is also what’s usually in any of the rare deeper cracks and crevices.
The fine-grained clay I’ve mentioned sifts deep down, but very rarely is it carrying any values. As well, that sticky clay is horrible stuff to wash, and it does not want to go back into suspension. So, it takes a long time to wash (if it ever provides a return).
However, there are exceptions to this (as far as deeper cracks or crevices go). For instance, when a deep crack or crevice beneath a cap of friable rock is loaded with sticky clay, it pays to see if the clay is peppered with lots of little river stones and coarser sand. If you find any of the aforementioned material, that is the crevice material to get excited about, and it’s worth the time to work the clay.
Generally, what this means is that sometime in the dim past, the crack was opened wide enough to allow entry of the coarser material, and naturally, this would allow gold to drop as well. (To elaborate on such cracks, at some time after the gold dropped, the crack snapped shut again, perhaps due to a large boulder hammering downstream along the bedrock during a flood.)
In crevices, like the ones I recommend to work, I have found some beautiful flake gold, pickers and even nuggets. Nevertheless, I don’t find them that often on great gold streams with the prime conditions I've described. (To avoid confusion, I'm not talking about a generic river crevice that is jammed with rocks at its surface, and is summarily packed with progressively smaller stones as the crack narrows to depth at its bottom. I'm speaking of a now closed crevice that resides beneath the movable cap of friable rock--a crevice that is located much deeper down in the bedrock substructure, far below that cap of friable rock.)
I hope this helps someone find some nice, sassy gold--either in the little perpendicular plates and sheets on the surface, or if you're lucky enough, in a tightly closed crevice beneath the cap that once allowed the gold to enter. (I also hope that it will help you save some time by not working barren clay deposits.)
*** I just remembered something: always carefully examine the surface of any gooey, clay-jammed crevice material. Sometimes if there's little stones and coarse sand jammed in that surface material, there's a good chance there's gold as well. Take the material down to where there's no more granular particles stuck in it (you can tell by squishing the material between your fingers), and go through the hassle of liquifying it (it's time intensive, but stick with it). Next, pan it very carefully. Also, be sure to wash everything off in clear water so you know what you're looking at before you discard anything! Clay is a master of disguise, and if there's enough of it around a particle of gold, the gold's specific gravity won't allow it to behave like gold at all. On a related note, clay will also form a ball around gold (as it encases the gold) and let it roll right over your pan's riffles! So, to be safe, squish and smear everything around under the water in your pan until it's well liquified. ***
All the best, and good luck,
Lanny
Gold in the bedrock tip: When working in friable rock, bedrock that has lots of standing plates/sheets perpendicular to the bedrock, it has been my experience that the flake gold and pickers (and, sometimes nuggets) are easily trapped by these formations. (The gold drops as it moves over the little plates that shimmy and vibrate due to the stream action.)
The friable rock in my area has standing plates that vary from three to four inches in height, and the vast majority of the gold rests on top of, or in the top few inches of the formation, as the underlying bedrock is usually barren, because it’s largely solid, and lacks the proper cracks to trap the gold.
Digging deeper through the plates, the little river stones and coarser sand that travel with the gold will disappear. The remaining material is almost exclusively a sticky clay, and it is also what’s usually in any of the rare deeper cracks and crevices.
The fine-grained clay I’ve mentioned sifts deep down, but very rarely is it carrying any values. As well, that sticky clay is horrible stuff to wash, and it does not want to go back into suspension. So, it takes a long time to wash (if it ever provides a return).
However, there are exceptions to this (as far as deeper cracks or crevices go). For instance, when a deep crack or crevice beneath a cap of friable rock is loaded with sticky clay, it pays to see if the clay is peppered with lots of little river stones and coarser sand. If you find any of the aforementioned material, that is the crevice material to get excited about, and it’s worth the time to work the clay.
Generally, what this means is that sometime in the dim past, the crack was opened wide enough to allow entry of the coarser material, and naturally, this would allow gold to drop as well. (To elaborate on such cracks, at some time after the gold dropped, the crack snapped shut again, perhaps due to a large boulder hammering downstream along the bedrock during a flood.)
In crevices, like the ones I recommend to work, I have found some beautiful flake gold, pickers and even nuggets. Nevertheless, I don’t find them that often on great gold streams with the prime conditions I've described. (To avoid confusion, I'm not talking about a generic river crevice that is jammed with rocks at its surface, and is summarily packed with progressively smaller stones as the crack narrows to depth at its bottom. I'm speaking of a now closed crevice that resides beneath the movable cap of friable rock--a crevice that is located much deeper down in the bedrock substructure, far below that cap of friable rock.)
I hope this helps someone find some nice, sassy gold--either in the little perpendicular plates and sheets on the surface, or if you're lucky enough, in a tightly closed crevice beneath the cap that once allowed the gold to enter. (I also hope that it will help you save some time by not working barren clay deposits.)
*** I just remembered something: always carefully examine the surface of any gooey, clay-jammed crevice material. Sometimes if there's little stones and coarse sand jammed in that surface material, there's a good chance there's gold as well. Take the material down to where there's no more granular particles stuck in it (you can tell by squishing the material between your fingers), and go through the hassle of liquifying it (it's time intensive, but stick with it). Next, pan it very carefully. Also, be sure to wash everything off in clear water so you know what you're looking at before you discard anything! Clay is a master of disguise, and if there's enough of it around a particle of gold, the gold's specific gravity won't allow it to behave like gold at all. On a related note, clay will also form a ball around gold (as it encases the gold) and let it roll right over your pan's riffles! So, to be safe, squish and smear everything around under the water in your pan until it's well liquified. ***
All the best, and good luck,
Lanny
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Lanny
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Jim, you are indeed an encyclopedia of mining knowledge, and I appreciate you connecting with the story and the experiences of gold left behind.Jim_Alaska wrote: ↑Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:05 pmGood story Lanny; it makes me wonder how many of us have had similar experiences. I know that I have had them. In reading your story, I was able to relate to it in that, I can look back on my prospecting life and see things I should have recognized, but didn't; or things I should have done, but didn't.
All the best, and I always appreciate your opinion,
Lanny
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Jim_Alaska
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Re: Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales
Lanny, are you kidding 
You say that I am an "encyclopedia of mining knowledge". The reality is that I am just a baby compared to you. Back when I was in Alaska, many years ago, and just getting into prospecting, you were already finding gold in places that amazed me to read about.
I vividly remember you posting on a forum that I don't remember, about finding gold by sweeping out road culverts. I also remember you posting about finding gold, I think with a detector, on the side of a gravel road.
It seemed to me at the time, that everywhere you went you found gold. I learned a lot from you over the years.
You say that I am an "encyclopedia of mining knowledge". The reality is that I am just a baby compared to you. Back when I was in Alaska, many years ago, and just getting into prospecting, you were already finding gold in places that amazed me to read about.I vividly remember you posting on a forum that I don't remember, about finding gold by sweeping out road culverts. I also remember you posting about finding gold, I think with a detector, on the side of a gravel road.
It seemed to me at the time, that everywhere you went you found gold. I learned a lot from you over the years.
Jim_Alaska
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