Chapter 116

I managed to survive the experience of sleeping with Wilson. Since nothing happened I assumed he really had blacked out the night of the storm. If he was faking it, I was perfectly happy to go along with it.

Wilson and I were up with the first light. We drove to the cafe for breakfast. We both had a large breakfast since it was going to be our only meal till almost dark. I did stop at the convenience store for Generator gas and a box of oatmeal cookies. The kind with the creme filling of course.

We were back at work on the prospecting by 9AM. The generator pumped water and we began digging and washing the sediment from behind the dam. We didn't look in the box were the gold, if there was any, would accumulate. The open part of the sluice showed us nothing. There was a chance something had collected in the sluice's carpet, since we were using it there as well. The water was always muddy so it was hard to see anything but large flakes and we really weren't expecting any of those.

Day two came to a close with the trench behind the dam's foundation about two feet wide and twenty feet long. It was also about a foot deep. I wasn't the worlds fastest trencher. Wilson had to stop the washing to help me dig now and then.

"Wilson, you are keeping those pebbles mixed with the silt aren't you," I asked.

"Yeah but only those that look like quarts. The granite ones get a quick look for veins then tossed on you dam to help with the water pool." Wilson replied. He had a five gallon bucket from home depot about 1/3 full of quarts crystals.

The washing and digging were both back breaking work. I just loved it. It felt good to only be concerned with things which I could manipulate. I didn't have to think about things over which I had no control. I was relaxed even though at the end of the first full day I was exhausted. We quit prospecting when the sun went down.

"Let's take this mother apart," I said to Wilson. The sluice on the tale end of the box held nothing. Wilson had learned how to pan the water from the miners carpet. The sluice held nothing at all. There was lots of bb sized gravel in the bottom of the shaker box.

"Take a look," Wilson suggested. In the bottom of the pan there seemed to be a peanut sized green bead. "Don't get your hopes up but that could be an emerald."

"Well put it in our save bag and we can have it checked out later," I suggested. Wilson and I went to the town 30miles away to eat. We also wanted to go to Walmart for a small radio. We were back at the Honda by 9:30PM.

"Do you have any idea how bad you stink?" I asked. Wilson just laughed.

"Sweetie you don't exactly smell like roses," he replied. I laughed at that. We had only been at the site two days and already we had reverted to living only a few rungs above how the miners in Alaska lived. It was what Wilson wanted. It was also what I was enjoying. In my case I was reminded of my twentieth birthday in Afghanistan. I smelled then as well, since we had been on the fuel run for three days without seeing a shower.

At the forth day's clean up we found a half dozen small flakes of gold. We had run the top foot of sediment from the whole dam's foundation. "So Wilson do we widen our trench or go deeper," I asked.

"We have ten more days to dig. How about we go down to six feet starting near the creed and moving toward the old river bank. We can go the full six feet at one bank or the other. Then we can work as far as we can toward the creek."

"Okay but you know we are going to restore the land to more or less the same shape as before?" I asked.

"Yes, but we can restore it after the lease has expired. Restoration wasn't part of the deal, so we can do it after time runs out," Wilson said.

"We will have to talk to the owner, when the lease is up. Let's don't promise him anything now," I said. If we reach the creek we need to slope it upward so that the creek doesn't collapse the hole in on us." I said.

"Yeah that makes sense. Lets get to it." Wilson said.

The third day I was so smelly I was willing to strip down in front of Wilson. We agreed to knock off early and boil some water over an open fire. We managed to wash from a plastic pan since the weather was still warm, it wasn't too uncomfortable.

I figured I was 70% clean and sweet smelling so I was content. We had washed in creek water to save the bottled water for drinking. "Besides," I told Wilson when he appeared concerned about the creek water having germs. "It's all part of the experience."

We had about an hour to kill before we went to the crossroads cafe for dinner, so we drank really good coffee while our hair dried. The Water for out whores bath came from a too small pot so it was mix it with cold water then put more back on the fire for the next person. It was really a mess but it felt good to be clean regardless of how it came about.

Dinner that night was their homemade hamburger soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal, even more than usual, because I was clean. Well not perfectly clean but I felt clean in comparison to the days before.

After dinner we went back to sleep on the foam pad I had cut before we left New Wales. It was far from comfortable, but I was able to sleep simple because I was physically exhausted.