Journal, 10PM, Dec 21, 2002 (Solstice) Portland, Oregon

I'm supposed to be writing a jingle for a client, but all I’ve been able to come up with is the following verse:

I’m in love with Walla Walla;

'Cause it's big, and yet it's smalla.

Dishwalla?...Marshmalla? Nothing or Alla?

I’ve always been self-motivated, but I still can't get myself moving on the ad campaign I’ve got to launch within weeks. I haven't even started the no-brainer search for props. 

All I can think about is being alone on a beach with my back to the sea and the boogie man who’s going to kill me.

He won't do it the first time he meets me.  He'll chat me up during our initial encounters as he tracks me like an animal; making sure I'm truly alone so he'll have a better chance at getting away with it. 

Either that, or a log will nail me from behind when I’m not looking.

I can't believe I'm planning to turn my back on everything I know so I can move to the southern Oregon coast to mine the beaches for gold, much less that it was my idea in the first place. 

I’m not doing this as an odyssey of self discovery, or to escape a life that’s lost its’ meaning. My life, friends and family are great, and I’m going to miss them.

I’m moving six hours’ drive south to a remote corner of the state so I can model my life upon millions of people in developing countries who make their living as artisanal gold miners. 

The main difference is, these people are using mercury to recover fine gold with devastating results.  I have a device that retrieves this kind of gold simply, without toxins, and for the next two months it’s how I’m going to earn my living. 

Giving up on the jingle, I doze lightly on the sofa, my arm draped across my comatose cat.  Something loud and violent happens on the TV to stir me, so I get up and go out to the porch to brood in the dark. 

A police car suddenly zooms down my block and pulls over across the street from me. A big, blond cop gets out with his flashlight and briskly starts searching the shrubs in my neighbor's yard. I watch him with a mild curiosity. As his flashlight sweeps around and locks on me, it hits me that boogie men are always nearby; I'm just more familiar with the ones who lurk about the streets of Portland.

Over a year ago I was near the height of my unhappiness, working as a creative director at an ad agency that wasn’t a good fit. I had to go out to the coast to pitch a casino that wanted to increase weekday traffic from senior citizens (sigh). Since I would be finished with the meeting by noon with the rest of the day to myself, I called a longtime friend of my sister’s who lived nearby and asked him if he’d like to meet for golf. He did.

David Plath is a gifted scientist who, also disenchanted with the business of his field, left it years ago and moved to Lincoln City to pursue the love of his life: the sea and surfing it.  Apart from his private consultant work as a chemist and microscopist, David had been tinkering with an environmentally safe, artificial reef to enhance surfing conditions.

His experiments led to the development of a unique method to separate micron sized gold from heavy minerals contained in the beach sands near his home. 95+ percent of gold mined today is this small, and the favored way to recover such gold is through cyanide heap leaching or mercury amalgamation. 

After five years of R&D, David received the patent for his device and method. Coincidentally, it was two years to the day after that patent was granted when I came out to Lincoln City for that round of golf. After he beat me on the course, we walked his dog on the beach and he told me about his invention.

I didn’t understand the process (adsorptive matrix?), but when he explained that his technology offered a clean alternative to cyanide and mercury processes, I knew what that meant. I asked David if he had showed it to anyone in the mining industry. He said he tried, but was unable to get anyone’s attention; he said he wasn’t a salesman. I offered to spend some free time on it.

When I returned home to Portland, I researched the web, using the keywords "gold mining" and "cyanide." An article from the Sierra Club came up, reporting that cyanide leach pits spoil 79 tons of soil for every ounce of gold they produce.

One hundred and fifty eight thousand pounds of Earth in exchange for one gold watch.

I’d spent a significant portion of my career bringing success to many jewelry clients.

I started mining the web to see if I could help David promote his device.

Less than two months later, on my brother’s birthday, I was on the porch reading the morning paper when my neighbor called to me, telling me a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.  I went inside and turned on the TV in time to see the second one hit. 

United in shock with the rest of the nation, I arrived to the office in a daze; late for the mandatory status session.  I entered the conference room without acknowledgement by the others to see my boss leading the group as though nothing had happened. Later in the day, I was in the upstairs conference room with my team watching as the buildings fell.

Most of our clients immediately cancelled their media schedules, costing tens of thousands.  The ones who did want to stay on the air told me to rush into studios to slap flags on their ads.  I reeled from the request, frantically emailing my boss the etiquette for proper use of the flag, highlighting two areas where putting our flag--MY flag!--in ads would be in violation, but I was ordered to do it anyway. 

Enter the high point of my unhappiness.

Driving to work the next week with Old Glory now screaming at me from electronic billboards and the antennas of SUVs, I found myself fighting back tears. I knew why, but I was still amazed.  What right did I have to crumple up and lose it?  I was three thousand miles away. I didn’t know anyone who died that day, but I was as fragile as if I had lost my best friend.

The economy tanked almost as bad as my attitude, and I was mercifully let go in a round of layoffs a week before my 40th birthday.

A couple of weeks later, during Thanksgiving holiday, David came over for coffee and I interviewed him like I would a new client. Then I went to work. We decided to stay apolitical, and simply position ourselves as a novel technology that increased micron gold recovery without chemicals.  After bouncing around and rejecting several stupid names for our venture (Plath-matic sticks in my mind as one of the worst), I combined the two words David frequently used to define his end result and Cleangold was born.

I pored through everything I could find on the web related to gold mining.  I contacted Native American tribes who were fighting mining companies’ attempts to blow up their mountains and install leach pits. The tribes weren’t interested in us. They wanted to stop all mining, period and I didn’t blame them. Politicians and others I contacted involved in the industry weren’t interested either.  With a new administration working in big mining’s favor, it wasn’t worth it to bother with a little device that hadn’t been scaled up and tested, much less proven.

During this period, David got a speaking engagement at a large, regional mining conference to present his technology. The chairman of that forum was an economic geologist from Idaho who spent a good part of his career in the former US Bureau of Mines.  His interest in David’s technology was sparked, and Jack Satkoski joined us.

Jack’s real-world experience and clarity on the obstacles we’re facing in this industry makes him a good Yoda to my Jedi. A more realistic metaphor is that he’s a good Eeyore to my Christopher Robin.

Journal, Friday morning, January 17, 2003

After writing the above, I managed to turn my focus back to the car dealer, and my housemate Kris came up with a word that rhymes with "Dodge" (garage!).  Today, I’m going into the studio to do some final tweaking on the TV spots.  David starred in one of them because I needed a golfer who could consistently hit a slice (and who also wouldn’t charge me talent fees).  Looking at the ad David was in, where he opens the spot and the client comes on for the close is an odd convergence of my two worlds. 

But now, my attention is shifting from interest-free financing to moon phases and tides. In the middle of one of my shoots, with the Oregon rain wrecking the shot, I had a brief moment when I laughed at myself for feeling anxiety about the risks and solitude in store for me on the southern Oregon coast.

Now, I can’t wait to get down there.

Journal, January 18, 2003

Four days from now will mark the first anniversary of the day when the project morphed from a speculative business venture into a mission that has taken hold of my heart and inspired the move I’m about to make.  A year ago, while scouring the web, I found an article discussing the plight of artisanal gold miners in developing countries. 

An estimated 16 million people around the world, because of bad economic conditions, had turned to rivers, beaches and mines individually or in small groups to scratch out their living in gold.  Many of these miners were women, and many were their children. Most were using mercury to recover an average of a half to one gram of gold per day (worth about $2.50 US) Better than the average wages in their countries but very costly to their health, their community’s health, and the environment.

According to the United Nations’ Industrial Development Office,

"Artisanal and small-scale mining uses the mercury-based amalgamation process with catastrophic results for the environment and human health. The mercury released into the air in the form of vapour or lost in the rivers and soil is one of numerous pollutants causing growing concern because of the long-term impact on the habitat and human health. The technology used by artisanal miners in many developing countries has hardly changed over the centuries. Gold in the ore sludge is mixed with mercury into an amalgam, which is then separated by heating into mercury vapour and gold. An estimated two grams of mercury are released into the environment for each gram of gold recovered."

David’s little device could help these people mine gold without mercury and could even increase their yield. 

The possibilities expanded.  If David’s technology could improve health and economic conditions in these communities, it might also help reduce or eliminate child labor; allowing these kids to go to school, play and learn to do something else with their lives besides mining. I emailed an officer working on the program and heard back from him the next day, most interested in the technology.  I was soaring from the contact, and David and Jack were also stoked.  A slam dunk after only two months of effort!  The officer and I busily exchanged questions and answers for a couple of days, but when I was finally able to email photos of the sluice to him, I was abruptly dismissed.  “Sorry, having to disappoint you,” he wrote. 

Stunned, I wrote back asking an explanation. His response said a sluice had to be of a certain size, set up at a certain angle, with a certain type of fixed, hard riffle system. I was stupefied and horribly disappointed. I tried to dissect what the hell had happened. Maybe we shouldn’t have called it a sluice.

Journal, Jan 24, 2003

I was unable to leave on the anniversary that led to this mission, because Crewcut wouldn’t get back to me with a yay or nay on the final cut, but the delay enabled me to spend two nights with my parents on my way south. They rock. We’re such good friends and I’m so lucky for that. After a great day of shopping with mom, then martinis and dinner with both, Dad went to his den and I sat with mom as she finished. She looked at me directly, “You know, you don’t have to do this.  You can come right back if you want to and it’s no big deal, ok?” I love her so much. Thanks for the out.

