Panning for Gold

I went to a party last night to celebrate an engagement, and wound up engaged myself. The host brought out a small vile of water with a few flakes of gold in it. He said he'd bought a couple of pans and just went in to the river up in Idaho City. He  asked a few folks along the stream how to do it, and in about an hour and a half he had about 30 dollars worth. Not a bad wage.

I have lived here for thirteen years and known for some time that mining was Idaho's first industry. I wanted to know a little more about my prospects, so I started looking in to it. I first visited the Idaho Mining Association's website to get some historical perspective, and here is what I found out.

In the year eighteen hundred and sixty, A small group of prospectors set out to discover Gold. And they did. A man named Wilbur Basset entered the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and searched in vain for a month. Old Wilbur found it in a place called Canal Gulch, which is east of Lewiston and south of what is now the Dworshak Reservoir. Basset's find sparked a mass migration, and helped make the great state of Idaho what it is today. People came from from points west, like San Francisco, Sacramento and Vancouver to try to get in on the bounty, making Idaho one of only two territories to be settled from west to east. Montana is the other one (parts of Wyoming, too). Six months after Basset's strike, there were over 1600 claims filed. Hundreds of people a day sluiced into Pierce City (named after E.D. Pierce, the leader of Basset's party) via the Columbia and Snake Rivers to try their hands at finding the color.

In 1862 gold was found in the Florence Basin and soon they were pulling over $600,000 (today''s dollars) worth of gold a day from the Salmon River Country. Over 10,000 people flooded the area that summer. A year later, in 1863, Idaho became a territory of the United States and Idaho City, North and East of Boise, had a population to rival Portland of over 6,200. At the time Lewiston had become the capital because of all the supporting businesses that sprang up under tents. By that time many of the prospectors had picked all the low hanging fruit and latecomers spread out in search of more. Some found silver ledges along Jordan Creek, and other creeks near what is now Silver City in the Owyhee Mountains. Today it's just a historical tourist attraction.

That same year Boise City was founded, and became the territorial capital two years later. Almost 20 years later new machinery and the steam engine were being used to crush rock in stamp mills, and air powered drills replaced the human powered hammer and chisel for blasting. In 1882 men made charcoal, 180,000 bushels worth, to smelt the ore they were pulling from the hills. And it wasn't just gold either. Lead and silver were abundant as well. 

In 1885  Noah Kellog found silver in the Coeur d'Alene river, which today is the largest producer of the shiny metal in the world. Just to give you an idea of how much metal has been pulled out of the ground - in 1985 the mines in that district produced their one billionth ounce of silver. That's ten million ounces a year of silver! There might be a few dollars in that. And that's just one district. They say in Idaho city that the strike there was bigger than the California find in 1849. Looking at all the left overs from the dredges along the highway up there - I believe it. The pile of gravel and river rock along Highway 21 are really a small sample of what you can find if you take some of the Forest Service's dirt roads into the hills.

This is only a brief glimpse of what happened here in the late 19th century. More than I care to write about. But, if you want to know more, about it its pretty easy to do these days. I'm hoping to go up the Boise River and try it myself. My friends from the party last night have got the gold fever, so we'll have to see what pans out.

Coup d'oeil: not only hard to say but hard to explain.

 I learned a new word today. My desktop dictionary defines Coup d'oeil as; a glance that takes a comprehensive view. It comes from eighteenth century French and literally means, "stroke of eye". Typically, this word is applied to the great military minds because they could look at a battlefield and know instinctively how best to proceed in battle. It is used in a book that was recommended by a couple of people. The book is titled, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (2005). If you have the chance to read this book, or listen to it, as I have, you will be amazed by the undeniable fact that human beings rely less on their conscience minds than they think. Gladwell sites undeniable evidence that underneath all the thoughts we hear in our own heads, our decisions and behaviors are guided by this one little part of our brains that we don't even know is there. It works all by itself, and is there for a very good reason. It seems, according to Gladwell's book, and the research of many others, we actually have two brains. One is the one we hear in our own heads. The other does something truly amazing. I takes the millions of bits of information that surround and bombard us on a constant basis and filters them. It acts a buffer between what we are focused on and all that seemingly unimportant data. This is why we are capable of split decisions regarding our likes, and dislikes, courses of action, solving problems, creating art, and the list goes on. What it really interesting about this is we don't even know it  is happening. 

Discovering this really made me think of some instances in my life where this part of my brain took over. looking back at those events, I now realize that I have no idea how I knew to do what I did. 

