"Lost Mines" intro (revised yet again)..

[mnaz]

Trails run everywhere here. Etchings drift across flats, up mountainsides and down ravines, through gaps into high sage; your very own wonderland of wander; door to the heartland. From long ribbons into a silent sea, trails that veer off and twist into rocky solitude hold the most intrigue-- the seekers' trails. They seem utterly random, yet each one exists for a reason once clear in the sun-baked mind of its builder, who went there to search for gems in beaten rock; a new stake, new take.

Do miners write poetry? No, only cowboys write poetry; they roam so much of the boundless that they have little choice. Miners are too deep into extraction . . . Yet the best prospectors understand possibility's poetry. They enjoy being here, astray and sunburnt. And their trails mark only what was found; a zone of greater intrigue lies in the universes between, a zone that has given us some curious legends. Spend time here and you start to pick them up.

Why are there so many lost mine legends in the desert? When finders of great wealth returned to their great finds, why were they sometimes gone? Hidden again in the infinite folds that kept their secret for so long? The desert can change its face, confuse you with space or thirst. Or maybe the eureka! moment replayed too many times in the seeker's mind, to a point where in that moment of electric discovery the lines of reality, dreams and memory blurred.

These tales can mess with your head a little if you ponder them too long in a dusty daydream . . . Could you be the one to finally drift out in the right frame of mind and find what others tracking the legend's footsteps could not? Or was it all just a trick of light played on a feverish mind to begin with? You're never alone; ghosts of solitude whiff at its far edges, drifting and searching, and it's fascinating. How do you explain these things?

[mnaz]

This is Chapt. 23 of 26, final edit (ongoing). I've been writing & rewriting this thing for 9 years (my entire writing "career," essentially), and part of the problem/challenge is, I've changed (evolved?) as a writer over that time span, so I find myself constantly reworking what I've written, tossing out things, but adding in more than I toss out. I considered tossing out these old tales about lost mines; perhaps they veer into territory a bit too PBS "documentary-ish." And personally, I'm not big on the idea of mining in general (especially the godawful strip mining that goes on these days) ... But I think these old prospector stories . . . Pegleg Smith, Shorty Harris, Breyfogle and all the other drifters, do hold some degree of universal fascination, especially given the wide-open stage on which they occurred ...

[mtmynd]

This is Chapt. 23 of 26, final edit (ongoing). I've been writing & rewriting this thing for 9 years

Your work improves thru time... i was engaged. no need to feel Lost Mines borders on "too PBS "documentary-ish" altho PBS does some great work. This is your vision written in your words about your experiences as it should be.

But I think these old prospector stories . . . Pegleg Smith, Shorty Harris, Breyfogle and all the other drifters, do hold some degree of universal fascination, especially given the wide-open stage on which they occurred ...

Absolutely. There always an audience for drifters, characters and seekers of all types.

How close to a closing of your book do you think you are? As you well know there is *always* room for improvement... the challenge is recognizing a personal satisfaction of what you've already completed. Being overly critical should offer new paths to the next book... new insights, new tales, new learnings based upon that which came before.

[mnaz]

True. Yeah, I remember "Totenkopf" assessing (dismissing) my "Lost Mines" writing as a documentary-ish sort of endeavor, a bit of stale history. Yet of course it was anything but "stale" for those caught up in that prospecting fever. And "Totenkopf" really didn't like too much in general, as I recall ..

Yes, dammit man, sometimes I think I'm trying to jam 3 or more books into one, yet I'm happy with the mix, as it grows. I'm pretty close now.

btw, it looks like I have some time breaking free pretty soon, and it's been an awful long time since I hit the road... I mean, really hit the road ... I wanna get out there again...

[mnaz]

Here is the "Pegleg Smith" legend-- or at least one of the countless takes on it:
----------------------------
You're never quite alone; ghosts of solitude whiff at its far edges, still searching, weary and fascinated. How to explain these things?

Pegleg's tale was the first one. You heard it in some terrible little Mojave dive, and it seems everyone who's wandered the hills knows this tale. The big one. It began in 1829 when Thomas "Pegleg" Smith, who took an Indian arrow in his knee to earn his nickname, rode south from Taos with his mountain men. Their beaver pelt haul was good, so Pegleg and a guy named Maurice de Luc took their pelts and rode west toward California across the unknown desert. Into a legend.

They were pinned down by a sandstorm for two days, and an exhausted Pegleg climbed short dark butte after the storm passed and made a strange find-- scattered heavy black nuggets, "enough to fill a wagon train." He grabbed one and rode on to the coast, where he and de Luc sold their pelts and started drinking.