On the drive down, all I could think about was how this would be way more surreal if I hadn’t already spent the past year away from my old world. Good preparation for the point I’m at now.  Driving down 101, as I passed the last busy town and entered the bottom half of the coast, I felt a distinct shift of presence.  Everything quieted. The road. The terrain. The inside of my packed Jetta. The inside of my packed mind.

I thought about how I wound up here. After the brushoff by the UN, we kept moving forward.  I looked into grants from the government, and was encouraged by mining experts I contacted at the EPA, but in the post 9/11 world, government-funded opportunities had quickly shifted from environmental endeavors to emerging bio-terrorism and weapons technologies.  I also explored venture caps, which had now grown sparse and were still too risky; we’d lose the company pronto if we couldn’t quickly return big profits.  We divided up markets: With his experience, Jack would go after big mining, I would work on the global artisanal scene, and David would develop the recreational mining market. 

While Jack hit the dead ends David and I were already accustomed to, David entered the web forums of recreational miners, posting notes which simply stated that he had invented a device for extracting micron gold from black sands and to check out our website.  He was thanked for his efforts with a thorough beating by the miners; most of whom wrote and spelled like they’d been inhaling the mercury vapors we were trying to offer an alternative to.

They accused him of spamming them, accused him of being a con man, and slammed his device without consideration; save for a few open-minded miners.  One of these was from Eugene and actually came out to Lincoln City for a demo.  He brought a five-gallon bucket of black sands from which he’d already painstakingly retrieved the gold, using several conventional and extremely time-consuming methods.  David processed these cons through a trough-shaped version of his device in about five minutes, using about five gallons of water, retrieving thousands of tiny specks of gold.  “Mosquito shit,” this miner called it. 

Were those few thousand specks a big deal?  Yes, when you consider that 95+% of the gold mined today is mosquito shit-sized.  This miner, credible in the recreational miner scene and a moderator on one of the nation’s biggest forums, reported back on the demo’s success.

There was a day of excited discussion, then the report mysteriously disappeared from the forum. A glitch in the system, according to the site owner, who distributed other companies’ magic gold-getters.

During this period, we also conducted extensive field tests, and those were a blast. That miner we met from Eugene hooked us up with friends of his who had mining claims in the state.  Hanging out on rivers with these miners and their crazy, loud, hard-working dredge operations was a culturally fascinating experience. I rediscovered the tom girl in me, and loved crawling around the woods and rivers with David and Jack, documenting everything on my little video camera. 

Then, David took us to Alaska.  “Burning Man for gold prospectors” is what he called Nome. Every summer when the tundra thaws enough to allow it, hundreds of miners converge there and so did we, to conduct field tests and promote the device.

Nome is where gold was first discovered in the 1800s, and Alaska remains one of the richest places on earth. In advance of our trip, I made contact with a miner via the web who said he’d be willing to meet with us.

By the time we arrived, word of our impending visit had spread so wide that our story had become twisted; much like that game where a chain of people whisper a phrase to one another and the last person who hears it has it wrong.  On the first day we were unpacking our rig to conduct a beach test, a local mine owner roared up in his pickup truck and excitedly asked us if we were the team from Norway. We said no. He then said: “Aren’t you guys the scientists who get the fines?”  We said Ya!

After we set up the equipment for the first test, David and I stepped away from the group.  With me saving the moment on video for his mom, David slipped some of his father’s ashes into a new design, the outflow of which would roll into the Bering Sea.  His dad RC, who had a machine shop and built all of David’s prototypes, died the previous summer.  He, along with his wife Jane were their son’s biggest fans and supporters of his research through the years. 

With 24 hours of daylight, we barely slept the whole time we were there, running field tests, partying, and paying way too much for reindeer burgers and Budweiser. David was able to show his technology to a wide variety of miners from all over the country, and I shot great footage of him recovering stunning amounts of gold simply by tossing a pan of sand into his sluice and dipping it into the surf.  I also captured video of him in historic Anvil Creek (where gold was first discovered in Alaska), recovering gold from clay.  It mirrored a scene I’d seen on the web of artisanal miners working in the Amazon.

In anticipation of the journey, I had been fearful of wilderness, wildlife and the Overall Unknown, but with the guys by my side I was able to break through several levels of Samsonite which for many years had kept me from feeling really alive. In my early 20s, as it began to dawn on me that I was not immortal, little changes began to slowly occur that led to my living a “safer” life. 

Perceived risks increasingly outweighed rewards in career, recreational and personal choices.  By the age of 40, this junk had accumulated to the point where I was experiencing way less of the life I was capable of.  In order to stay alive, I had sort of stopped living.  This epiphany struck my very hungover head the morning after we had crawled around a gigantic, rotting gold dredge in the middle of the tundra. 

After our return from Nome, I kept up my search and contacts with other global organizations that deal with small mining without response, until I found an organization called CASM (Communities and Small Scale Mining) in Washington DC. I was put in touch with their senior mining specialist, who said he was willing to see my videos. I looked up his background on the web, and though he’d been prominently involved with big mining all over the world, I gleaned from his resume that he might care more about what’s right instead of what’s in it for him.  Maybe he’ll be the one with the vision to see the potential of this project and the power to help us implement it.

Late in the summer, with all of us suffering from ennui and constant wheel spinning without success, I remember griping on the phone with Jack about my frustrations.  He told me what he’d been hearing from the people he’d been contacting: if we wanted to sell this thing, we’d have to go get rich on it first.

I decided I would do just that and started making plans to move to Gold Beach for the winter, which is the best time to mine the Oregon coast.  You know all that light, fluffy sand you have to wade through on the beaches in the summertime?  Dig about 8 feet deeper than that and you’ll find what we’re after. In the winter, storms and swells strip the beaches of the lighter sands, leaving exposed the denser, darker minerals like garnet, epidote, hornblende, magnetite, and in a few spots, gold, platinum and other rare metals. 

The southern Oregon coast is historically famed for being rich in gold, and last spring David and I visited there to explore old mine sites.  Although most of the gold had been taken via the best of the technology they had back in the 1940s, David knew the finer gold would have blown right through their sluices and onto the beaches, and we weren’t disappointed.  Since all of Oregon’s beaches are public and motorized equipment is prohibited, I’d be able to work every spot I could find.  All I would need is David’s device and a natural stream of water emerging from the banks to rinse sand through it. And a place to stay.

The mother-in-law of a friend of my sister’s lives in Gold Beach, and she let me rent a small apartment on the ground floor of her house while she wintered in Arizona.  This apartment had large windows facing the ocean, and the house is secluded by 26 acres of forest with a private path to the beach.  A young man who rents the adjacent apartment is a state trooper, and his pickup truck with police markings would be parked in the driveway whenever he was home.  Oh, and there was a hot tub in a separate room upstairs that I’d be allowed to use. It seemed like the universe wanted me to do this.

The Southern Oregon coast is Oregon’s most beautiful, comparable to northern California’s coastline.  Most Oregonians are more familiar with our north coast, and make a big, squealing, “honey take my picture here” fuss about a large, haystack-shaped rock called Haystack Rock.  Down south, that hunk probably wouldn’t have a name.  There are hundreds of staggeringly beautiful rock formations rising out of the sea, some that look like whales, dragons, shark fins, and one in particular is called Face Rock, which is a profile of a face looking up to the sky.  I swear it resembles mine.

I arrived on a Thursday, which gave me time to unpack and prepare for the next day’s arrival of David, Jack, and Jack’s girlfriend Diana.  I was grateful they would spend the first few days with me to help get me started.  It rained non-stop from the moment they came, and I had no clue of how to deal with keeping dry.  Yes, I’m an Oregonian, but I’m also a city girl with a car, a house, an umbrella I can never find and a roof over my front porch. The transients in my city make good use of Hefty bags, but I don’t like that look. Jack taught me how to hang wet clothes near the heater without setting them ablaze, and how to use my hair dryer to safely dry my rubber boots, which proved to be a lifesaver. David advised me to buy a rubber suit. Diana prepared a huge feast of Thai food that would provide me with meals for two days after they left.

While they were here, David found me a rich area to work. We nicknamed this beach “Channel 6” (all of our hot spots have elaborately inspired code names), so I was all set. 

Except for my head. I was anxious about being left alone. I’m an unusually social person.  It’s not uncommon for me to have spontaneous dinner parties at my house 5 nights a week and planned ones the other two. I definitely wasn’t moving down here to get away from it all because I loved being in it all. Though I tried to act lighthearted while the team was here, David saw through it and gave me encouraging pep talks about how great it was going to be and how envious he was; promising to come down at least once a week or more when he could.

Journal, Jan 30, 2003. Gold Beach, Oregon.

I swore I would create a new brand out of this experience, that I would project a new image of the modern gold miner:  A sleek, well-put-together woman who gently commands earth and water to retrieve treasure from the Mother, without ripping and raping and blowing up and crushing and leaching her in the process.  Ok, other than the first two adjectives, I’m doing all that.  But, as I sit here writing, my hair is way too long past its last cut, it’s streaked with gray, and I haven’t had a shower since yesterday; post-session sweat dried on me as I sit here in the same clothes I've worn for the last two days.

