Standing on Quicksand

The Prospector

  Clouds can be the difference between life and death. In the flat plains of the high desert it is easy to see a storm brewing half-a-day out but in canyon country with such a limited view of the horizon it was impossible to forecast the weather from one hour to the next let alone see what was coming. The canyons sometimes allowed vistas up or down stream but little could be told from these. Storms could dump buckets of rain somewhere up stream that could send a flash flood through in a matter of minutes. This ever present hazard forced him to always play a balancing act with the placement of his backpack. If the water started to rise rapidly he would never escape its rampage if he was too weighed down. Finding a safe place to stow his equipment and supplies but not too distant for him to retrieve something if he needed was thus a difficult judgment call. There was also a constant risk the pack might get washed away and if that happened there was little chance he could survive this far out. But it was only this far out that the best finds were still available and had not already been claimed so he had to take risks.

  The flash floods could also be a blessing in disguise. The force and volume of the rushing water often churned the creek bed uncovering new finds, nuggets or veins that had long been buried. No one knew this greater than he did.

  As a young boy he and his friends always played down by the local stream near their village despite parental warnings. The danger of flash floods or sharp objects hidden by the rapidly moving water was part of the attraction, but the true allure was the potential, no matter how slight, of finding nuggets, tiny nodules that they could sell at the Scales-Shack for money. There always seemed to be a small pack of children exploring and digging at the fringes of the water. The big pan-handling clans cared little as this stretch of river by the town had already been worked over for countless years. Their time was much better spent in stretches that promised a greater payback and more fortuitous results. Every once in a while, usually after a big storm had churned up the river bed and re-directed its flow, a big find would occur. At least it was a big find for small children living in abject poverty. He had been the seeming beneficiary of such a find when he as about 10 or 11 years old, he had a hard time remembering the exact age it was so long ago. Many children had gone down to the river bank early in the morning to explore after a particularly big storm. They swarmed and scrambled over the debris and boulders like ants searching for sugar. Something drew him away from the crowd, perhaps the old saints were whispering to him that day. He wandered to the section of river bed from which the flow had been redirected, a section that was flat, like it had been swept clean. After a while searching and prodding about the silt he discovered what he first thought was a tiny nugget. After glancing around to make sure no one was paying him any particular attention he started digging around it. The extraction took longer than he had anticipated. This was in part because of it's odd shape but also he was small and trying to be careful, mimicking the older prospectors he had seen. The piece was about the size of his fist but it might as well have been the mother-lode to a small child. It brought a crowd of ogling kids, many of whom followed him all the way up the road to the Scales-Shack. Curiosity nagged him about how much it could possibly be worth, it was the largest he had ever found or even seen found by a kid.

  Entering hesitantly he placed the nugget on the wide empty galvanized metal counter. The elderly man on the stool behind the counter peered over his spectacles; eyed the nugget, then the boy, then all the other kids.

  “If you don't have business here you'll have to wait outside the doors” barked his gruff voice, “I won't have a bunch of youngans crowding my floor, this is a place of business not a show-place”

  The group shuffled out but many stayed outside, peering in through the dirty windows.

  “So what do we have here?”

  “I'd like to sell this,” he squeaked, ”I found it down by the river after the storm” he had added apprehensively. Silence hung for far longer than it seemed it should.

  The proprietor lumbered slowly forward and took the nugget in his calloused paws. He began a cursory inspection of it. Muttering to himself, “Looks slightly contaminated, might not be quite as pure as it might first appear. Sometimes you get more sediment than ya think crammed into the crevices”.

  He scraped a sliver off with a large knife and after inspecting it under a magnifying glass put it in a small dish filled with other bits soaking in a clear liquid. Next he inspected the nugget itself and consulted a chart in a massive tome lying open to the side. Little did the boy know that this was all just for show. Many of the children were still peering in thru the windows wide eyed as well at the seeming intricacies of this strange grown-up world.

  “Well not only is it not pure but it's fairly bad quality” muttered the old man without looking up from the chart, “I can't get good money for this or even trade, it's just not in that great a demand”

  He was barely listening as the old man took the lump and placed it on the balance scales while carefully placing small measured counter-weights till it hung even.

  “It is worth something? Right? Sir” he remembered whimpering.

  “Sure, just not as much as you or any of those other youngans might have thought” waving his boney hand at the window, “There is just not a great desire for a sample so impure, takes longer to melt down and process out the impurities ya see”.

  He nodded even though he really had no knowledge of such things.

  The grizzled old man carefully removed and tallied the weight tokens off the scale while consulting a tattered chart hanging on the adjacent wall. “Well, it looks like the most I can give you for it is about...” moving his index finger on the chart “about 32 bits, that's it I'm afraid” turning back to the counter “ or else I won't be able to even make any profit with it” he added apologetically.