And time passed. Pegleg's black lump proved to be nearly pure gold, but for some unexplained reason he never went back to his great find. He ran a trading post in Idaho and recruited Ute warriors to help steal horses from ranches in California for resale. He knew all of the escape routes. Most of the many "Horse Thief Canyons" in California are named after him.

When the '49ers blew through his place in a gold rush fever, Pegleg followed them, only to find the best claims already staked . . . But he recalled that rich dark butte he had found twenty years earlier, and resolved to finally go back. He gathered a few other hard-luck '49ers, and they went back into the unknown desert but came up empty. And then he tried a second time. Same result . . . He never found that butte again, but never lacked for stories to trade for drinks at the bar, and his desert tale of lost black gold was his favorite.

Over the years a few people claimed to have found Pegleg's lost riches, and even flashed a little black gold, yet strangely, like Pegleg, they never returned to grab the rest of the gold. Desert Magazine, in 1965, published an anonymous letter by a "Mr. Pegleg," who sent in a large black nugget. The letter detailed his find of the lost gold and secret recovery of it. Perhaps true resolution at last. But why did this letter tell of a wide slope, not a dark butte? And why an eighteenth century Spanish scabbard amid the strewn nuggets?

These tales reach a point where you must guess to fill in blanks, grasping at factual fragments, extending, weaving them into your own versions of a legend, and this one should have died given Pegleg's reputation for drinking and lying, but the story kept resurfacing. Like that soldier who found black nuggets on a dark butte and gathered an expedition in Los Angeles to return to the site, all found dead later beneath San Ysidro Range. And what about the Indian woman, thirsty and dazed, who found gold on a butte? She staggered into a railroad camp she'd seen from the butte and left a black gold nugget before wandering on.

How to explain these things? Like that Spanish scabbard in the letter? You start guessing . . . Okay, maybe gold was scattered when Indians attacked a Spanish mule train in the 1700s. And maybe the warriors came from a "round valley marked by dark buttes," a spoken tradition of Colorado Desert tribes, who had no certain sense of distance or direction. (Who does out here?) Or maybe there was no attack, only a dark butte littered with gold. Maybe Pegleg the storyteller was told a story, and it was all myth and hazy recollection. Maybe, but how do you explain that black nugget in his pocket?

And the mind starts to grind . . . How much wealth might be patiently waiting out on some desolate reach for a fool to come by and pick up? How much could a fool pick up? How much gold did the average Spanish mule train carry in the 1700s? It was certainly more than "Mr. Pegleg's" last known sum. So maybe you should take a long walk in that low desert some day, if you could figure out where to start.

[mtmynd]

It stirs my imagination and I long to go on a search for black gold.

Nicely done, nazzer... is this a separate chapter or .....?

[mnaz]

Thx, Cec. It's just the last edit/rework of the "Lost Mines" chapter-- stuff that I first started writing way back in '06. My how time flies!

[the mingo]

thx mnaz - enjoyed!

[mnaz]

Glad you enjoyed, El Mingo.

Here is the "Lost Breyfogle" synopsis:

A recurring theme emerges here: the exhausted, euphoric seeker tries to leave a marker to treasure found on some vague, remote slope, never to be found again. It stretches credulity, yet is it possible that so many of these stories could have simply been made up?

Like Charles Breyfogle's story. He quit his job as Alameda County Assessor in 1863 and joined Nevada's Reese River gold mania. He worked as a mill hand and prospected tirelessly. One day he left his horse and climbed a hill, where he found a quartz vein rich in gold. He spent all day on the hill, and his horse and water were gone when he came back down. So he tracked his horse until dark and slept on open ground, and by dusk the next day he was dry and confused, and then unconscious. Until he woke inside a friendly Shoshone Indian camp.

He had no idea where he'd been rescued, but he knew he had a gold mine. So he convinced his boss to form a search party. And then another one. They combed the Nevada desert thoroughly but never could locate that rich gold vein, and two years after his great find, Breyfogle gave up and returned to California.

This legend also should have died, but a sandstone outcropping was found in 1933 in Forty Mile Canyon etched with an inscription: “BY FOGLE 1863.” So seekers came back again, into this canyon to resume the search, but for eighteen more years they came up empty until the feds grabbed the area for a bombing range.

[creativesoul]

really nice
coughing and sputtering this morning
can feel the dust
like the story- the feds fuck things up=