Lanny

13 hours ago, nebulanoodle said:

Love these stories! Sounds like a great time and some great conversations. I’m sitting here wishing I could join you one day in those far northern reaches!

Thanks for leaving a kind compliment, appreciate it.

Lots of fun, always some unknown in the North, sometimes rewarding, sometimes scary, oftentimes a grand adventure. You'll have to do it someday, something you'll always remember, glad you enjoy the stories.

All the best,

Lanny

Local miners and exploration

Way up north where the wolverines roam, we were out one day cutting firewood, then took off to find drinking water. We found a local spring up the canyon with sweet water whose taste finished with a slight buzz on the tongue, strange, but great stuff.

The next morning, after starting a fire to kill the chill in the wall tent (water in the fire bucket covered in ice), and after a miners’ breakfast cooked on the wood-burning stove, we lathered up with bug-dope, hopped on the ATV, and bounced along the rough, twisting road through pines, fir, and stands of aspen and birch. Fresh yellow and purple mountain flowers grew thick along the road-side. Lazy bumblebees tumbled from flower to flower while butterflies and humming birds sipped nectar as the pleasing smell of new-growth pine filled the air.

The ATV climbed in elevation toward the active upstream placer claims. We stopped and introduced ourselves in every mining camp along the way. Two upstream operations bordered the main logging road, with a total of eight workers. Both operations had exposed old drift mines from the 1800’s and 1930’s.

Staring at those now open tunnels was fascinating, and one of the miners offered to lift me up in the bucket of the excavator if I wanted to poke around inside. But looking at the collapsed and rotting timbering, I passed on his generosity.

The larger of the two placer mines was working upper-strata dirt that ran six grams to the yard, but when they hit bedrock, it ran eight grams to the yard. The bedrock gold was coarse, with nuggets in the half-ounce to ounce-and-a-half range. That coarse gold had tons of character, bumpy and rough. The bedrock that held it was graphite schist and slate.

The other operation was smaller, their equipment much older, with lots of down-time to repair equipment. Moreover, both mines were located where several ancient channels intersected, and the smaller mine was getting the same gorgeous gold. At both locations, the friendly miners shut down their wash-plant and excavation machinery to chat with us.

Both groups of miners invited us to detect their claims whenever we wished. We just had to tell them what we found and where. Furthermore, they told us to keep all the gold we detected, great people! (We went home with some fantastic nuggets thanks to them.)

Leaving the two mines, we took a branch off the main logging road, exploring an inactive logging trail. Along the way, we noticed where old growth trees were cut long ago in the canyon, their massive, moss-covered stumps accompanying the new growth. To our surprise, we found a placer miner far up that trail, located downslope in an adjoining gulch. With an old WWII-era D-8 Cat, he was patiently working a small-scale operation with a pay layer that was six feet off the bedrock. Strangely, there was no gold on the bedrock (lots of pyrite though), yet the gold he was getting was magnificent—some of it was crystalline, and all of it was coarse.

He was a very trusting sort, and at the end of the day, when the cleanup was taken from the wash-plant, he gave us the concentrates and told us to pan them out! (They were loaded with coarse gold.) He left us to keep panning, then headed off to have a bath in his outdoor tub, heated by a clever invention he’d connected to the water-jacket of the engine block of his Gen-Set.

From him, we learned the gold deposits in that area required real detective work. The pay-layers had to found and worked wherever they were; they weren’t deposited in a normal way due to multiple glaciation events. It required forgetting former gold ideas, keeping the mind open so as to accept new techniques and strategies hard-earned by the locals. So, we threw out the idea that gold always concentrated on bedrock and accepted his new teachings.

We spent the entire day exploring, meeting people, and asking lots of questions. While cruising from mine to mine, we also oriented ourselves to our new surroundings. By the time we got back to camp, it was getting dusky (about 11:30 at night). We were both bone tired, not yet recovered from the sketchy trip in to our base camp.

So, back at camp, we were eager to drive the bugs out of the tent by firing up the wood-burning stove, as well as making sure the Winchester 30-30 was loaded for business and within easy reach, just in case an apex predator decided to call.