I’m tired, grubby, happy, and All is Well.  It was a Great Day, capped off on the edge of a perfect cliff, watching a sunless sunset with a martini in my hand, listening to birds whose songs I've never heard before. 

Loneliness factor: Zero.  Missing TV, newspapers or other media factor: Zero.  Fear Factor: Zero.  Bubba factor: Zero.

Every day of the last six I’ve spent here has turned fears of the boogie man into respect for the boogie mama.  Storms, landslides, washouts, power outages and Bambi wandering into the roadway are rapidly replacing all threats of Bubba.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not watching out for him.  You know how easy it is to have a relaxed conversation with a total stranger in an airport bar?  That’s the way it is on the beaches here.  As people hit the beach and see me shoveling sand into these specialized plates, they’re curious and most will talk to me.  Some of them know what I’m doing; they just don’t realize it’s not roofing shingles or car mats I’m running my ore through, which is what other people have used to try to trap gold on the beaches here.

In Chile, on Chiloe Island, the beach miners take long sheets of corrugated tin roofing, coat them with mercury, then run sands down these troughs to capture the gold through amalgamation.  All the effluence of these efforts runs right into the sea.  I heard about this from an American who mined copper there for awhile.  On the web, if you look up Chiloe Island there is no mention of this practice, but you’ll find lots of raves about the incredible local seafood the resorts serve, “caught fresh from the sea that day!”

Channel 6 is very secluded, and I had to force myself through a wall of fear to go onto that beach alone.  On my first day there, my first encounter was with a guy who startled me while I was concentrating on setting up the proper water flow into the sluice.  When I noticed him heading toward me, I snapped into my already pre-determined defensive position with my shovel, which I patterned after Captain Kirk from that classic fight scene with those long wooden spear sticks.

Remember the great fight scene music they'd use on Star Trek?  Dah-dah-duh-dah- duh!  Anyway, the guy called out:  "It sure is refreshin’ to see a lady’s got the fever!"  Big grin.  Hyuk yuk yuk.  I was polite back and we chatted briefly --he was collecting large pieces of driftwood to make furniture--then he went on his way.  I continued shoveling, but I was a little huffy that he was of the impression that I was merely a greedy gold miner.  I thought of what I should have said back (with a snobby, sniffy tone):  "I don’t have the fever, I’m a scientis-er, I'm doing scientific stuff, er.."  I actually laughed out loud at how stupid that would've sounded and looked around quickly; thankful that no one was there to see the crazy fever lady cracking herself up.

It rained like Oregon (I initially wrote "hell") last night and all day, up until the time I hit the beach for my session. Then, the weather released a 30 minute sea mist facial that would’ve cost $100 at a salon.  Then, it quit raining altogether.  The water flow was supreme, the sand was streaked with glistening black, the air was pure and intoxicating, and from time to time I'd pause from my shoveling to stare at the sea or watch a lone seagull floating in the wind in a stationary position.   

I had to make myself stop shoveling after two hours, because I wanted to control the experiment and not push old injuries, but today I felt like going longer.  Shoveling always had a negative sound to me in the past, but David taught me how to do it in an ergonomic, Zen-like manner, which I’ll teach to anyone who comes out here and joins me.  I don’t feel like describing it now, although there was a non Zen-like moment when I leaned into the shovel as it slid into the sand and hit a rock, causing the handle to pop me in the solar plexus as a warning to take it easy. 

But back to the point: I look like one of them crazy prospectin’ broads!  At least I’m not wearing my boyfriend’s/ex-husband’s oversized, skanky flannel shirt.  And I talk gooder too. There is only one woman I'd trust to cut and color my hair, but she’s in Portland.  And, she charges more than I can afford, even if I can get in to see her.  However, the tides are not looking so good for the next four days, and I do need an oil change (the only mechanic I trust is also in Portland). And, I do need to project the image of the modern gold miner.

I wish it wasn’t raining so I could take my laptop out to that perfect cliff below the house to write. I wish all of my loved ones were here with me. One or two at a time.  Maybe I can find a good colorist or mechanic nearby. I don't want to leave.

Journal, Jan 31, 2003

Okay, enough with the spa mist bullshit already. And now I’m of the mind that $60 is not too much to spend on rubber pants, I just need to find some. Do they sell rubber pants for short women?  The fluorescent orange ones David wears make even his butt look big.  It’s a tossup between those and Hefty bags for which will flatter me the least. At this point, I don’t care.

The local radio station’s forecast had been for showers and breezy—local lingo for a monsoon with gale force winds. It is raining and raining and raining with no end in sight.  Because of the tides (and the cold water collected in my boots), I only put in an hour of mining today.  When I came home and drove down the long, muddy driveway to the main house without seeing the trooper’s truck parked there, I thought I would be alone. But, as I walked past the sliding glass door of my neighbor’s apartment and saw him in there, I realized Lewis must have been one of the state budget cuts reported on the radio today.

I had just enough time to stick my hair dryer inside a sopping wet boot when I heard a knock on the door.  Lewis came in and confirmed he’d been laid off.  I’d only had a couple of brief, “hi, how’s it going?” encounters with him over the past week, but he sat down and talked and talked and talked, about the stupidity of the legislature, about the chaos facing his colleagues, about his past, and what his options were for the future.  I could see it really hurt him.  I’ve been laid off twice in my life, and both times were a relief; a brief respite from the Joy Sucking Freak Show, but Lewis truly loved his job.  He was way too serious for being way too young. 

I was glad to listen to him (he LOVED busting grow ops), glad to talk to another human in person, but I was itching to check on my yield, as I had attempted a new experiment that day.  I asked him if he wanted to see what I was up to and he said he did.  My experiment turned out to be a bust; revealing just a thin spray of gold dust across the pan.  He was politely enthusiastic but clearly not impressed, and if there was ever a good time to put on a bad show, this was it.  If I had rolled out a huge hit of gold in front of him, it probably would’ve spread through town faster than I’m ready for.  I’m hoping to have at least one season here with the beaches all to myself.  If anyone asks, my official position here is that of a visiting, recreational gold miner; only Lewis and my landlord have any glimmer of the wider implications of the project. I continued my cleanup, then Lewis finally ran out of gas and went next door to have his dinner.

Mining report to David and Jack.  Sun. Feb 2.  Channel 6.  1.25 hrs

Checked Headhunter on the way there because from the highway I saw what looked like a ripping stream coming out of where it should be.  Lugged all the gear down there just in case, but very little flow and sand still not ready.  Lugged all the junk back up.  Imagine if I were toting a highbanker!

Another sunny, gorgeous day at Channel 6. I had the best flow ever.  Less strong than in the past week, and it only took me 6 days to figure out that I should build a symmetrical dam so the flow is more even.  When I was heading down the walkway (eye on the ground looking for nuggets, Jack!), I was greeted with loud chainsaw sounds.  Surfers/driftwood sculptors had their pickup truck parked smack dab in the middle of my stream, hacking into the wood on the banks.  They were nice guys, though.  I set up my stuff 10 feet further down than usual, and one of them immediately critiqued my shovel technique.  Had to show me how to do it, by leveraging the handle against his knee during the scooping, but all of his other moves were wrong.  I showed him the way you taught me David and he had to admit that it was a good way.  Their gallery is in Big Sur.

Today I did the proper order of pullout of sluices (ow!) and am excited to check results but can't tonight because my neck is too sore.

It was a bizarrely beautiful sunset tonight.  I felt like I was on another planet.  A rose/fuscia/magenta color highlighted the underside of the clouds on the horizon. Then, the moon revealed itself right where the sun had been--just a sliver showing. 

Forecast is for dry and gorgeous weather the next five days.  Bummer.  When it's sunny and blue-skied here, with all the different variations of aquamarine on the sea, I don't think I've seen any place more beautiful, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here, but it’s bad for mining. I need a natural source of water flowing on the beach or else I can’t work.

I might take Monday off.  That special spot on my spine I call "ground zero" from my car accident a couple of years ago is calling my name fairly loudly.  Think I’ll check on K1 and K2 for a spell in the morning and call it good.  

It's great here, but weird.  I talk to strangers all the time but I’m starving for authentic conversation (which is the reason these reports are ever more rambling).  I consider myself somewhat down to earth, but I keep thinking about the scene in that movie Private Benjamin, where Goldie Hawn is marching in the mud, whining "I wanna go shopping!  I wanna go out to lunch!" so perhaps I will go to the big city of Brookings tomorrow, 20 miles south, to shop for rubber pants and other supplies.  That ought to make me go screaming back to the sea.

K

Journal, Tuesday night, 2/4/03  Spot gold $383/oz, up from $373 this morning, up from $260 when I first started this project late in 2001.

Ok, now that I’ve examined everyone’s hair, I’ll talk about what happens after I’ve spent a couple of hours shoveling sand (the blacker the better!) onto this specially designed magnetic plate set in the path of a runoff stream.

Showtime.  Retrieval of the gold. 

The feeling I get when I’m about to see the gold I’ve recovered is akin to the feeling I used to get in advertising when I was about to watch freshly processed film for the first time: it’s either going to be Christmas or a bad Monday morning.