  In hindsight the tone from the old man should have been a warning but when you are offered an amount that your mother earned in a week and you were poor, it seemed like a lot. It wasn't until years later that the realization came over him that the old codger had ripped him off. That nugget he had found had probably been worth ten-times the amount he'd been paid. It created a strong distrust of the scale houses and their proprietors to this day, which is why he always tried to deal directly with banks.

  Be it a blessing or a curse it was that ‘find’ all those years ago that he believes sent him down the path of becoming a prospector. Soon after coming-of-age he got the “panning fever” that would burn the rest of his life.

  With his pack safely stowed on higher ground he ventured down a crag to the foot of the creek bed that had cut its way through the landscape. He was methodical about what he was looking for; eddies in the water, debris piled a certain way, exposed strata of soil at the water’s edge. He had learned over the years to read the story that the passing water told. To see what was under the sand and pebbles. Years ago, when he had just started in this profession he believed that it was blind luck. That some prospectors were more frequent and consistent in their finds while others languished with poor equipment and ‘bad luck’, but he now knew the latter were just fools, just like the children of his youth hoping to stumble on a big find. If he had learned one thing it was that you make your own luck.

  His favorite place to start searching was usually the base of debris or in the tangle of the roots of the plants that sometimes favored the water’s edge, springing up in clumps. These had often proven to be promising starting deposits.

  He started work as the day was already well past noon. It had been different in the past when Norman, his mule, had been alive. The old prospector could travel more extensively in a day, visit more locations and not be so darn tired once he arrived. But after his mule has passed away the previous season he couldn't bring himself to purchase a replacement. Norman had been more than just a pack-animal; he had been a trusted friend and constant companion. He still found himself reflexively muttering to the mule on occasion. This terrain can be just as unf
orgiving on your scruples as on your sinewy frame. If there hadn't been some other living creature to keep him company all those years he might have just gone ‘cuckoo as a coco-bird’, as his mother used to say. Anyways he would have had to use up most of his savings and have a good haul to even be able to afford a decent mule, one that didn't have one hoof in the slaughter house.

  He scooped up some alluvial sand and strained it thru the grate over his pan using the calm water at the edge of the creek. He'd then place the strainer and pan upon a boulder, someplace he could stand-up and straighten his legs out to continue working. He found that his knees would cramp up if he stayed squatting for too long, a position pan-handlers like himself often found themselves. Squatting was not only painful after a while but dangerous. He'd always had bad knees and they would take longer to stop hurting and for the swelling to go down after he'd been squatting for several hours at a time all day long. It was also dangerous too because it made him less mobile in the event of a flash flood.

  After mixing his fingers through the pile, sifting through the screen he would then pick through the large pebbles and debris to see if there was anything worth keeping. Then from the shoulders down, in one fluid motion he would spin the water in a smooth circular motion, pick off any floaters and slowly drain off the water against the rippled wall of the pan to see if there was anything else worth keeping. This sequence was then repeated over and over again with the leather pouch hanging from his waist belt slowly but surely filling up with potentially valuable specimens.

  The later afternoon sun beat down relentlessly and his straw hat gave him little respite. When it got to be irresistible he would bend and splash water in his face then fill his hat with water and put it back on. One might think this would be refreshing in and of itself but down in the gully there was little wind to evaporate the perspiration. Little shade either with the creeks north-south orientation. He could have chosen a different bed, one just around the bend perhaps but then he wouldn't have the light. He had found that the sun was most helpful in illuminating and creating a more brilliant glow on the treasures he was after, making them easier to see. Once again life brought a blessing in disguise. Just like the flash floods which would churn up more treasures the sunlight too came with a silver lining.

  “Silver-lining? More like a gold lining” he coughed out a chuckle “a rainbow blanket. What is one man’s garbage is another's gift” repeating a fond saying of his mothers.

  He meandered down the creek bed drifting from one promising spot to the next. Every so often he would tilt his head up, close his eyes and listen intently. Listen for the wind on the ledges out on top of the gully which might tell what the weather was doing behind his back, listen for the animals that maybe milling about as you never knew when a feral dog pack or coyote might take an interest, listen for the chirping of birds and hope that a few might find the insects in the traps that he'd set that morning, but always listening with a keen ear for the tell-tale distant roar of an impending flash flood.

  He estimated from the suns position that it was about two hours before sunset he had nearly reached the end of the gully. Not the end of the creek mind you, that disappeared into a sort of sinkhole about a stone’s throw away. He thought it must feed some underground aquifer or more than likely just taking a nap below the surface for a while before popping out and continuing on a half-day hike further on, that is probably what he would search for tomorrow.