With the tent nice and warm, we crawled into our sleeping bags, and we drifted off accompanied by the solid heat, and lulling crackle of the logs burning in the stove.

We spent weeks in the area and had many adventures. It is a nugget-shooter’s paradise for sure, and I hope to return one day. But the trip is hard on vehicles and tires, and the air is filled with bugs. So, perhaps I’ll visit one year in the fall, after the frost has knocked the bugs down, and it has firmed the roads up a bit.

All the best,

Lanny

An explanation on the nature of boulder clay, and glacial gold action

People have asked me what boulder clay is. Well, the only explanation I have comes from local knowledge shared with me by the placer miners in the northlands.

When the glaciers were running many miles deep, and countless miles wide during the ice age, they dragged unsized rock and soil with them. They packed along serious boulders mixed within stubborn clay. While parked and melting, or when melting and retreating, they dumped this nasty mess all over the lower areas, as well as the mountains and valleys. To understand this, it’s necessary to remember those huge glaciers were miles thick, covering many mountains completely.

With such titanic forces moving these glaciers, and when they dropped their loads, they often left forty feet and more of this boulder clay which smothered the existing stream beds. This protected any golden stream deposits for untold eons. Over countless thousands of years, successive glaciers and post-glacial streams chewed away at the boulder clay in the canyons, erosion working its way down to those hidden deposits. When they cut into that former river-run (freshly exposed), they started re-concentrating the gold in those existing streams.

Sometimes, the early prospectors got lucky enough to find a bedrock outcrop that was the rim protecting an ancient channel from glacial gouging along a river, and then they’d tunnel in, drifting along the bedrock to mine out the deposit under the huge deposits of adjacent boulder clay bordering the streams.

So, boulder clay (sometimes called armour clay), is a solid deposit of boulders and heavy clay that overlies old stream deposits and ancient channels. It is the bane of modern miners, as it has to be stripped away to get at the channels underneath, and it often requires ripper teeth on the back of huge bulldozers to break it up sufficiently so it can be bladed out of the way. Clearly, it takes a lot of time and money to strip it off.

But, once that overburden is stripped away, and if the Oldtimer's haven't beaten the modern miners to the deposits underneath, it is sometimes a glorious bonanza to behold! The nuggets in the sidewalls of the channel are easily seen (a foot or two off the bedrock). I’ll never forget that incredible sight twice seen: multi-gram nuggets spaced eight to ten inches apart, making it easy to finger-flip the nuggets out of the channel material into a pan. Too bad those nuggets weren't mine to keep!

All the best,

Lanny

5 minutes ago, GhostMiner said:

   Yes. I've lived up at Jed's dig site for over a month on a few occasions. Twice by myself with no cell service so you are really on your own. No gizzly in Cal but lots of black bear & lion up there. I was out there 3 other times with a cre and that was a lot of fun. Ten X ten tent and shower with a 2 gallon pump up sprayer that sits in the sun to get warm. Life can be so simple.

No cell service where we were either. Had to make a drive to a tiny store with a satellite phone for any kind of connection. (Lots of places I still chase the gold where cell service goes to die.)

We used to hang those black shower bags (the ones with the red nozzles) in the trees in the sun to get warm water for our showers. Lots of people can't relate to truly living off-grid, nice to meet a kindred soul.

Good luck chasing that gold, nothing better to keep life amazing, and it sounds like you're on some likely ground.

Looking forward to the rest of Jed's story.

All the best,

Lanny

31 minutes ago, GhostMiner said:

   Thanks Lanny. Got it down. I had a guy stop by one yr when we were down at one of the creeks. He told me they hit a good spot when dredging and got 80 ounces back in the 1980's. Now California doesn't allow it. Of course i've read the journal but posting it is making me want to put a team together and work it old school for a few months. I love living off grid. 

I've done the off-grid living, in a wall-tent to boot, with a nice wood-burning stove to drive off the cold mountain morning air. Lots of fun, but the apex predators up here in the north always keep that type of off-grid living fresh and exciting, and the bugs keep it interesting as well. Still, lots of great memories from living off-grid, ones I wouldn't trade for anything.