The first night I was here alone, a total novice as a gold panner, I dutifully tried to follow the recovery technique David taught me.  I could hear him correcting me in my mind as I fumbled along in my scraping and sloshing, until I finally had my first little patch of highly concentrated black sand.  Which, if I had done everything correctly, most of the gold I shoveled into the sluice today would be buried beneath that little dollop of black sand in my pan.

I shifted my body to get a better view because the overhead light was casting a harsh glare on the surface of the water.  As I unlocked my crossed, now-numb legs and moved, my wrist clumsily jerked hard to the side, almost upsetting the pan. Before I could bring the pan level again, I saw the heavy black sand in it slosh toward me, uncovering the largest swath of gold I’ve ever seen in my life.  Bigger than anything we saw in Nome.  I stared at it slack jawed for about 5 seconds, then burst out laughing.  I grabbed my video camera and shot the patch of extremely fine, gleaming, clean gold. 

I would come to perfect this panning move, which I named The Spaz.

David came down on Friday night to spend the weekend, still recovering from a neck strain he received while body surfing with his family in Puerto Vallarta.  He couldn’t wait until daylight to process my concentrates and we had a merry time drinking and laughing as he retrieved an abundance of gold that I had missed panning.

The next day we worked Channel 6 and roamed north of it, mining areas of black sand that the surfer/ sculptors had told me about.  Outrageously beautiful, warm weather for a February day in Oregon.  Hard to believe my friends were freezing back in Portland. 

David had sold a sluice a few months back to a nice man who recently retired.  Paul and his sweetheart Ginny sold their home and belongings, bought an RV, and intended to roam the country to do “environmentally sensitive mining” with David’s sluice. We met with them on Sunday for breakfast, then we took them to Channel 6 for an excursion.  I had initially pouted that David intended to show them our hot spot, but he assured me these people were worth sharing it with. 

He was right.  While David showed Paul the finer points of prospecting, I taught Ginny how to mine.  After only two weeks here, my proficiency had accelerated and I was quite comfortable with showing her what to look for, how to set up dams, shovel without strain, control flow and keep the ore moving through the sluice.  David said I was a natural teacher. I kept thinking how great it would be to teach other women how to do this all over the world. 

After our session, they invited us up to their RV and we drank Yukon Jack in styrofoam cups (mine was mixed with Mountain Dew) as their two cats crawled around the carpeted poles in the RV.  I envied them their life, their love, and the wonderful times that lay ahead of them. 

We parted as good friends, and they promised to keep in touch with us and share their adventures.  I was quite buzzed from the two-punch of alcohol and caffeine, so I was thumbs up when David wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon surfing.  I sat happily on the sand without shoveling it and watched this man in his late 40s (who usually limps and groans on dry land from old foot injuries), effortlessly leap like a teenager onto his board and rip it up with the rest of the youngsters.

Journal, Thursday, February 6, 2003

Concerned about the loneliness I might feel on this journey, I joked to my friends before I left that I was worried I’d become like Jack Nicholson from The Shining—bursting through Lewis’ door with my shovel, screaming “Hereeee’s Johnny!”

Now, I think I’m more likely to become like that blind guy Gene Hackman played in Young Frankenstein; so desperate for another person’s company he's grateful a monster just burst through the door.

Journal, Monday, February 10, 2003

Since the weather has been so beautiful with no end forecast, the flow at my most productive spot has been drying up.  It’s also an 80 mile round trip to experience this increasing non-event.  Today, I was determined to find a richer spot and tired of spending 40 dollars a week on gas (at 99c per gallon), I was determined to find a place to mine within strolling distance.  So, I spent several hours scouring every flowing and dried out runoff creek all the way from the front of the house to the southernmost point, where giant rocks stopped me from going further. 

I don’t think I would have made it as a Bedouin.  The sand was light, loose and deep; in my big rubber boots a size too large, I tired within the first five minutes.  Carrying all my gear, plus a two pound bottle of water, I slogged through channels of sand, sweating away, with only a couple of agate hunters buzzing past on ATVs for company.  At least no one yelled “Are ya rich yet?” as they sailed by. 

I did find one interesting area that took me 40 minutes to get to, but it’s not ready yet.  Even if it was ready, I don’t think I could manage the journey back to the house with the extra weight of the sluices after they’ve been loaded up with ore. I thought I had set myself up with an easy physical day, but this one was the hardest yet.  I’m definitely ready for my trip to Eugene tomorrow (I have a mechanic there I trust to change my oil).  I’ll probably even pay attention to the perpetual sports on TV while I stay at Steve and Kathy’s just because it’s TV.

When I finally got back to the house, I went up to the hot tub room to water the plants and saw the biggest rat trap I have ever seen in my life.  It looked like a cartoon.  And, it was freshly loaded with cheese.

Uh oh.

Journal, Eugene.

It was great to get away and play with most beloved friends.  I proudly showed them the eentsy, teensy pile of gold dust I had thus far collected in a small glass bottle and, since they were close enough friends they didn’t have to be polite, laughed.  “That’s all? Is that good?” The next day I got an oil change and upon the mechanic’s recommendation, new shoes for the Jetta.

While I was waiting for my tires to be installed at Costco, I picked up a book by Isabelle Allende, called Daughter of Fortune.  It’s a story about a Chilean woman who follows her lover to California’s first gold rush in 1849.  I enjoyed it, but just when I got to the part where I read that the prostitutes made more money than the miners, my cell phone rang and I saw on the caller ID that it was Crewcut, my car dealer.  I answered the phone laughing, but I usually greet him in such a manner so he was not put off.

Steve and Kathy took good care of me, and Kathy let me hide in their bedroom for a couple of hours to watch Oprah and some other show with a psychic who knows all about dead relatives and lost wedding rings. That was the only thing on but I dug it.

I drove back to the increasingly desiccated coast, worried because my next visitors would be arriving the following day and I really wanted them to see a good show of the technology.  My uncle Dudley and his wife Beverly were traveling all the way from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to go gold mining with me.  They’re quite the adventurers. They’ve ridden elephants in Tibet, hiked in Patagonia, and have seen more places around the world than most ever will. After sharing my Nome adventures and Cleangold videos with him, he surely thought this would be an interesting experience. 

His wife Beverly has a brother who’s working on assignment an hour north of here, so I figured she would split off and spend a lot of time visiting him.  But mom called the night before their arrival and told me she heard that Beverly’s brother would be out of town during their visit.  I gulped at the prospect of them both being here with bad mining conditions.  I don’t know Beverly very well; she negates Dudley being my actual uncle, and she’s a bit younger and very pretty.  She had been reserved the first few times I met her, and I was somewhat intimidated by her.

They arrived on time, and surprised me with a sprig of daphne!  It’s my absolute favorite flower because its fragrance immediately flips the switch on my spirits to Bliss.  Mom asked them to bring me some because it doesn’t grow on the coast and I was sorely missing its run in my backyard.

Beverly had a scratchy voice, having just come down with some sort of bug on the flight over.  Oh no!, I panicked inside. She’s going to be miserable, bored and petulant, and Dudley is going to quickly realize they spent a lot of time, money and trouble to experience nothing except a giant rat crashing through the walls to kill us all.  I mixed cocktails and we made small talk until David arrived for the weekend and started happily blabbing away with Dudley, oblivious to all my apprehensions, God bless him.

Saturday morning, Dudley ran to the store and got Beverly set up with juice, muffins and tissues, then we headed out for some mining.  We hiked deep down a hillside into one breathtakingly beautiful spot that had showed some promise but still wasn’t ready.  Although some light showers had teased us during the day, it still wasn’t enough to increase flow or strip the lighter sands that had crept up on Channel 6.  With no other prospects we mined it anyway.

We returned to find Beverly still sniffling but in good spirits, and I shot video of David’s recovery from our session.  When he handed a snuffer bottle to Dudley with a pitiful trace of gold dust in it, Dudley magnanimously declined; insisting that we keep it for the pot.  I burst out laughing at how badly this was all going, but at least I had lightened up.  Beverly and Dudley were gracious guests, and I was enjoying the time we were spending together, especially the early family stories Dudley told of how vibrant and vivacious my maternal grandmother had been before she lost her spark.

Over dinner at a barbecue joint that night, I declared my acceptance of the fact that I might not be able to mine in the morning, golf in the afternoon and shop online for Mercedes’ in the evening. However, I refused to believe that this was as good as it got.  David suggested we spend the next day prospecting closer to the house, because I’d also been griping that my gasoline bill was getting way out of hand.

On Sunday, we drove along the coastline and checked out one spot that was just a high point with a treacherous path down to the beach.  David cheerfully descended a steep cliff to pull a sample from the sands and we lost sight of him.  The wind was blowing hard and I was getting vertigo standing within 10 feet of the edge. Dudley and I waited for David for awhile, and just as we began to discuss whether or not we’d hear him if he called for help, he emerged with his sample and began processing it in a big puddle.  I was glad there wasn’t much gold, because I would’ve hated to tell him there was no way I’d descend that cliff if there had been. 