  His eyes followed a piece of wood floating past him on the current. It slowly bobbed up and down innocently weaving its way thru the boulders until it disappeared into the maw, swallowed by the darkness. A shiver shot up his spine as he remembered a story he'd been told once of an old prospector who'd got caught in an unexpected mudslide by the entrance to a similar inlet. He'd been sucked in and there was nothing his companions could do to help. That old prospector’s body was never found and it never washed out the other end, it was stuck down there somewhere in the ice cold dark water.

  “You’ll last longer than I will” he muttered to the abyss. He found it ironic that that old predecessor’s body has probably been kept pretty well preserved down there and will probably stay that way long after his has become a worm farm. He dipped his tattered handkerchief in the water and wiped the days grim and sand from his face and neck.

  After surveying the landscape he charted the easiest path up out of the ravine. He would be glad to get up onto more even ground. He breathed deeply once at the top and started back up steam to where he had stowed his pack and the rest of his equipment.

  It was a moderately good day but what would really make it a great one is if he had trapped something. He was not looking forward to eating hard-tack again dipped and softened in coffee. It had happened too often in the past few days and he was hungry for something more substantial. The previous day he had indeed caught something but a rodent has gotten to it first, very disappointing.

  After retrieving his pack he headed to higher ground. He always found it rather efficient to set his traps in the vicinity of where he had scouted a place to stay the night. This saved him valuable time at the end of the day when he was most tired.

  He scrambled up onto the level plateau that he had chosen in the morning. It wasn't adjacent to any game trails so prey were less likely to be hunting nearby let alone the fact that the height helped discourage unexpected encounters.

  “No, this will do nicely, none waking up to no coyotes or pluto-cats tonight” he mumbled, “now let's see about these traps” he glanced up at the heavens as if flinging up a forgotten prayer. His first two traps had yielded nothing and there was only one left.

  “Well, isn't that ironic” he chortled out as his gaze fell upon the last trap in which had been killed a good size rodent. “Perhaps this lazy fella has gotten it's due, lil' thief trying to eat my catch and got what he deserved. Still make for good eatin though”

  After getting a fire going he put his kettle on to boil water and fashioned up a little spit to cook the rodent. Now was time to rest and wait. He sat leaning up and reached for the satchel which held the treasures he'd gathered that day. He opened it up and reached his big hand inside to extract a palm full to gaze at. Their lumpy shapes and various sizes sat piled in his palm. His eyes widened a bit with all the varied bright colors glowing in the fire light.

  With the pointer finger from his other hand he fingered thru them. “Every color under the rainbow and then some for sure” he whispered to the twilight. He put the nodules of plastic back in the satchel and cinched it up with the draw stings.

  He mused while sipping his coffee and munching on rodent gazing out over the concrete and steel skeletons of decaying skyscrapers leaning like weary shapes in the twilight. From his perch on the 3rd or 4th floor of what must have been a magnificent building at some point in the forgotten past he had a good view.

  “What were these people like? Did they even know what they had?”

  He'd heard stories that back then petro-plastics were everywhere. You couldn't go from one room to the next without bumping into dozens of things made from it. He'd even been told once an outlandish rumor, that they had so much they would just throw it away. What he wouldn't give to go thru their garbage, there must have been a fortune in petro-plastic.

  “None of this crappy plant-plastic, can't hold up, no, not the same, nope just not.” He asserted to no one in particular.

  His attention was drawn away and he shifted his head slowly to one side to listen with his good ear. He heard a couple of distant yowling cry’s echoing among the ruins of the long dead city.

  “Pluto-cats,” his eyes narrowed “a good half days distance, probably more.”

  No, these radioactive predators that had evolved out of the desolation centuries before wouldn't be bothering him tonight but just the thought of them made him nervous. He'd seen a man once get scratched while trying to fight one off. Heck, you didn't even need to get bitten, a scratch was enough. The man's scratch never healed, if anything
it opened into a gash within a day. The radiation poisoning spread quickly and he was dead inside three days, there was nothing they could do. Near the end that man was in terrible pain. The distant howls reminded him of the man’s loud moaning near the end, like he was devolving into one of the cats, calling out to them.

  The prospector sucked greedily the last of the gristle off the leg bone and tossed it away beyond the fire light into the rubble. He had a pretty good day and his finds will bring in a decent price.

  “Well what does an old plastic-prospector know but that the greatest reward lays at the end of a good night’s sleep”

  He washed his hands with the last of the hot water and wiped them on his trousers. He lay down on his bedroll next to the dying fire and drifted off to sleep in no time as the distant stars gazed on from their infinite perch in the night sky.

  Interlude #3

  If you are not consciously creating good habits than you are unconsciously developing bad ones. Stay Conscious.