All the best,

Lanny

Suction Eddy Gold, Part II

My brain at last connected that directly above me was the bedrock hump, and here was steeply rising bedrock trending in the same direction. Talk about a cross-wired brain (and one snapped shut, remember?)!

In hindsight, the eddy exposed a shelf that must have connected to the hump. Of course, there were tons and tons of overburden between me, the rest of that rising bedrock, and the hump. Anyway, my brain at last tuned in, and I scraped the exposed bedrock and sluiced the remaining material. (I had an aluminum river sluice in my vehicle up on the cat-trail. Freighting it down to the river, I had a near-death experience from the header I took while taking what I thought was a short-cut; however, I made it to the river in one piece.)

I started sluicing. The first shovel of dirt produced an instant nugget. It was around two grams, and L-shaped. It didn't even get into the first riffle. It just hit and sat in the header, sparking golden in the summer sunlight.

I sluiced the remaining dirt and recovered chunky gold throughout. It was getting dark, and I didn’t want to leave, but I’ve no love for mountain lions or grizzlies. So, I headed back to the safe, comfortable log cabin I called home in that northern land. (On a side note, I need to mention it had been raining for three days straight prior to my first find on the river. This helps explain upcoming details.)

When I floundered my way downslope through the much safer face-slapping route the next morning, I saw the river had dropped about four inches. Seeing a fresh, soft bedrock edge exposed by the lower waterline, I was suddenly stunned. There, winking in the morning sun, was a nugget! (A little sunbather taking advantage of the new beach so to speak.) My mind, now wide-open to prospecting lore, started calculating what had likely happened at the site.

I reflected that there was consistent gold right up to the boulder clay on the bank where the suction eddy had torn into it. Moreover, that gold was being drug down into the pool. So, I scraped with my shovel out into the pool as far as I could I could, but the bedrock dropped off quite sharply into that eight-feet of water. As well, for any that have scraped off river run, while fighting hydraulic pressure, it's tough-sledding indeed.

In spite of the challenge, the coarse gold that came up from the submerged river-run was spectacular! By the time I'd retrieved all the material I could, I had a quarter-ounce of nice rounded coarse gold, and several nice sassy nuggets to boot.

So, what’s the analysis of that suction eddy gold deposit? Well, those early square nail finds were everywhere because the suction eddy had plucked them from flood-level waters, and the bedrock held them fast. Cleary, the gold was yanked from the flood water along with the nails as well. But, the haunting reality to me now is that a whack of those “square nail signals” were feisty nuggets! This leaves me with the uncomfortable reality that what the heck did I throw into that eight-foot-deep pool as I cleared the overburden?

What the heck indeed. . . .

All the best,

Lanny in AB


[Author's note: I heard the next year that some dredgers went into that pool. One of the mine-workers had seen my truck parked on the trail, had walked down to the river to investigate after I'd left, had seen the suction eddy as well as my diggings, and he sent his buddies the next year to dredge the spot. Well, they had a field day in that hole and took out ounces of coarse gold! As I reflect now, It's clear to me that the suction eddy had cut into an old channel that trended up the river bank to that old drift mine. (Likely how the Oldtimers had found the higher deposit of gold in the 1800’s.) This gold tale is just one of my missed opportunities that still haunt me.]

Klunker, check out boat shops--maybe your nuggets could sell quicker as anchors.

All the best,

Lanny

If it flattens out, good sign. Some of the pictures do look like alloyed gold, some look like a purer form. My son always takes anything he's not sure of to a pawn shop for analysis (XRF) and they always do it for free. Best to know for sure before you head back to dig up that big one. . . .

(Not sure if this counts as wisdom as it's pure speculation after looking at your pictures and reading your posts, but the XRF will let you know, if you can get to one.)

All the best,

Lanny

This is a captivating story, thanks for the entries.

That kettle hole reminds me of other stories I've read where miners hit potholes/large crevices in gold-bearing rivers that were thick with gold. Wouldn't that be amazing? (I hit a hole once while dredging and the entire bottom was covered in gold.)

I love the 1860's+ gold era of gold rushes, so I'll guess 1860 ounces--a phenomenal haul if he pulled it off, and if it's more, booyahh! 

