Fool's GoldA Story by Carol Cashes This is how I felt when I first returned to the Gulf Coast after living almost twenty years in the Pacific Northwest. Fool’s Gold
In the beginning, she stayed in a constant state of railing
at the gods, the powers that be, fate--whatever was keeping her just this side
of whatever she was after. Her last marriage
had been a good one up until the end, when a series of unforeseen events led to
choosing her life or her death. Her automobile was the best she'd owned in her
adult life, current model and reliable, but it would never have been her first
choice and would remain a practical matter.
She enjoyed her job, but was over-qualified for the Receptionist
position she was hired as, and she
chafed at the copy jobs and endless envelope stuffing. Sizable deposits were made to the savings
account, yet it never seemed to grow. But the primary sticking point was that she
could not be farther from the gold-bearing waters she loved without living on a
tropical island. The differences between
the Pacific Northwest mountains and the Gulf Coast were many and glaring.
The only times she could remember being truly at peace, with herself and the world around her, was in those beloved high mountain waters,
those wild places where brief prospecting would reveal "color", and
she would dig, methodically and ever deeper in pursuit of gold. It
wasn't really the value of the
gold, or the centuries-old fascination for the shiny metal that pulled at
her. No,
the attraction lay in finding
and extracting that which had known no human hands until hers pulled it from
the river. The invigorating smells,
sounds, and feel of rough mountainous terrain had always, even from her first
encounter, felt as natural as skin, like
her natural habitat and she felt its absence much as she would a limb. She had a natural gift for finding gold -
easily grasping the concepts of "reading" a river and the surrounding
terrain, knowing that gold is nineteen times heavier than water and what that
meant in the practical process. She
discovered a natural, inborn ability to pan away the soil, rocks and clay,
swirling the debris in an outward motion until nothing remained. Nothing but
the black sand that shone brilliantly in the sunlight and seemed determined to
conceal the gold. Now the real “hunt”
began: revealing and removing the gold
from the magnetic material held her undivided attention until she instinctively
knew all had been extracted. The
once-shiny black sand would become dull and without purpose or value �" no
different from the soils, rocks and clay initially discarded. Even the roar of the swift and swollen river
faded from her hearing and only thoughts of gold would occupy her conscious
mind. When daylight faded, she
carefully inspected her vials of water filled with gold flakes and nuggets,
always surprised at the amount accumulated in a day’s panning as she had no
concept of time so fully absorbed was she .
It was not until she stretched stiff and aching limbs that she realized
ten or more hours had been devoted to the river and its elusive treasure
Springtime so far from her elements, both the mountains and
the gold, was the hardest to endure. Spring was when scouting expeditions
determined the amount of winter snow run-off, melted snow that would flood the
rivers, eroding the riverbanks and moving large masses of soil and other
materials from the high country. In
known gold-bearing areas, this gave birth to new gold each spring, bringing
it down the mountains through the
fast-moving river waters. The amount of
“flood gold” found indicated the presence of larger nuggets, pieces that
remained nestled firmly underground until the combination of earth movements
and melting snow dislodged and transported them down the rivers. Potential sites were noted, marked on maps, and the itinerary for the coming summer’s prospecting began to
take shape �" vacation days were requested and approved, lists of supplies
written and rewritten, equipment
checked and replaced as needed, even meals and menus were discussed and
evaluated for feasibility. These
preparations were undertaken as seriously as the actual prospecting, and the
first outing was as fraught with anticipation as Christmas to a small child.
The effort required for the primitive camping that
mountainous areas commanded neither
discouraged nor deterred her, and she took great pride in creating
comfort in what appeared to others as untamed, even daunting places: pitching
the tent, setting up the campfire and
cooking area, gathering firewood, allowing the wilderness to dominate and set
the decor of her camp. Even her home displayed
one or more collections of what was really nothing more than sticks and stones
- all found and kept for some unique characteristic known only to her. Her affinity for this environment and its
natural accessories allowed her to see at once the arrangement specific to each
campsite. Not unlike a kind of feng-shui
for wooded areas, her campsites always had a symmetry �" an unconscious
design that she instinctively perceived and efficiently arranged.
In the evenings, with a hot and hearty meal eaten and
utensils washed and put in their place, the aroma of strong “hobo” coffee
competed with the smell of the carefully tended campfire and large Ponderosa
Pines. While slowly savoring the rich
coffee, the heat of the campfire warmed and eased her aching muscles, pulling
her into a relaxed and complacent state many sought from alcohol and
drugs. With no artificial light to
interfere and the high elevation of the mountains, the stars appeared to shine as millions of
small floodlights, lighting the woods like a full moon on a cloudless
evening. She would then plan the following day �" where she would dig, what areas to rework that could still be
hiding gold, always from arrival to departure her thoughts remain focused on
the gold: finding, retrieving, and finding more. When her mind finally admitted exhaustion,
and after she carefully banked the fire, she succumbed to sleep that too often
eluded her in the comfort of her home, and was always as deep and natural as
the sleep of children who are fed, nurtured and loved.
She missed all of these things, from the smell of the
campfire to the water-filled vials held up to the sun to catch all of her
gold’s glory, from the hearty one-skillet breakfasts to the glare of the sun on
the river’s fast-moving current, from the welcome warmth of her sleeping bag to
the firewood gathering forays into the wild, wooded terrain. Her mind began to convince her heart to be
patient, that a trip could be planned soon - maybe next year �" and with the
passing of each year, she finally began to fear that she was losing interest. This saddened her and she wept for several
days, every spring, grieving the loss of this once passionate pursuit. In time, she convinced herself that she was
being foolish; there were, after all,
more important things in life. She floated into the summers, worked through the
week, sunbathed in her backyard with pitchers
of fruity, exotic cocktails, and read book after book…after book. Her passion
for books increased ten-fold by the absence of her first love. It began as a poor substitute, but soon
became her personal fool’s gold, that shiny metal too many times mistaken by
amateurs and those who desperately needed to believe as real gold. She tried to convince herself that knowing it
was fool’s gold, pinning no high hopes on its redemptive value, and receiving
none, that she was different from the
amateurs and desperate believers. Her heart always knew the truth: everything now would always be her personal fool’s gold. © 2017 Carol CashesAuthor's Note
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Carol CashesBiloxi, MSAboutI'm very cynical, jaded, just this side of bitter and the only reason I haven't crossed that line is a good man loves me. I am extremely empathetic, but seldom sympathetic. I can be a ferociously lo.. more..Writing
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