Then, because it was close by, we stopped at another beach we’d prospected a couple months before with no results, although another runoff stream had opened up since the last time we’d been there.  While I wandered around, Dudley watched David run a test pan of sand through his prospector’s sluice, then I heard the two of them roar.  Jackpot.  It wasn’t just a huge amount of gold, it was HUGE gold! Larger, coarser gold than we’d seen anywhere else in Oregon!  We flipped.  We threw our big sluices into the stream and started shoveling.  There was a lot of rocky material mixed in with the sand, and Dudley dug up deep shovels full of ore with flecks of gold sitting right on top of the stones!

You have to understand—this device was designed to get extremely small particles of gold—we almost never see the gold we’ve mined until it’s concentrated and clustered in a pan with many thousands of its buddies. I’d never worked with this kind of ore before, but it worked perfectly in the sluice.  I kept fussing with the rocks, trying to rinse them first and pull them off the plate so it wouldn’t interfere with the process, but David kept reminding me to “trust the technology.” 

When the sluice is in operation, all one can usually see are rows and rows of what look like black corduroy while lighter sands simply pass over it. That corduroy is a heavy, black sand called magnetite, which is usually found with gold, and when Cleangold’s in action, it sets up an adsorptive matrix; a “virtual” riffle system which traps gold finer than one can see without a microscope.  All of the lighter sands and excess magnetite rinse out while trapping gold, platinum and other rare minerals, making this technology unique from other recovery processes. The gold particles at this spot were so large, we could actually see it trapped in the sluice while we were looking down on it!

It was a spectacular moment.  A storm sneaked up on us and it even hailed for several minutes; blasting our goretex-covered bodies with stinging pebbles of ice.  And, just when I thought it was peaking and couldn’t hail any harder, it doubled itself. I was laughing out loud with all of my heart at this point, because it was the first time in my life that I had fully experienced a hailstorm without running for cover.

It was only after lightning cracked the sky with an immediate answer of thunder that we decided to pack it up and hightail it out of there. David headed north to his home in Lincoln City, and Dudley and I went back to the house, dried off and shared our adventures with Beverly.  She had greatly improved, having had a warm, cozy place to recover, read books and watch the waves.  We made cocktails, panned out an astonishing amount of gold for our efforts and cooked a great meal.  David called after he got home to announce that our code name for the spot would henceforth be known as “Dudley,” and I could see it tickled the man it was named after. 

The next day, Dudley and I ran out there in light rain and got chased off the beach by the incoming tide after only 45 minutes.  In that amount of time, I got my biggest hit yet, almost double the amount of gold that I had retrieved after 15 hours at Channel 6.  Beverly joined us for an afternoon session and while Dudley shoveled, she and I hunted for the perfect hot massage rock as we rinsed gold off the larger ones in the top of the sluice. Dudley kept saying “Trust the technology” with his Texas twang. It was a much better visit than I could’ve hoped for.  And, after spending some real time with Beverly, I realized that she is a very smart, sharp woman who is truly in love with my uncle, and they’re both very lucky to have found each other.

After their return home, Dudley mailed me a VHS copy of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Mining report Day 14.  Thur. 2.20.03

To David, Jack, Dudley.  Mined Dudley (or, what's left of it)  1.0 hrs

Glad we got to see it when we did, because Dudley is a whole other beach now.  A dune descended upon it last night and now it is totally covered in coarse sand.  Inconceivable!  What's left of the runoff creek disappears into very light sand just about where my sluices should go.  Those cute little tiers of the creek are all one height now; either collapsed or buried under rocks and driftwood. Stubborn, I try to set up anyway, and built a huge, complicated reservoir, but never could find enough magnetite to get the mats built up.  So, I only ran a couple shovels through that I just guessed at and pulled up out of the quicksand.  They were rich shovels too--if there had been halfway decent flow I think I could've worked it. 

Dudley 2 (the creek next to it) has raging flow, but it’s all coarse and tight with giant boulders too--not looking good at all-- so I didn't even try.  I'm simultaneously disappointed, amazed and incredibly grateful at what I got to witness there over the last five days.

K

Journal, Friday, Feb 21

David arrived for the weekend and while he was settling in, I got a call from mom. My father had been down in my neck of the woods last week, golfing with some friends at Bandon Dunes about an hour north of me. I’d hoped he’d be able to sneak away from them and come visit me, but not only did he not make it to see me, he almost didn’t make it home.  The car he was riding in as a passenger was the second vehicle hit in a four car collision near Coos Bay.  They landed upside down in a ditch, the car totaled, and if it hadn’t been for the air bags, he would have been totaled too. 

How much time lapses between It’s Over and It’s Not?  What transpires between the shock of airbags exploding in his face and the point where he walked away from an upside-down, smoking heap of metal?  Is it the same amount of time between the horror of hearing “Your dad’s been in an accident,” followed by the relief of hearing he’s ok?  Thank You for sparing him this time.  I’m not ready to lose my dad and of course I never will be.  I am so blessed to still have both parents.  Reflecting on it the next morning, I said to David that however horrible it would have been to lose him, at least he would have left knowing how much I not only loved him, but liked him too.  Five or ten years ago, he might not have been so sure. 

If any father ever reads this, tell your kids you’re proud of them. Don’t wait for them to do something great. It’s better to do it when they least expect it but need to hear it. My father said those four words to me as I kissed him goodbye on Thanksgiving; a few weeks after I’d been laid off. Those words sustain me when self-doubt crashes in. 

Journal, Sunday Feb 23, 2003

Loneliness factor: 10.

I miss people.  David was here for the weekend and we had a wonderful time. I put the shovel away and returned to my video camera to capture experiments; getting our best footage yet of his cleanup trough in action, which he used to recover the rest of the gold I missed panning Dudley. And, it was a lot! I’m getting about 70% on my first pass of concentrate retrieval, which David says is very impressive for my lack of experience.  Good thing I’m panning over a Rubbermaid tub instead of a rushing river.

We prospected gorgeous, sunny, blue skied beaches, I cooked delicious meals, we had martinis at sunset on the perfect cliff and capped off the evenings in the hot tub to reset our muscles for the next day’s adventures.  But this time, when Sunday morning came so did melancholy; knowing I’d soon again be alone. Since our mining schedule that day included a 40 mile jaunt north, we took separate cars when we left the house.  We had an enjoyable breakfast at our favorite spot in town, but from the moment we left the restaurant, I was already lonely again.

After a short session at Channel 6, he headed north, I went south, and returned to my very quiet little place.  Missing TV factor: 10.  I like Sunday night TV. 60 minutes, The Sopranos, Sex and the City.  It’s definitely a good night for nesting.  I think what I miss most about TV is the sheer escapism of it.  It’s quite a relief to be able to turn off my busy brain and just veg out.

As a pure survival tactic, I gave up on TV news programs during the anthrax scare and haven’t had an urge to return. It drove me nuts to see the talking heads deliver heartbreaking news, then, in the last 10 seconds of the program they’d end with something like: “And, finally tonight, scientists have mapped the human genome.  Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.” 

Nowadays, I get my broadcast news from NPR and the Daily Show. TV has always been a major presence in my life. It was one of my majors in college and other than a few misfit forays into radio, it’s how I’ve made my living.  I’ve always been fascinated with modern culture; especially its subcultures, and TV is an ever-evolving, twisted reflection of that.

But these days, it seems to be especially filled with those you can thank God you’re not.

Mining report:  Mon. 2.24.03 (one month since I arrived)

To: David, Jack, and Dudley. Mined Dudley 2 (Raging stream), 2 hours.

Another beautiful day.  Ever the optimist, I headed straight for Dudley 1 to see if something miraculous had happened and I'd be able to work it.  On the way, I talked myself into pretending that I needed gold as if my babies' next meal depended on it.

I feel like I haven’t behaved as a true artisanal miner because I’ve covered my expenses for this project, and in advance of it I fully planned on mining in the morning and golfing in the afternoon.

Hah.  My neck and back get so trashed from carrying loaded sluices up winding paths and shoveling at Dudley 2, there’s no gumption left over for golf.  And I’m only physically able to shovel a pitiful average of two hours a day!  My basic game plan is to shovel until I start to stagger, then it’s all I can do to pull the sluices and drag them uphill to my car.  It’s been one full month since I’ve arrived and I have a sum total of 1/3 ounce for 15 days of mining (I'm not counting prospecting), which has nothing to do with the capability of David’s sluice. It's catching all the gold I’m able to get through it. My take is actually impressive, considering we’re having a beautiful winter. No rain means no flow from the runoff streams which means slower movement of lower grade ore, which means no food for my imagined babies much less golf, which the weather is ideal for but I’m too physically trashed and poor to do. 

So, I’ve decided that from this point on, I’m going to wail on it harder, like my compatriots around the world have to. Will that march another minute forward on the Cleangold clock of Karma that will earn us some funding for field tests so we can get this into the hands of those poor souls who depend on mercury?

If David hadn't named the whole beach Dudley, I would be calling this other area Rich Bitch, because it's both. This is not a Zen-like experience of shoveling silky black sand into a sleek, patented plate.   It's a bunch of boulders surrounded by slivers of coarse, light sand.  And, all evidence of the big rocks David moved away yesterday are now gone!  It's as if some Herculean pranksters went there last night and tossed them back in and then covered them up with giant logs of driftwood. The little pool he created was now buried in more rocks as big as he had already moved out, and I unhesitatingly passed on the prospect of moving them again.  Bummer, because those pools would have made my work a lot easier today.