All the best,

Lanny

Really enjoying this thread and the tech explanations. Love your pack-mule setup as well.

Nicely done on getting those sweet nuggets!

All the best,

Lanny

Suction Eddy Gold, Part I

I prospected a river quite a while back. It was far to the north, down in a steep canyon lined with lots of alders, pine, and fir. Rugged slopes led down to the stream, and I was trying to find a spot where I could detect or pan for some of the nice coarse gold the area was known for.

I took a wrong step and got smacked in the face by an alder while trying to get down to what was clearly an active suction eddy during Spring Flood.

The eddy was straight down the mountain slope from where an old placer tunnel went in, about a hundred feet up slope. The mine (called a “drift” mine by the locals) went into the mountain on a bedrock hump, about seventy feet above the river. The Oldtimers had seen the hump and drifted toward it along the up-sloping bedrock that rose from the river, hitting the hump then driving underneath about fifty feet of boulder clay (almost exclusively clay, yet sprinkled with boulders and lesser rock dumped from the long gone Ice Age glaciers). [The mine entrance is still there, but the tunnel is caved in.]

Some modern miners had come in with big equipment and made a road around that bedrock point on the hill, cutting into the bedrock as they widened the road, while slicing across the drift mine entrance.

Now, what a dummy I was--I didn't detect that scraped off bedrock hump where the drift mine had gone in! Instead, I went over to the entrance, and hauled several heavy buckets of material down to the river to pan.

What a miserable time I had getting those buckets down to the river, skidding down that 30 to 40-degree slope covered in broken bedrock and loose cobbles. Fun? Not as much fun as a double root canal, but just about. Still, I was way over the legal-limit for fun.

Every bucket held gold, but only flakes. And, as I was chasing coarse gold, after lugging three five-gallon buckets of clay goo from the mine entrance to the river, I'd had enough fun.

But, since the eddy I’d picked to prospect was exactly below that bedrock hump, I dropped into the spot, a truck-box sized hole high water had cut into the river bank. It was littered with bread-loaf sized cobbles.

I was in my own little enclave down there, and I couldn't be seen from the equipment-trail above, nor could I be seen from up or down the river on my side of the stream.

I had packed down my old VLF detector and a shovel with me. I fired up the detector and scanned the cobbled section. I immediately got a loud signal.

I chucked a load of bread-loaf cobbles into the river and scanned again. The target was still there. Moving the underlying loose stuff, I exposed a nice square nail. What the . . .? That wasn't what I wanted, but square nails were everywhere on that bank!

Well, being the dimwit that I was, I never made the connection this was a good sign (heavies dropping out during flood stage). So, I scanned more bank, got more signals, then gave up detecting because I KNEW every signal was a square nail. (Dumb yes, but I was quite a rookie back then.)

I cleared the rest of the loose stuff from under the cobbles and chucked the stream-run back into a hole (eight-foot deep) in the river. That hole lay downstream from a series of bedrock drops, it being the only calm water in a long stretch. This clue should also have lit up my gold-getting brain, but my rookie mind was a steel trap, and once shut, no helpful gold logic was getting in.

What I found after clearing the overburden was friable rock standing over a layer of soft decomposing bedrock. So, I scraped the shingle-like pieces off and panned it all out. Immediately I had coarse gold in my pan! What the . . .? My rookie brain began to make connections.

All along that eight-foot section of bedrock, there was fantastic, coarse and sassy gold!

Sitting down, I looked at that river eddy excavation. The bedrock, where the eddy had dumped the heavies, rose up into the bank. At that moment, my brain finally made another connection. (Part II to follow)

All the best,

Lanny

Nice looking nugget regardless of where it came from; however the Internet sleuthing is proving interesting as well.

When it came to great fishing holes, when my dad came back with a great catch of fish and locals would ask him where he caught them, he'd grin and say, "I caught them right in the mouth!" Maybe this nugget's provenance is motivated by a similar desire to keep the area secret/undisclosed.

All the best,

Lanny

What a great gold tale! Thoroughly enjoying the read, and I can relate to suspicious characters in the gold fields, have run into too many over the years. Having said that though, far more nice people I've met that were out chasing the gold.

