"Gold" (revised)

[mnaz]

Contact the outer reaches of space; cheatgrass glare and greasewood daub. I enjoy the religion so far. To get a sense of what it isn't, wander past a major open-pit mine, with its fearsome liquidation of landscape, terraced to an unrepentent scale, prominent and bleeding, visible across long stretches of quiet.

It's not that the land won't outlast these assaults, scattered over the realm. The desert remains undesired and unchallenged, overall. But if I see an entire ridge cut down, then a question or two may surface. Here is a place of value. A corporate arm noticed it, or perhaps a hapless stray in a pickup. The former covets what may be powered from the earth by sheer might and economics, while the latter may seek the earth itself, or a philosophy of the lesser trail.

Of course it's easy for me to bash the mining industry, especially a faceless behemoth setting out to trash an entire hill. But how far would I go to extract gold if I knew its hiding place and had the means? Hard to say, exactly. I can't imagine that a precious metal could exert such an industrial-strength pull on me. The numbers can be astonishing. The operation at Cortez, Nevada, for example, processes 9,000 tons of ore daily. I crested an amber ridge one day and happened onto its concussive glory; a complex of steel and heavy fuel, remaking a battered horizon in the image of its shareholders.

Not all miners approach a hillside in the same way however. It was not so long ago that I crossed paths with a Depression-era prospector named Red, who was well-versed in life's subtleties. His claim in remote Mojave hills was a one-man labor of love. After his wife passed, he placer-mined for decades, taking what he needed. That was life's secret, he used to say; figuring need from want. He was an innovator, a junk genius, with a galaxy of spare parts around him, from which he improvised equipment of the trade operable by one man, including a hole digger and ore cart processor, built from timbers and scrap steel.

He was at peace in his canyon, and he passed it on to the occasional wanderer. He got the rhythm of it. He studied spareness and noted plenty. He planted fruits and vegetables, and knew the native herbs and plants. He studied Indian petroglyphs and the stars. He used to have a routine, if such a thing is possible in fine arid light; a breakfast of coffee, mush and bacon, and then a slow dig toward sundown. It was hard labor, but for a moment's notice exit to serenity, to lie in the sun for awhile. His well was tainted with arsenic, so he hauled in drinking water from up near the mesa. He had his share of unexpected visions, reflected in subtle contours from time to time. Loneliness should wait its turn. There is always plenty to do.

Red used to pass by an open-pit juggernaut in later years on his trips into town. Generally, he shook his head at the sight. What was all the fuss about? Wherein lies the value of gold? Well, it has a sheen when properly polished. And it's rare, extremely rare, found in sub-miniscule flecks of earth's shallow crust. Yeah? What else? Well, lately it's been used for electrical contacts since it resists heat and corrosion. Its elastic density is legendary. A troy ounce of gold can be hammered into a 250 square-foot sheet, or pulled into a 50-mile long wire strand. Extraordinary.

But it's the sheen, the goldness of the element gold, which matters most; its perceived inherent wealth, assigned with a curious sort of mystical reverence. In the King Midas legend, a curse turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink. It might be a lesson in the folly of avarice. More likely, it is a reminder that gold is only a metal. If the bottom were to drop out, what is the point of gold?

Red used to lie back in front of his cabin when the stars came out, on his best chair, one of the first recliners, leaking stuffing from brown vinyl. He tried to hear what the wind might be up to. He had a good telescope trained to the sky, to pierce fickle wind currents. He knew the constellations and nicknamed them years ago. He looked for more unusual sightings as time passed, and found them on occasion. He was fluent in the desert's hidden language.

[iblieve]

Beneath the words in this peace is wisdom if one diggs for it, more valuable than gold. We seek materialistic value while leaving the valuable commodities of nature either untouched or destroyed. This was one of the most pleasant reads I have ever had. Thank you. "C'