Over the last week or two, I've come across a plethora of people on some creeks and everyone is friendly to the point where there's no competition or anyone being upset about someone digging near them. Everyone immediately offers any advice, tips or information, including better places to go and dig. Here I thought I'd risk running into people that assumed some type of exclusive ownership or entitlement to some areas of some creeks, but no one yet been like that at all. I'm sure there are some places, or cases where you unknowingly stumble on someone's claim (unlikely, since I'm watchful of that) where there are some issues, but I've made more connections this way than a lot of other stuff.
Being a musician and martial artist, you can imagine the ego's and competition you'd typically come across, and this is a nice break from all of that (though there are some really good people into that stuff, too). People just offer details that make it more interesting and more fun and it's a really cool community of people. It's exciting and as I mentioned earlier, I'm oddly eager to go out and do back breaking hard labor for 10 cents an hour, so that's got to mean something. Rain or shine, I seem to find myself out there for hours now, and even more now that I have a sluice box. You'll have to excuse me while I go grow a long beard and become accustomed to the life of a hermit.
Comments
We got a new Jacob Waltz in the making here...great words Tim! You are right, my wife and I have met some of the nicest people while on prospecting trips. Hard work and relaxing conversation around the campfire after a hard days work in the river...it don't get much better than that (and of course that beautiful metal in our vials).