It takes me back to a summer job in upstate New York. I was working as an electrician's helper for the State University in New Paltz. I was helping one of the staff electricians expand the electrical service in one of the large dining facilities.  For most of that summer I found myself inside the plaster and lath ceiling plenum, among roof trusses and 2" channel steel that was used to support the lath and plaster. It was a dark and dustyplace laced with wires and HVAC duct. If you were to stand on the floor of the dining room and look up you would see that the ceiling was not flat, but had large recessed boxes in it that held Musak speakers, and lighting. On the inside of the plenum (above the plaster and metal lath) the vertical sides of these indented boxes were supported by the black steel, basically forming a cage to which the metal lath was attached and then plastered.  The steel on the vertical side ran up past the horozontal surface that supported the speaker or lighting; like punji sticks, only these weren't sharp or smeared with poison. 

One day another worked decided he was going to give us a hand. He entered the ceiling plenum through the small access panel that was only reachable by a fixed ladder in the electrical room. In order to get to the place where the work was being done we had to walk along the top of a duct and climb down to the plaster and lath ceiling, which was now our floor.The new guy went first, flashlight in hand, and set out across the duct. His flashhlight went dead, he steped on a cable and rolled off, and impaled himself on the black steel.

There I was, 16 years old, all of 130 pounds, looking in to this black square, listening to a 185 pound, fully grown man scream. I remember exactly what I did. I grabbed my flashlight clicked it on and went through the small door. I walked along the duct, careful to avoid the 1" thick cable. I shined my flashlight down on him. He was stuck on the steel, hanging there; helpless. I jumped down on to the plaster, knocking some loose from the lath. It showered the floor below. I grabbed the large man's impaled arm. It felt like a hot, wet, raw, prime rib. He was soaked in blood. I lifted him off the steel. He screamed at the pain. The journey man, Greg, heard the screams and came through the hole with his flashlight as I lifted the man back up on to the duct. Greg pulled off his shirt and tied it around the man's gnarled bicep and we got him out of there. Greg radioed the dispatcher and called for an ambulance. 

The man wound up with over 90 stitches; most under the skin. The steel had missed the artery in his upper-arm by less than a quarter of an inch. If I had pulled him off the steel at a bad angle and hit that artery, he would have bled out in a matter of seconds. 

I can remember every detail of that incident; as if it had happened an hour ago. What I can't tell you is how I made the decision to do what I did. I just knew what had to be done, and did it. After reading Gladwell's book Blink, I finally understand that it was my other brain that did the thinking for me...  in the stroke of an eye. 

Please share your insights on this phenomenon. 

Today's Lesson - History

We all know the old saw, "Know your history, or be doomed to repeat it." Wise advice. I mean if you don't know what mistakes were made in the past how is it possible to keep from making them in the future, or even today for that matter.  This is  the greatest of all human failings. Forgetting the time you applied the front brakes on your bike while making a turn has serious consequences the next time you need to slow down going around the corner; just as serious, if not more so than the first time you did it. Especially if you're wearing shorts and riding on gravel.

Definitely there are some things to learn from the mistakes of others. History is littered with examples.  There are so many it boggles the mind. The ones that really stand out makes me wonder, "what were they thinking?".  I'm sure a few names come to mind when you think of all the despicable and horrible things that have been done in the name of some greater purpose. And yes America has had her share of transgressions, but I would rather focus on the simple fact that learning the "why's" of what has happened in the past are just as important as learning what actually happened. 

For instance, why did they kill all those, " _________"? Was it done for the greater good? Was it done because of racism, lack of resources, national pride, national guilt, differing religious beliefs, or some combination? I know a certain retired philosophy professor that says, "throughout history man has had three major addictions." He calls them, "The three B's: Booze, Bombs, and Broads." Sounds kind of crass, but if you put this premise in the context of some historical event, it does carry some water. I think I would add a "P" to that list, which stands for power. After all, once a leader has all three of the "B's" what's left but the "P". 

So what is it about having power that turns men and masses in to monster's? Some would say that it's insanity, some would say that its a thirst for more power. I would say it's a little of both. It speaks to the self worth of the individual. Just take a look at any of the real monsters that became leaders in the 20th century. Whatever name comes to mind, that person's self worth had to have been pretty low to want to control all the people around them. Either that, or they had such an over-inflated ego they thought they could do no wrong. Stalin (not even his real name), was the son of a drunken shoe maker who beat him, and abandoned his family. He went to school to become a priest, but thought what he was learning was a pack of lies. Hitler never did anything with his life, other than some fairly decent military service in WWI (another power grab) until the National Socialist Party (later the Nazi Party) found out he had the gift of oratory.  Get either of these two together with a slick marketing campaign, and a disgruntled people and it is a clear recipe for disaster. Ask yourself, if you see any similarities to today.

So here's what I learned today. Pay attention to the past. It will give you a frame of reference to make informed decisions. I actually learned this lesson long ago, but I thought repeating the past in this instance wouldn't have a bunch of horrible consequences. Any thoughts?