So, I hunted around and wound up on the right side of the area, because it had a more manageable flow and about 15 feet above it were smaller boulders that I was able to carefully pull up and hurl out of my way.  I created one impressive pond and a second mediocre one but quit after two hours when all of us were exhausted. 

While I was pulling the sluices out of the stream, I noticed an old man at the top of the hill in the parking area looking down at me.  When I packed up my gear and trudged up the path to my car, his two dogs jumped all over me and the man said "If ya pet ‘em, they’ll want to go home with ya!"  I was totally out of breath but politely started to reply and he cut me off, yelling:  "I can’t hear anything you say! Those damn hearin' aids hurt my ears, so I don’t wear ‘em and I just can’t hear ya!"  Then he started yammering at me about how he figured I was panning for gold.  I tried to make that international sign for "sort of," by rocking my flattened hand horizontally, but he interrupted me, yelling that he couldn’t hear me, then he introduced the dogs to me as Penny and Tar. While I loaded my sluices into the trunk and tossed the stick that Penny brought me, I called the dogs Asshole and Shithead to make sure the old guy wasn’t pulling my leg about being deaf.

Retrieval:  Pretty good, I think.  Not even half as good as Dudley was doing last week, but still better than Channel 6.  Plus, I like this place better because it’s a closer drive and although it takes more out of me, it's an interesting new ore that I want to learn more about.

Plus, I need to feed my babies.

Also, I retrieved a plinker--another jagged chunk of stainless steel.  Smaller than the one David found in the sluice yesterday.  I set it on my tv tray, then I forgot about it and it fell somewhere into the carpet when I put the tray away that evening.  I’m not worried about it though.  I’m sure David’s bare foot will find it on his next trip back.

K

PS, I’m kidding about calling the dogs those names.

Mining report: Wed. 2/26/03

To David, Jack and Dudley.  (RB) Rich Bitch 2.0 hrs.

I almost cried when I got there.  The tidal pranksters had returned and tossed big rocks and logs on top of all the pools I dug yesterday.  Although water is still flowing strong at the top layers, there is no longer a stream coming out of the right channel where I had been working.  I think my pools are causing the surrounding boulders to collapse back in, sending coarse sand to fill the deltas and absorb the stream.  At the next high tide at a reasonable hour of daylight, I'm going to park myself there and just watch it, because I can't believe what is happening when I'm gone.

I built four pools, but ran into more boulders and couldn’t create anything deeper with the two higher ones.  If I hadn't beat myself up on those, I would've worked the lower ones longer but I tired easily today.

Since there wasn’t exposed black sand on the beach, I pre-charged my sluices with clean magnetite before I went out, hoping for a halfway decent yield which I guess I got, but was disappointed; considering its potential.

At least it didn't rain on me.  Hot tub has finally cooled down to 103! 

When I drove back today, I took the old coast road and a bit south of Dudley, I saw an unmarked beach trail that had a stream, which I will check out tomorrow.

K

Journal, Friday, 2/28/03

Hooray!  David comes today!  Yesterday, after first prospecting that area south of Dudley with no result and another dispiriting session at RB next door, I had planned to call and tell him not to even bother coming down.  No rain is forecast, and it’s just too long of a road trip to do too much work to see nothing new. 

I only spent one hour mining yesterday; my neck and back screaming at me, plus a nifty new stress injury has developed in my elbows from lifting boulders and pushing my shovel into sand covered rocks.  I tried to build new pools higher up from the stream, but with PMS also in progress, my tolerance for nonsense was at its nadir, and I wound up creating the easiest pool I could manage, a few measly feet from the stream. 

Funny, how my definition of “easy” has changed in the past couple of weeks. 

I barely saw any gold showing in the plate, and defeated, I packed it in.  I came home, panned it out, and got a lot more gold than I thought I deserved for the effort—plus I saw an impressive amount of what looked like platinum.  I must have hit a hot spot.  I called David that evening to make sure he was still coming down!  Our game plan last week was for him to recruit at least one of his surfing buddies to aid in boulder wrangling, and there’s a slight chance his friend Aquaman will accompany him on this trip.

After I got off the phone with David, I went upstairs to soak in the hot tub.  Peeking into the dark room before I entered, I could see that in lieu of the cartoony rat trap that had been placed there, was instead a gargantuan, complicated contraption that I think is designed to catch one live.  Did I mention it’s HUGE?  I opened the door, flicked on the light and stomped into the room in my clogs as if to say: “Hey rat!  Big, scary human coming in!” and I heard something in the back of the room shuffle away. Not scurry, mind you, shuffle!  Like the sound an old woman in a big housecoat and 10-year old slippers would make if she had to get up to answer the door.  There were some signs of this old lady on the hot tub cover too.  Ewww!  With my shoulder strain, I could barely lift the cover and once in there, I couldn’t relax; wondering if I was breathing humidified hantavirus, or whatever cooties come from rat droppings. 

In case David is unable to enlist a friend to come down, I think I might do a run at Channel 6 today, saving myself for the onslaught that will come tomorrow.  I am excited to have another human here!  Hope I don’t talk his ear off.

My basic mining outfit consists of a raincoat, long-sleeved t-shirts and leggings, which fit better under my rubber pants (I was able to find some in navy blue, thank GOD!), but since it was sunny I decided to wear my jeans.  I slipped them on and was surprised at how loose they were.  I hadn’t changed my diet, but had obviously lost weight.  There wasn’t a scale at my place, so when I went mining I first stopped by the medical clinic in town and asked if it was ok if I weighed myself.  They said it was fine, and even though I was fully clothed and had eaten a big breakfast, the scale showed a loss of seven pounds! On a doctor’s scale too.  Without access to my usual workout machines at home, I had been worried I would lose what little fitness I had while here, and the shoveling and boulder hurling seemed totally anaerobic, but when I placed my hands on my hips, my sides felt firmer than I could ever remember. I passed on my plan to work Channel 6 and mined Rich Bitch that day with a new attitude.

On Saturday, David and I wailed on RB together, and he approved of the pools I created.  If I’d had a tail it would’ve wagged from the praise. The pools were quite productive, and then we prospected some areas north, which were also promising.  One area in particular is very close to Dudley, is pure sand and has easy access.  Not much flow though, so rain, dammit, rain!

On Sunday, we left town in separate vehicles and stopped off at Channel 6 in time to shoot some video of the tide coming in, with David giving a short lecture on respecting same. The area was buried in lighter sand again, and the flow had dropped significantly.  It may very well be finished for the season.  Then, I made the hellaciously long drive back to Portland, which meant I didn’t have to face the abandonment I felt when David left last week.  I returned home to get hugs from my friends and family, meet with a new client, and get my financial papers together for David’s accountant friend who is an unbelievable doll for offering to do my taxes this year free of charge. 

Journal, Monday, March 3, 2003.  Portland.

I don't mean to be a drama queen about it, but it's strange to be back.  The house smelled different.  The look of it and the light was different too. Nothing had changed except its aura, which meant Everything Had Changed. It's as if all traces of my presence had departed and had been wholly replaced by Kris’s and Debbie’s, the new housemate who moved into the spare bedroom after I left.  Even my bedroom seemed different too, but that was probably because I made the bed before I left.

There were still fresh daphne blossoms in the backyard!  The willow tree shed a mess of branches too, which I can't wait to clean up.  After what I've been going through physically, it'll be a snap.  Last night, I lifted an ottoman to move it from the den into the living room and it was quite a bit lighter than I had remembered.  Stud!

Our new roommate Debbie is really cool.  Everything worked out perfectly for her to come into our lives at this time.  We needed the rent money, she needed a more affordable living situation (she was recently laid off too), and it’s a bonus to have someone to take care of the house and cats when both of us are gone.  It's also good to have company for Kris while I'm away.

My neighbors Pete and Thea stopped by and said they really missed my energy in the neighborhood. See?!  Auras are real!

Brett and Brandon came over last night and I gave both of them super big, long hugs. I bet old people would be healthier and live longer if they received regular hugs. I bet there have been studies conducted on this subject.  I should go over to the neighborhood nursing home and volunteer to give hugs to the residents.  On second thought, I don’t want to wind up on TV news as the freak of the week.

Journal, Monday, March 10, 2003

It only took me four days to make the 6 hour drive back, having spent one night at my parent’s, then two at Steve and Kathy’s in Eugene. It’s raining and big swells are forecast.  When David and I spoke on the phone last night, he warned me to watch out for them, and although I know big swells are important because they get him excited (they’re good for surfing and help strip the beaches), I still don’t understand how they impact conditions.  If I’m out there during a 1.4 ft low tide, does a 20 foot swell negate all that, bringing a logster fest onto the beach?  All you can eat, literally? David may come down tomorrow for a couple of days (yay!) and best bud Brett is coming down this Friday for a long weekend (Happy/Joy squared!). 

When I returned to Gold Beach yesterday, I asked my new neighbor Bryan how the rat battle was going. Lewis had left town shortly after he was laid off, and a nice young couple took his place. I would’ve been freaked to be totally alone with only a giant rat for company.