Love his journal-entry style, fresh, sparse and smooth.

Thanks for sharing, and all the best,

Lanny

No nuggets in smooth bedrock?

Most of the time, smooth bedrock doesn't hold gold, but I have run across some spectacular nugget finds in smooth bedrock. Even if the surface has been pounded smooth or weathered flat, it doesn't mean that there weren't cracks in the bedrock before those massive re-shaping and smoothing events occurred. So, when I'm in gold country, I always check smooth bedrock with my detector as well, and I have been rewarded, from time to time, with some incredible results because the worn, smooth sheets are often overlooked, with most nugget shooters giving them a pass.

What new shooters don't realize is that any bedrock in gold country has an excellent chance of holding gold. It's not as likely as rough bedrock for a trap; but, due to untold years of change and weathering, any bedrock in placer areas offers a chance I don't pass up, as the rougher bedrock has usually been hammered to death.

All the best,

Lanny

Icy gold is the best--requires true dedication and extra skill.

Nicely done, and all the best,

Lanny

Pretty gold, nicely done.

All the best with your new purchase!

What an incredible nugget!

That sure is beautiful gold!

Thanks for the videos, and all the best,

Lanny

Won't be able to make it this year, love Quartzite, hope it all goes well for you.

All the best,

Lanny

Old Trenches--A Missed Nugget Opportunity

So, I thought I'd post a little story about one of my infamous missed opportunities, a chance gone by to metal detect for some sassy nuggets. But, what else is new, right? I’ve left lots of gold behind due to my long nugget shooting learning curve.

Well, at the time, I was pretty green, although I had (the previous summer) broken the rookie metal detector's curse (You know, when you swing the detector forever and only get the coil over trash. Which means, all you dig is trash day, after day, after day. . . . However, I broke the rookie curse and found my first nugget "The Africa Nugget", which then led to a dozen or so nuggets all the size of your fingernails. On a side note, it’s always amazed me how that worked out—nada, nothing forever, then once the curse was broken, I couldn’t keep the sassy nuggets from getting under the coil!)

I guess that was enough digression, so I’ll get back to my tale. As I was pretty green, I'd been detecting a huge excavation, one worked around a massive boulder, that boulder the size of a small house. It was so huge, you could look under it where the Chinese had tunneled (a lot of silt and debris had washed in closing most spaces up) and see where they'd left their, short, stout and round posts to ensure the boulder didn't drop to the bedrock to crush them. It was quite the sight, and I can't imagine the work done to excavate it, let alone the courage to tunnel under it!

Anyway, I was detecting around the boulder’s basin, and I was getting all kinds of trash. I was having flashbacks to the previous year's "Rookie Curse" mode, so my enjoyment level dropped fast.

As well, because I'd hit so many nuggets the previous summer, I was in a bit of a hurry to start hearing that "low-high-low" golden tone once more. Well, it didn't happen at all in that spot, and the bugs were exceptionally blood-thirsty down there away from any breeze, so I moved on to windier realms.

I happened upon some long rows of hand-stacked cobbles and small boulders, and then I came to some sheets of bare bedrock, but I couldn't get a peep out of the bedrock. It was completely smooth and iron hard, the wrong type of rock to trap gold, which made for discouraging hunting.

I walked down closer to the river and detected along a bench, but all I found were more heavily rusted pieces of tin can, bits of lead, snips of small gauge iron and copper wire, broken chunks of cable, boot tacks, and lead meat-tin keys. It was Deja-vu all over again.

By this time I was hot, sweaty, tired and felt four times dumber than when I'd hiked in there. (I say I was much dumber because of what happened next.)

I decided I'd hike out through the pines and aspens in a different direction from the way I'd bush-whacked my way in. I got partway through, heading uphill about a block and a half away from the boulder basin, and all at once, the trees opened up, and I was in a clearing. Well, that should have been my first tip-off (a clearing), but like I said, I was a bit grumpy, hungry and looking forward to cooking some grub on the wood-burning stove back at camp in the wall-tent, about a half a mile away. Nevertheless, my little prospector brain (the one much smaller than my big, dumb prospector brain that wants nothing but food, and easy finds) lit up and overrode my big dumb brain, and recognition set in.

