A Gold Nugget
Copyright© 2008 by Jack O' The Shadow
Chapter 1: Gold Fever
Joshua came to a stop at yet another river bend and took a swig from his hydration pack built into his backpack as he inspects the river bend. He had been hiking along the Albino river sampling the inside bank of every river bend for placer gold. However, the amount of gold in this river was lacking and Joshua had made a decision to turn around and start hiking back if this river bend did not offer a good sample. He dumped his backpack at the base of a large birch tree and took out his pan and a collapsible shovel that he bought at an Army surplus store yesterday. He headed over to a likely spot and dug up his first sample.
To his astonishment, he struck gold literally; the very first sample he panned had revealed a full ounce of gold flakes. He had to restrain himself from immediately setting his camp and forced himself to pan a few more samples. After panning 15 more samples and finding at least nine more ounces of gold flakes. That was more than enough to convince him to stay for few days; he went back to where he left his backpack and took out a GPS and a notebook. Inside the notebook was all the coordinates of all the rich fields that he found over thirteen years. This wasn't the only notebook he had, he had six other notebooks at home in a safe. He took the coordinates from the GPS and wrote them into the notebook, and then checked his watch. It was four thirty and the sun was starting to setting.
Joshua stuffed the GPS and the notebook back into the backpack and went to find a place to put up his tent. He got lucky and found a small clearing nearby and after putting up the tent; he gathered some firewood and put it to the side. All this made him hungry so he grabbed his fly fishing rod and headed back to the river. After catching a five pound Rainbow trout and gutted it, he went back to the campsite and laid the gutted trout on a large granite slab he found nearby. He started the campfire and then he spilt the trout in two along the spine then laid them side by side. He then shifted the slab closer until it was resting on the edge of the campfire. This makeshift rock pan worked to perfection and the trout began to cook. As Joshua sat there staring into the campfire, he began to reflect on how he got his start in the prospecting lifestyle.
Thirteen years ago
Joshua was sitting at the edge of his bed fondling his grandfather's WW2 Ka-bar knife, the taunting of the cheerleaders still ringing in his ears. Just few hours ago, he had approached a childhood friend of his, Sarah Ginger, at school and asked her out to the Homecoming dance. He had a crush on her for a few years and had just managed to gather enough courage to ask her out to the dance. Instead of letting him down gently, she laughed in his face. Unknown to him, the rest of the cheerleaders were coming up behind him and had overheard him; and they immediately began to taunt him. Joshua could have easily endured the taunting but only if Sarah had not joined the squad in taunting him. Out of all the taunting, it was Sarah's taunting that broke him. Instead of stay and finish the rest of the school day, he skipped school and went home.
At home, Joshua went upstairs to the attic and looked through all the junks that had collected up there and found Grandfather's old footlocker full of his WW2 stuff. It was there that he found the Ka-Bar, once he found that, he went back to his room. As he sat there fondling the knife, although he never considered suicide up to that point, it was exactly at that point that he seriously began to considering it. Joshua was overweight, outcast and a loner and Sarah was the only friend he had. As he fondled the knife, he hesitated but Sarah's taunting voice started over again and he pressed the knife against his wrist.
It was at that moment that his grandfather chose to walk into Joshua's room. Startled, Joshua whipped the knife behind his back but Grandfather's eye, developed by his time in WW2 where the slightest movement could have meant his death, caught everything and he asked with a raised eyebrow,
"You better not be planning on doing what I think you're planning on doing?"
Ashamed, all Joshua could do was to shake his head in reply and grandfather sighed in relief and grunted,
"Good, now hand me the knife you're hiding behind your back and tell me why I got a call from the school asking why you're missing?"
Reluctantly Joshua handed over the knife and proceeded to relate the story. When Joshua was done, grandfather sat down beside him,
"Believe it or not, I know exactly how you felt, I had similar problem as you did except I was extreme skinny back then. Like you, I was a loner and an outcast; I had no friends except for books. At the time, my family and I were living in Diamond Springs, California. One Christmas day when I was sixteen, I got a book about Gold mining and a gold pan from my mother. I had just came across an old abandon gold mine a month ago and told my mother about it. Anyway, I took it with me into the mountain and tried it, I didn't succeed the first time but after some practice, I managed to pan out three small gold nuggets. That was when I got hit with the gold fever."
Joshua listened to grandfather but couldn't see how it related to him, he asked grandfather,
"That's nice and all, but how does that have anything to do with me?"
"You'll see in a moment, my impatient little grasshopper."
Joshua rolled his eyes as his grandfather continued in his narration,
"As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted, I got the gold fever and I started to spend more and more time in the mountain. Pretty soon, I was getting tired of using only a pan so I did more research and found sluice boxes. Back then, aluminum was rare, so I made my own out of wood. It was heavy but I carried it up the mountain every weekend. Do you know what happens to your body when you spend the next few months carrying that heavy load up and down the mountain? You develop muscles and by the time I became old enough to join the army, I was so fit that I actually passed basic training very easily."
"So... ?"
It was Grandfather's turn to roll his eye in desperation,
"I'm going to make you do the same thing I did. When your summer vacation comes up in few weeks, I'm going to take you to my place in Alaska and you're going to learn the fine art of prospecting. You will learn how to pan for gold, and later, you will also build your own sluice box from wood and carry it yourself up the mountain every day. I guarantee you, by the time your summer vacation end, you won't recognize yourself."
"Are you sure that's going to work? I've tried every diet and exercise and nothing seems to work."
"Oh, yes. I'm certain that it'll work, you see, I mentored a few other people in the prospecting lifestyle, they were much larger than you and they lost weight. That's why I was on the plane coming here when your parent died, they called me and asked me to come down here to help you with that problem."
"That was six months ago," Joshua asked, "why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"
"You needed the time to mourn and beside I'm an old man and I have this unfortunately tendency to forget things sometime."
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