Bryan is from Arkansas, and has critter capturing experience.  His zeal to get that rat reminds me of the character Bill Murray played in Caddyshack, sans the brain damage.  When I asked Bryan if he had caught the rat, he replied that indeed he had, but it wasn’t a rat, it was a skunk!  A “city skunk” (who knew there were distinctions?). He trapped it live in the hot tub room and thankfully, the skunk waited until Bryan took the cage outside before it started defending itself.  Knowing the skunk would return, Bryan had his pistol in hand and was carrying it to the forest to shoot it, but he slipped, dropped the cage and the skunk escaped. Yay!  Another happy ending!

Now I’m going to log onto the web to find out what the deal is with swells before I head out to Dudley.  I would’ve asked more about it from Mr. Masters in Oceanography, but I think I exhaust David with my constant barrage of questions.

Mining report.  Day 20  Mon. 2/10/03 , RB

To: David, Jack, Dudley

It stopped raining when I hit the beach and hasn’t rained since.  I had raging flow, and a heck of a time trying to figure out where to set up sluices. A 2 foot high bank of very coarse sand surrounded rocky stream beds, so I had to drop sluices 8 feet lower than where David and I last mined it. I started a pool two feet above that.  Worked it for about an hour, getting excited because I quickly saw big pieces of gold sticking in the sluice.  Immediate Gratification. Could see it whilst standing up! 

I eventually ran into bigger rocks and thought I had spent that pool, but found a soft spot between two moveable rocks and hit black sand!  I got the big rocks out and discovered it was a very deep pocket of black sand (about 50/50 green and black).  Sweet!  I had almost forgotten about my old friend Sand And Nothing But!  It was so rich, I ran up to the car and got the Economy sluice and tagged it on the end.  Got a lot of ore through, and dug so deep, the water went up to the handle of my shovel.  I knew there was no way this pool would still be there by tomorrow, so I worked it for about 30 minutes until it and I started to collapse. 

It seemed like it was a hot pocket for coarse gold, so I’m hoping it’s hot with fines too. I was getting more excited as my shovel sank ever deeper.  Jack’s encouragement from our chat Saturday kept running through my mind—“Keep at it, you might hit a really hot spot that could bring ounces!”  Mwa ha haaa.

Heard on the radio coming home that there was a mudslide between Yachats and Florence that hasn’t been fixed yet.  David, you better check on that before you come.

Retrieval:

3 was a surprisingly good hit of only uniformly coarser gold.  Nice backsplash. The kind that flies around in the pan and takes me forever to retrieve, so I bagged it after the fourth or fifth reveal and threw the rest of it into the con bin for David to get later.

2 was a huge hit, but not as good as Dudley’s prime was, considering how long I worked.  Again, uniformly coarse.  I think I’m losing the bigger pieces in my initial retrieval.  I saw the gold in the sluices when I pulled them out, so I know I’ve “got” them, but I’m not seeing them when I pan out.  Found another small piece of jagged steel.  Wonder if it’s part of a chainsaw blade?  Wish I had a chainsaw.  Kidding.  Wish I had some mercury though.  Kidding!

Ok, I confess I made a martini before I started panning, so please excuse all the rambling asides.  I’m surprised by these results, expecting to see finer gold, and am wondering if I dug too deep into low grade ore, or perhaps the finest gold is located deeper than my reach. 

Has anyone noticed yet that my reports are written play by play?

1 was a humongous hit, and an excellent amount of the finest gold I’ve yet seen at RB.  Comparing the total I panned against the amount David and I got there on Saturday, I got almost twice as much gold. 

Since David did the retrieval on Saturday, and since his retrieval rate is at least 10% greater than mine, I think I hit a pretty hot pocket. Gold is Everywhere.

Journal, Wednesday 2/12

There’s an electricity in the air. Big storms are coming and I don’t need a forecast to feel their approach.  David is here and all is well.  He makes himself at home and I don’t have to play hostess or worry about his amusement.  He told me last night that on his drive down, he was thinking about all we’d been through and said the sluice would still be gathering dust in the patent office if I hadn’t come along.  I’m grateful for his gratitude.  Sometimes I feel like I owe him.  I’ve never felt so good about anything I’ve worked on in my life. After my last crash and burn, I didn’t think I could ever feel passionate about putting my skills to use again.  Beyond all that, it’s been more than an adventure, it’s been like an awakening from a very long sleep; snugly covered with a plush comforter of fear. Even if I fail, I’ll fail knowing my heart was in the right place, and I’ll never feel like I’ve wasted my time. 

Email to David after he left.

David, you missed the mudslide by about an hour.  Good work!  I heard on the radio last night they're not even going to try to fix it until the storm lets up. Brett arrived in the dark last night and was literally shaking from the trip down.  Navigating his VW Vanagon through the coast highway was a harrowing wrestle match against 75 mph gusts.  Speaking of storms, it has been raining constantly since my mining session yesterday and won't let up.  It's raining so hard, it woke me up, so I went and peeled Brett off the couch and put him in his bed (he was mumbling, "are we really going to go out on a beach in this?"). Yes, dear Brett, we are.  This is the same guy who, with a couple of cocktails in him last night, begged me to take him down to the beach at midnight (I managed to talk him out of it, then he went down there after I went to bed). Good thing the tides call for afternoon mining, because that boy is not a morning person.  While I was just getting the coffee going, lightening lit up the skylight, followed by a very big boom!  It's really cool!  Sheets of rain!!  Can't wait to see what's up with Dudley today.  I can see big waves out the window too.  I think I'm going to have a cup of coffee and then run out there to see what's happening at high tide (think it's in about an hour).  Will take the camera, in case there's enough break in the rain to get out of the car and get some footage.

Journal

I did exactly that, and the rain broke long enough for me to get some frightening footage of waves tossing logs around the beach like they were twigs.  Then, I had one more task before I returned to the house.  Even though I couldn’t afford it and didn’t need it, I stopped off at the grocery store where a car wash was being conducted for the high school golf team and got the Jetta washed in the rain.  I chatted with the coaches while my car received the scrubbing of its life by the boys. The coach told me their funding had been completely cut, and I wished I could’ve dropped more in their donation can. In the course of our conversation, he asked me about myself and I went ahead and told him the truth about my project. Seeing his impressed reaction when I told him the technology was an alternative to toxic recovery methods, I felt a strange sensation swelling in my heart.

Pride.

As I drove out of the parking lot, the clock struck noon and the town erupted with the shrieking siren of the old-fashioned civil defense system common to little towns across America.  It scared the holy bejeezus out of me too; I’m still not used to it.

I love this little town.  I was sure I would make at least one friend while I was down here, but other than that deaf guy with the dogs and another man who says hi as he takes his daily walk past Dudley, I haven’t found anyone to hang out with.  The locals here are so used to tourists passing through, I’m instantly dismissed whenever eye contact is made. 

My big social moment of the day (besides waving at the flaggers who are working the bridge repairs as I drive by), is stopping off at Mc Kay’s to shop for my supper. I’ll pull into the parking lot, tucking my little sedan in between heavy duty pickup trucks and SUVs, then I’ll pick out my items and stand in line with the manly men.  All of us are wet and covered in mud or sand, but I’m there with chicken breasts and broccoli while they have their frozen pizzas and beer.  I was at Mc Kay’s the other day and bumped into the clerk from the hardware store. I greeted him like he was my best friend.  He said hi back to me, but I could tell he had no idea who the hell I was.

I returned to the house, made a fresh batch of coffee, then Brett finally rose from the dead and we went out to breakfast. I had this idea to play a trick on Brett while he was down here, to tell him we would try out a new spot, then I’d take him to Dudley, whip out a huge pile of gold, watch him jump up and down and then name the spot after him. I forgot to do that. When we arrived at Dudley, we saw the rain had opened up some flow, but it still wasn’t enough to power a sluice, so we attempted to work at the raging beeyotch beside it. 

Although Brett is a big fan of the project and has followed it every step of the way, he’s also a landlubber who doesn’t get out to the coast very often. I couldn’t expect him to make a six hour trek just to turn his back on the Pacific and dig.  After I bent my shovel against a boulder into uselessness (which I took as a miner’s rite of passage), I gave up and joined him.

From then on, it was a tourist weekend.  We played in the tide pools, joined locals for a raging happy hour at the Sea Star, then the next day, we visited the cheesilicious Prehistoric Gardens, which had life-sized dinosaurs placed along a path in a dark section of forest.  They had way too many plaques to read about ferns and lichen. Then, we shared the sunset on my perfect cliff and made calls to friends and family to get tips on the Redwood National Forest, which neither of us had been to before.

On Monday we rose early, drove south for 45 minutes and walked through a grove of quiet giants. Brilliant, crisp sunshine filtered through the trees.  Mist from the evaporating rains rose above us and we feasted on sweet air that can only taste like that after a deluge in the forest.  Awed from being in the presence of these 500 year-old ancients. and musing on all the changes that have occurred since their birth, we quietly returned to the car. The radio came on when I started it and we heard the words: "...weapons inspectors have been urged to immediately depart Iraq." then I turned off the radio. We listened to mellow CDs as we drove back to Gold Beach.  After 500 years, some things remain the same.

I rarely fall ill, so when I do it’s a profound experience.  After Brett left town, I attributed my ensuing listlessness to all the partying we packed into the three days he was here.  But after being a good girl on Monday and Tuesday and still finding myself dragging, I knew something was amiss.  I woke early Wednesday morning to unbearable stomach cramps and was violently ill for the next 24 hours.

