The Miner

I am a Miner. A Prospector.

There is treasure here. I am standing on an immense hill of sawdust, left here over a hundred years ago by lumber men. Then the land was naked and scarred. Not far from here men scrapped copper from deep inside the Earth for a dollar a day, and other, armed men guarded the camps against restlessness and violence.

The Earth has healed since then and now before me is the trail, which stretches across the land for 4600 miles. Here I seek out emerald and sapphire and skies of opal...

Gold that spills abundantly down the rock face...

...and liquid silver that laps gently at my feet at sunset...

At the water's edge, I search for something more. Rough agates, the world's oldest, formed here a billion years ago when gas pockets in cooling lava filled in with minerals in layers and swirls. Seen when dry, they appear to be ordinary stones. but when wet, they reveal their true colors and luminous, mineral beauty.

One large agate broke off from its basalt matrix and tumbled through endless oceans of time to land in my small hand. Others were found at my feet at the mouth of a river, resembling two small hearts.

Yet another emerges from waist-deep, ice-cold water of purest blue and looks like a Death's head from a Medieval painting.

I am a lonely miner of things I never wish to sell.