Chasing Flecks

Yesterday, day three, 1:49 p.m.–and the Nevada sun beat down like it wanted me gone. My claim–twenty feet of dry, cracked earth–lay baking in the late Spring heat, marked by four crooked rock cairns and misplaced confidence.

There, I leaned on my camp shovel, panting, sweat stinging my eyes and grit in my teeth. Every muscle in my back ached, my jeans were stiff with dust, and my water jug was sweating more than I was.

I’m a dreamer, maybe an idiot. It depends on who you ask.

I found the spot a week ago, wandering farther than I meant. I wasn’t looking for anything particular–just trying to clear my head.

That’s when I saw an old dry wash twisting through the brush, maybe four feet wide in places, choked with rounded stones and rust-colored gravel. The kind of cut that comes from water–fast-moving and heavy at some point in the past.

The sides had scalloped from old floods, with layers of sediment packed tight. High up along the bank, I spotted what looked like black sand trapped between slabs of fractured bedrock–nothing major, but enough to make me stop. A few pieces of quartz, too–white veins spidering through brown rock–and one chunk with a yellow stain I couldn’t quite explain.

There were no footprints, no trash, no claim markers. Just a quiet, weathered cut in the earth that hadn’t seen human hands in who knows how long.

It’s what got me.

It wasn’t the color or the shape of the rocks–it was the feel of the place. The way the old streambed twisted off the ridge like it was trying to hide something.

The old timers say, “Where water slows, gold goes.”

Crouching, I scooped up a handful of dirt. The wash had all the signs–a couple of tight bends, an inside curve where floodwaters might have dropped their load, and even a slight natural riffle formed by rock clusters near the bend.

It wasn’t proof, not by a long shot, but it was enough. Enough to believe. Enough to stake a claim, dig in, and see if that little whisper of instinct was right.

Three days into my fool’s errand, I’d scraped together about one-sixteenth of an ounce of gold, not worth justifying the blisters on my palms. I wiped my face and stared at the stubborn third boulder I’d been trying to move.

“You win again,” I muttered, giving it a half-hearted kick.

It didn’t budge–instead, it sat there like it was laughing at me.

Dry panning is less a method and more a test of patience–maybe faith. There’s no creek here, no water at all.

Just me, a battered green pan, and dirt. Lots and lots of dirt.

I knelt, scooped a handful of sand, gravel, and powdery silt into the pan, and began to swirl. I tried to mimic the movement of water, just like I’d seen in those old prospector videos late at night when I should’ve been sleeping.

Tilt, swirl, tap, let the lighter sediment spill over the side while the heavier stuff—hopefully gold—settles. I’d done it hundreds of times now.

My fingers were cramped, my breath shallow. Time and again, I tapped the pan’s edge, coaxing any shimmer to reveal itself.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Just one more flake.”

It felt ridiculous, standing alone in a forgotten wash, begging dirt to turn into dreams. But here I was, dust in my hair, sunburn on my neck, and more hope than sense.

Sam Clemens’ voice echoed, “A mine’s a hole in the ground owned by a liar.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “but at least I’m an honest liar.”

Gently, I blew across the surface, a trick I’d picked up online through YouTube. It’s supposed to lift the lighter dust and leave behind anything with weight. Most times, all that happened was dirt–blown back into my face.

The pan was no different—until a glint caught my eye. Tiny. Barely there. But it gleamed like a wink from the earth itself.

“Gotcha,” I said, grinning as I dropped the one lousy speck into my little glass vial.

As I packed up my truck, I remembered Sam’s final words about digging in the earth, “Mining’s a fool’s game. Hard, hot, and you’ll starve one way or another.”