My time divided between the bedroom and bathroom, I unfortunately had writing tasks that needed immediate attention for Crewcut’s next radio blitz.  I managed to gut those out, then with great effort I composed a reply to the moderator of a mining forum who had shown interest in the technology.  I hit the send button and barely made it back to the bathroom.  I had no thermometer, no medicine, not even aspirin--and no one around to fetch either or otherwise say “There there, can I bring you some juice?”  At one point I was in such agony, I became frightened that I might have some funky new virus that’s winging its way around the globe. 

Then I remembered I was in a fairly remote part of the globe and hadn’t had contact with anyone except Brett, whom I called and found out was fine. 

It is really sad to be sick when you’re alone, even though you don’t want anyone around. Sadder too, my time here is dwindling down and RB was starting to go off with serious hits that were very easy to shovel.  It rained hard throughout my illness and even Dudley could be fired up now, but I still can’t risk even a 2 minute drive away from facilities. I’m still pretty weak but was able to swallow some broth this morning.  I will wait another hour to make sure the soup stays in me before I’ll call this bug officially squashed.

Journal, Friday,

David came and so did Dudley!  I was thrilled he finally got to have a good go at that spot, since he had to leave town shortly after it had been discovered. But come Sunday, the flow had slowed and by Monday it stilled. Instead of mining that day, we shot an instructional video on how to use the Prospector’s Sluice.  This time, David was the one who seemed sad to leave. After he left, I checked the messages on my cell phone and got the following one from my friend Jerry, who owns The Gold Door in my neighborhood: “Kristina, you must be up to your neck in mud right now, sorry I missed you.  I’m heading to Rio next week but will be back after your return.  Brett told me you’ve been transformed down there, that you’re doing great and losing weight and looking beautiful and I can’t wait to see you! “

Transformed?  Nahhh. 

Hmm.

Mining report: Tues. 3. 25. 03

To David, Jack, Dudley. Mined at Dudley’s, 2.0 hrs 2 stack

The rain from last night opened Dudley again and I had perfect flow--not too slow or fast.  By the time I got to it with another shovel full of ore the sluice was ready to receive it.  The ore was awesome to work with too; fairly easy shoveling and I pulled up one of those round, greenish reddish rocks that had hundreds of particles lounging on top.

While mining I saw more gold in the sluices than ever before.  A group of women from Medford walked by and flipped out when they saw all the gold.  They took my card.

Cleaned 1 first.  Biggest hit in my personal history.  Comparing the take to my bottle of Channel 6 with 1.2 g, I have about twice as much more.  I'm guessing I have over 2 grams.

Cleaned 2 and assumed it would be more because 1 acted as a bit of a slick plate with all the rocks.  2 's take was just slightly less than 1's.  I may have lost more during panning, as I had a lot more magnetite to work with in the 2nd one.  The gold was overall finer in 1.

I think I have about 4 grams for the 2 hour session (not counting what I lost in the con bin, which would bring the total to over 5). 

Fairly steady rain since this morning.  Will take my economy sluice out for tomorrow's session and have a triple stack session.  Am concerned about one or two extremely large boulders caving into the creek that I probably won't be able to move.

Wahhhhhhoooo!

K

Journal, 3/27/03

I can pan!  In fact, I’ve become pretty good at this mining thing. I don’t even use The Spaz move anymore because now I have more refined ones. I remember the first time I laid my eyes on Rich Bitch I didn’t even attempt to mine it, but now I’m amazed at my ability to lift boulders and heave them hither.  I’m a pretty good digger too, and my body has gotten tougher because of it.  I can build a dam and I can tune the flow. I’ve learned what a delta is and how to create one.

I can tell if the sand is promising from the feel of it under my feet.  I know what swells are, how to read their charts on the web, and how to watch out for them. 

I forgot to lock my door last night before I went to bed, which I don’t believe I’ve ever done in my entire adult life. 

I’ve discovered that I do enjoy my own company and can amuse myself all by myself for longer stretches of time than I ever thought I’d have to.

I always wondered if an ocean sunset would lose its magic if I could see one every day, and now I know the answer is No. 

And I’m no longer afraid of being alone on a beach with my back to the sea.  It’s the logs in front of you that you should worry about.

Mining Report Thu. 3/27/03

Dudley, 1 stack, 10 minutes /RB 2 stack .75

Sayonara Dudley.

A sobering scene when I arrived there today: a gigantic log that had been perched on top of a pile of driftwood just above the spot where I was working had rolled.  If I had been there at the time, it would've creamed me.  David had even made a safety tip about that log when we shot video the other day.  I had been nervous about working near it yesterday (not that it stopped me, mind you). Any dismay about Dudley being unworkable is very much offset by being alive to be disappointed.

All traces of my past couple days of mining (high piles of rocks on either side of the stream) are gone.  Sand oozed down from the top of the creek and buried all the pools.  It was like a reclamation, only I didn't have to do it.  I stuck the economy sluice above that mess and managed to get a couple shovels through, but ‘twas no use.

I didn't mention all the clay I ran into yesterday--there was the greyish stuff, but also a very dark, tree bark brown, and even some bright red clay.  The dark brown stuff was the hardest to break up, but it all dissolved in my fingers fairly fast.

Went over to RB and had a, well, bitch of a time trying to get proper damming and pools going.  The muscles at the base of my fingers even hurt (that was a new sensation), and I had no tolerance for boulder management today as I was getting no payoff in pools.  So, while I waited for the sluices to clear, I sat on a log, stared at the sea and began to pull my presence out of there. I thanked the beach before I left.

Retrieval:  Dudley was an impressive hit for the two shovels of ore I got through it.  RB was too; considering my lack of dedication; probably a 1/4 gram for dinking around with poor conditions.  If David comes down this weekend and there's no rain, RB will still be worth working and should cure me of any urge to mine again for many months to come.

I'm mildly depressed.  Why?  This has been a wonderful experience, I got to do everything I wanted to, my friends and family claim they miss me, and hopefully my cat will forgive me.  I've been really lonely here at times and know I'm ready to return, but I still feel kind of sad.

Whatever!

K

Journal

David came down on Thursday night, and the next day we drove south to the mouth of the Klamath in California.  Passing through the redwoods to get there, giant trees shot into the sky straight up from the side of the road.  The spectacle of those trees did not diminish the impact of the Klamath; a very mighty river. More of a reconnaissance than a prospecting mission, David just wanted to get a lay of the land for the future.  We returned in time to meet with John at Rich Bitch, who is the host at our favorite breakfast spot.  He had purchased a prospector’s sluice and we showed him how to use it. 

There have been very few times I wished I were a man.  Being on the beaches in Nome, my bladder filled with beer and no trees in sight was one of those times.  Mining a place like Rich Bitch is another.  Working our own sluices side by side, watching David hoist impossibly large boulders and create pools in minutes where there had once been knotted up rocks had me highly envious of his strength.  In addition, he can shovel nearly double the amount of ore through his sluice than I can in the same session.  Yet, my hit at the end of the day was still a bit more than his had been.  He complained that I have an intuitive sense to dig in hotter spots.  So, somehow in this world, balance can be achieved. 

A niggling cloud of impending departure was threatening my mood, but I was able to stay in the moment and savor the last couple of days I spent here.  On Saturday, all trace of wind died, the sun pushed the temperature to 70 and we attacked RB in t-shirts, then we came home and ran all remaining cons, sluice bags, and even the floor mats from the back of my car through his cleanup trough. 

Pulling out another couple of grams, my grand total is just shy of an American ounce.  David pointed out that if I were living in Africa, I’d be a much wealthier woman for my efforts.  Regardless of the gold I got, he’s right. I did get rich here. I was grateful that David and his hi ho demeanor was with me through the end of this experience.  We cleaned the apartment and got my stuff packed out.  It was only after I returned home that I realized I left my toiletries in the bathroom drawer.  If we have an unusual amount of rain before the end of April, perhaps we’ll lose our minds and return.

During our last breakfast at the Indian Creek Café, we said our goodbyes to John and the wonderful waitresses there, who are now fans of the project and want to try their hand at David’s sluice.  Before we headed north, we had one final sunny session at RB in t-shirts, shorts and rubber boots, taking our loaded sluices with us to pan out at our respective homes.

Back in Portland, I awoke in the lovely home I have owned for 6 years and at first I didn’t know where I was.  I had trouble with the keypad to disarm our burglar alarm, then I picked up the newspaper that had miraculously appeared on the front porch while I slept. 

Seeing headlines of war with sidebars of SARS, I set it aside without reading it and made coffee. Then I saw the TV!  Yay!  Didn’t turn it on.  Later that day when I finally did, I saw the screen was all green.  The tube must have blown while I was away.  Instead of waiting for Brett to come over and haul it away, I easily lifted that huge Sony Trinitron out of the cabinet and moved another large one from my upstairs bedroom into its place. I watched Oprah that afternoon, and she had her fitness guru on with her.  They talked about the importance of weight resistance for losing weight. Hm. I ran upstairs to my bathroom scales and saw I’d lost another four pounds.  As I sit here in my living room typing, my cat Lucy has parked herself next to me on the edge of the sofa, staring at me as I write.  I pause to watch her watch me as her eyes slowly close for a nice, long nap. I feel forgiven.