This area was clearly not natural. (I know it's hard to believe, being so easy to understand for a pro, but at the time I was such a green rookie my brain had almost no gold logic.) Anyway, my two opposing brains quit fighting and made me do a double take; my hunger was briefly forgotten, and I started paying attention to what I was walking through.

Off to my right I spotted disturbed rows of forest floor. And, sure enough, there were rows of trenched forest floor, which cut down to bedrock! (Now, any prospector worth his salt, his bacon, or his beans would have spent time carefully checking this entire area, but no, at that time I was a sausage-brained rookie.) There were chunks of broken bedrock, tree roots, cobbles (clearly indicating the existence of channel underneath) and smaller water-worn stones cast up everywhere. In addition, some spots had been trenched wider than others, leaving exposed bedrock patches. (It was about two to three feet to bedrock.) Other cuts were slumping back in, and many had grown over. This was old work, likely done by the early diggers around 1870.

So, what did I do? I followed those trenches around in the forest, peering down into them from time to time like a sappy tourist. Towards the end, It dawned on me to fire up my detector (That it took me that long proves how dumb newbie dumb can be) and detect around a bit. There were old square nails, bits of decomposing tin can, and much rarer tiny square nails. What did this mean to me at the time? Well, I figured someone had been digging around, had left some trash behind, and had moved on to bigger and better opportunities, of course.

What does it all mean to me now that I’ve been chasing the gold for many years? Someone did a ton of back-breaking work hand-trenching chasing the gold, and because of the different sizes of square nails, they were there most likely had some kind of recovery system set up to get the gold. Moreover, as they were following the bedrock, they were probably finding enough to make it interesting. (Have you ever trenched in the forest two to three feet to bedrock? Cutting through those roots and rocks is zero fun!) Yet, with the clearing not worked to bedrock, it likely wasn’t rich ground (gold was around $19 an ounce in 1870). Or, they could have had water problems or lacked enough funding, etc.

Regardless, I should have reopened some of those trenches and detected that ancient bedrock. Instead, I overruled my tiny prospector's (developing) baby brain that had tipped me off in the first place and only gave the ground a superficial working.

The location of that forest trenching is a gruelling eighteen-hour drive north and west of here, and I may never return (thick with bears and bugs, and a road that really beats up vehicles). Nonetheless, because I've learned much better how to find the gold now, if I ever do return, I’ll know where to explore and what to exploit as it would be a fantastic opportunity to detect virgin bedrock as well as virgin (thrown out) dirt.

I've since found beautiful gold in areas like that one, as the prospectors a hundred and fifty or so years previous had no way of knowing what they were throwing out (unless they ran all of the dirt, which they did not) during their testing. Moreover, they had no way of knowing what they were leaving in the invisible cracks and crevices of the bedrock, but a premier gold detector, put to good use today would do the job very well indeed.

So, there’s one for the someday, if I ever return list, and a lesson that’s stuck with me since that’s produced nice nuggets when I’m out tramping around old workings.

All the best,

Lanny

1 hour ago, Jim_Alaska said:

No one tells them better than Lanny; I've been reading his stories for years.

Many thanks Jim, kind words indeed.

All the best,

Lanny

A desert gold-hunting misadventure

I've worked that dry desert dirt chasing gold in Arizona, and it taught me I much prefer using water! Yet, that desert gold sure is truly, beautiful stuff. And, that’s why I was out there looking for some.

While I was working a dry wash on the side of a hill, I found myself wrapped up in a frightening misadventure.

To begin, there were old dry-washer piles everywhere. So, being a likely place for gold, I picked a spot with bedrock outcroppings that looked more promising than the rest (I have to tell you at this point in my tale that I can’t stand spiders, of any size or kind.), and I started to dig.

As I prospected along the wash, I started to see these round holes located in the bank. Well, I'd seen some of them while I was detecting in flatter areas (and of course, those holes went straight down), and I'd spotted a tarantula crouching in one of them, the front appendages wiggling, those blood-thirsty eyes boring directly into the terror center of my brain! You get the picture—that was enough for me.

