little known talent
Hume Lake (where I was recently) is chock full of fool’s gold. The sand is like an organic glitter snowglobe. Pictures can’t capture the glitter-i-ness.
Trust me. Sparkly.
I know how to pan for gold. Probably every person who grew up in Arizona did; there was (and is) an olde-towne-y frontier fakeland amusement center called Rawhide (I will not supply the link; the site has annoying auto-loading audio) that all children would visit. It featured the standard gun battles, giant steaks, horse stuff, and prospectin’ (the category in which the panning falls).
I remember being about 8 and watching a dude use a large rocking contraption for panning. He was not having any luck finding gold, so he turned his back to us, opened a small vial, and sprinkled some real gold into the water. I was crestfallen in only the way an 8-year-old witnessing how the Cynical World really works, can be.
Panning was a part of my family’s trip to the Sierras, too, and during visits to rivers and lakes around the Southwest. I just assumed that was true in other families, but I kind of now realize that may not be the case.
My dad and brothers knew how to pan, too; perhaps that knowledge came from my dad’s dad, who apparently was a Montana prospector for a time. He’s the one who found a battle axe on the Little Big Horn site, the axe that my sister just returned to its proper home this summer.
Enjoy this mesmerizing video of a delightfully Canadian prospector showing us how it’s done.
I’m stiLL prospecting for a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers…