He rode out of Old Vermont and crossed the Connecticut River and stepped for the first time into the New Hampshire Territory. First time for him and his horse, Old Scamp. “The Connecticut ain’t much of a river,” he thought to his self; “maybe the folks in Connecticut think it is…or maybe it is by the time it gets there.” He rode a few miles upstream to the junction with the Ammonoosuc River, noted that the sun was starting to reach the tops of the mountains and would soon disappear behind them and decided to make camp on the banks of the Ammonoosuc. He unloaded his gear and unsaddled the horse, took off his leather boots and he and the horse cooled their hooves in the shallow, stony river. He sat on a rock and rolled some ‘bacca and was savoring his smoke when a bright glint of something in the water caught his eye. He leaned over, picked it up between thumb and forefinger, and snorted, ‘Well I’ll be damned.’ Back in Old Vermont he’d heard some fellers sayin’ they found gold along the Ammonoosuc. Always struck him as a tiresome and a fool way to chase after riches but he respected men with ambition, not possessing much of it himself. Now danged if he hadn’t found himself a flake right off. Weren’t much of a thing, small enough to balance on the point of a 22 caliber bullet if there was no wind, small enough to pass through the eyelet of his boot, but gold just the same. “I’ll be damned,” he said again. He went back to his campsite, built a fire, and sat on a flat rock to eat some warmed-up beans, the fleck of gold next to him, and he stared at it the whole time he was eating. “Gold,” he said aloud.
Next morning he brewed up a cup of chicory and walked back into the gold-bearing river. He looked around to see if there were any more shiny flakes. After a time he saw them—much smaller than the first one, too small to trifle with, but plentiful. He started moving rocks around to see what was under them. The swift flow of the river carried away the silt and after a period of looking he found another little flake of gold he could pick up. He sat down on a rock in the shallows and started sifting through the sandy river bottom. Pretty soon he found another little flake. He could see the tiniest particles of gold swirl in the water as he moved it around, impossible to capture by hand. He devised different methods of searching—digging little depressions in the river bottom and combing the sides, creating little whirlpools with his hand. He got a stick and excavated trenches and overturned rocks. The miniscule flashes of gold tantalized and seem to taunt him, “You can’t catch me!”
Finger-size fishes came to feed in the areas he disturbed. At first he thought this was a good omen, but then he began to think that maybe gold was their food and he started shooing them away and building dams around the little sites he was working.
The sun rose higher in the sky and he kept looking. He tried to capture smaller and smaller flecks of metal, most being forced away by the action of squeezing his fingers together. It frustrated him to see so much of it drifting away, ungraspable. He piled his treasures in a cavity in a rock and kept looking as the sun rose higher. He looked around occasionally to see if anyone was watching that might jump his claim when he left. He was determined to work it dry before he would let that happen, or sit watch all night. Occasionally he got excited by a big piece flashing in the bottom only to find it was a piece of mica. “All that glitters…” he was reminded of the old chestnut, but rather than striking him as wise insight he found it annoying. A long time passed, of which he was unaware. Finally hunger and the ache of bending over reminded him. He gathered his collection and was disappointed to find that it hadn’t amounted to much more than enough than would cover his little fingernail. “I’ll be damned,” he said aloud. “Tain’t much. How long I been out here?”
When he got back to camp Old Scamp had run off from hunger and chipmunks had broken into his saddlebags and eaten all his stores and a squirrel was gnawing a hole in his leather boots. He admitted that having gold was likely a good situation to be sittin’ in but collecting it this way was a fine waste of time. “Sure is pretty, though,” he allowed and he stared at it while he rolled a cigarette and the sun disappeared behind the White Mountains.
Sort of a true story. I did find a noteworthy fleck of gold within minutes of arriving, and I did get a small case of gold fever. We did not know, coming here, that the Annomoosuc River, just above its union with the Connecticut River, is the goldpanning destination of NH if not all of New England. There was a goldrush here in the 1840s. The source of the gold is upriver a good ways and worked out, but bits of gold are bound dup in the granite and other rocks and get washed downstream. There were several teams of guys digging up the river bed and the banks over the past couple days, running the sediments through various contraptions (nothing mechanized, all hand), slowly accumulating their reward. Disturb the sediments of the river in bright sunshine and the water is aswarm with gold pinpoints. Brenda found a nice piece of green quartz. After many hours poking around in the shallows for a couple days I realize I’m more of a nugget man, myself. You can keep your placer gold.
Today is sunday and the other campers at this family campground have mostly left. We have the pool (a saltwater-system versus chlorine) to ourselves on this blazing hot New Hampshire afternoon. Not much to report–we’ve been lounging.