I quickly changed locations—with about the same speed as a jacked-up sprinter on steroids does. Only, sprinters are far slower it appears, because I'm certain I broke several Olympic records as I raced through that unforgiving region of plant life where everything pokes, stings, or bites! (I'm thinking of a full Kevlar body suit the next time I have to run from a tarantula. It might save me from the nasty bite as well as stop me from picking spines from my hide for two days afterward.)

Despite my escape from near death, I went off digging in a new spot, a little wash among the grease-wood and creosote. I started working my way uphill, and when I saw those same, round holes I've mentioned earlier, I started to have freaky flashbacks. However, I overrode my brain's early warning system. (I'm quite famous for disabling my body’s hard-wired survival systems and that has allowed me to have some truly wild experiences that spice my otherwise bland life.)

Motivated by the fact that I'd traveled well over a thousand miles to get myself some desert gold, I wasn't going to let some hairy, fanged octo-ped drive me from my diggings, not on such a fine desert day.

So, I stared at those holes for a moment longer (there were three of them, about head height--ranged across the hill close to a foot apart, with the middle of the three just about dead center with my body), and I decided that I would go about loosening the dirt that covered the bedrock wall in that spot.

With my pulse back to a normal level, and my formerly panicked brain calmed to a benign state, I hefted the reassuring weight of my pick, and drove the pick into the ground.

Like a blast from a rocket-propelled-grenade, something came flying out of that center hole!! It flew at me so fast that I had no time to react. I was the perfect, paralyzed victim.

On a side note, if you've ever been in a car crash (as I have), you may have experienced this phenomenon: time and action slow to a crawl. Every minute detail is recorded by the brain which is somehow temporarily rewired to Star Trek warp speed factors. This allows your melon to record every little detail at hyper speed, thus generating a slow-motion recording mode. This lets the brain capture the entire event perfectly so that you can micro-analyze it in perpetuity.

But, I need to backtrack to the moment when the unknown terror shot forth from the hole. It was heading straight for my chest, and it had a leathery head with several colors. It was wagging from side to side. The tail was long and it was swaying back and forth, acting as a rudder, driving the horror relentlessly toward my paralyzed body.

I watched immobilized as it dropped below eye level, then caught the bizarre object again, just to the right of me, as it plowed into the desert dirt. Sensing this was no spider, my brain switched out of panic mode, and it returned to recording at normal speed.

This flying menace was only some kind of stinking, pea-brained lizard! Although this rotten reptile was launched from the underworld to give me a heart attack, quite obviously, the desert plot to frighten me had failed miserably.

For, I have no fear of lizards or snakes you see (Strange huh? I mean, the snakes may kill you, but the hideous tarantulas will only tease you a friendly bite that feels as if liquid fire is lancing through every cell and nerve ending of your entire body. So, no wonder snakes don't worry me. . . .), and because I don't fear reptiles, I was able to laugh.

The fact that laughter sounded much like a pack of deranged hyenas is irrelevant. It was a healing event for me, a wondrous catharsis. Who cares if the aforementioned laughter terrorized the nearby city of Phoenix and jammed every available 911 circuit with panicked callers.

On a reflective note, in a bold act demonstrating my supreme daring and courage, I abandoned that hill-side and headed off to a flat, wandering trail I'd spotted earlier in the day, one that leisurely led across a level mesa, about three miles distant. . . .


All the best,

Lanny

Sweet finds with the Nox, nicely done!

All the best,

Lanny

In the summertime, here in the northlands, hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood. This is no donation at a clinic but a bizarre, annual event conducted in the boreal forests.

To provide some background, if you’ve never been deep in a northern forest, I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time relating to the True Northern Prospector (known as the TNP from now on) that heads off each season to donate blood.

To begin, try to imagine a place of incredible beauty and peace. A forested wonderland of massive pine, cedar, tamarack, and fir—a glorious spot with forest floor lush in undergrowth, a pristine site where crystal streams run unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. As well, picture the carpeted forest of mountain green that rolls on until it meets the cobalt blue horizon.

