Gold

My hobby of Gold prospecting began when a true friend, Bob Cox, took me under his wing to teach and inspire me to chase those little golden specks. I was immediately bitten by the Gold Bug.

My chase began in the chilly waters of several streams in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where gold is found in the gravels and sands of many creeks and rivers. Like most I started with a gold pan, followed shortly by a sluice and metal detector. As time passed Bob introduced me to drywashing for gold in the desert of Arizona. The next twist in this passion came when Bob bought a small gold dredge that allowed us to enter the realm of underwater prospecting. That is when gold fever really kicked into gear.

After our first dredging experiences we were now knee deep into this hobby. Prospecting underwater brings you into a new world, where you can actually see pieces of gold where they lie, where no living person saw this piece of gold until you discovered it. It is a strangely serene world when you are in the water, and fish swim up to your face mask and look directly into your eyes, as if to say who are you, and what are you looking for. Of course, the fish look very big under water, where the water and mask combine to magnify all your images, and that really helps with those small pieces of gold, which become nuggets, until you have them out of the water and into your hand, where reality turns them back into little grains of gold.

So all of my vacation time was spent on various golden adventures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Alaska, and finally California, with Bob and his wife Vivian, who somehow put up with all our silliness, pursuing little specks of gold. Soon it was time to make a decision - continue working and saving money like normal people, or choose a path less traveled, and retire to pursue a passion, Gold Prospecting.

In the end, it was an easy choice. Life is much more peaceful and interesting here in this classic American small town, Happy Camp, California. In fact, the name of the town says it all: Happy Camp.

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