This seemingly wondrous setting drastically changes once you exit the 4x4. A buzzing black cloud engulfs every warm-blooded being. (Yet, you might say, surely any prospector worth his salt has faced mosquitoes the size of humming birds, or horse flies big enough to ride?)

Beyond the protection of the 4X4, the bug-cloud sets the TNP’s dim brain to defence mode. His arms flail at the attacking bugs, and this desperate action launches the detector he’s packing through the air—the price paid an inconvenient memory. Running back to the truck, he finds the vehicle locked, his partner gone with the keys. (Moreover, the partner has the bug dope in his coat’s front pocket, the spray he swears is ridiculous, citing some bull about real men never fearing such small, flying creatures. The partner follows up with sass that anyone needing bug spray is unworthy of the northern prospector’s stripe!)

Raw panic soon widens into a chasm of terror. There is no place to hide! The bugs are everywhere. This seals the TNP’s fate, which begins the bizarre annual blood donation event.

Engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings and teeth (vampires, by comparison, lag thousands of years in evolution), he accidentally kills an entire squadron, breathing them in while gasping in terror.

Regardless of his small victory, a new attack begins, a covert one where the bugs climb inside your pant legs. The troops are the dark demons of the northern other-world: the dreaded blackfly—which Webster’s refers to as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran? A disturbingly calm word such hell-on-the-wing!

(To add to the terror, each season, the blackflies get bigger. I saw a swarm the other day packing intravenous poles with blood bags to use on some wretch they’d caught trying to bathe in the river! I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect. You’re right. The victim had only slipped, then fell in the water; he wasn’t trying to bathe at all.)

Now, I’d hate to leave you wondering about the TNP caught without his bug dope. (Which reminds me—I’ve often pondered on the annoying name given to that spray. But, one day it came to me. The name “dope” refers to the idiot that has none with him!)

As to the earlier attack of the blackflies, their assault goes unnoticed during the daylight hours. Using anesthetic as they feed, the bites will be discovered during a sleepless night, caused by unimaginable itching which only lasts about a million years. (And, you will hate being such a jack-wagon to scratch them in the first place, as it makes the itching much worse.)

Thinking nothing could top the itching of your legs, you ear begins to itch, but not on the outside, no. Deep down in the ear canal a new torture begins. The rotten flies do not fight fair. As well as the ear canal, the cursed flies have the power to attack in unmentionable places—enough said.

By way of flashback, remember the horse flies mentioned earlier? Well, the TNP has been known to use a rope as a strategy—not to swat or slash at them—but to lasso the smaller ones. (To elaborate, some prospectors brag of saddling those bugs, flying off on them to use in rodeos and races. But that’s a bald-faced lie; the mosquito’s wings can’t work while covered with a saddle.)

And, to counter a different claim, some people swear you can shoot the mosquitoes up north with a shotgun. This is absolutely false! A shotgun won’t bring them down. However, a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing or leg, now and then.

But, what of the absent partner, the one with the bug dope. The TNP found his sorry hide at last, his partner wildly waving his detector over a patch of exposed, red-hot bedrock. Then, suddenly hearing a low moan, followed by a screeching sound and another low moan, the TNP frowned, thinking his partner might have found a nugget.

Imagine the TNP’s surprise when he found the sound was coming from his partner as he fled the bedrock, while outpacing a flying blood-bank, only to have that cloud quickly cover him again.

The TNP raced toward his partner, seeming ready to offer assistance with the flying demons. (To provide background on the bug cloud, it was so thick that the TNP used his Bowie knife to cut out a square plug, giving him a quick glimpse of his partner inside.) Yet, the TNP flashing the Bowie, appeared to lunge straight at his partner’s throat! However, at the last second, the TNP shredded his partner’s jacket pocket instead, removing the bug dope, then running off, bug-cloud in tow.

Now, this story may seem inconsequential to most of you—perhaps even rather bland. But I assure you—it was a serious matter, with some truth added for effect.

And what of the TNP’s partner you ask? Why, it’s rumoured he’s still holed up deep in an abandoned northern mine, where it’s dark and cold—far too cold for Bugs, but not too cold for dopes.

All the best,

Lanny