Money can make you feel good, but gold makes you smile.
I used to sell mining claims in Northern Ontario. I was a cheap, but perhaps not too sleazy mining property huckster. (I actually had some gold on these claims). I am deeply ashamed of my past, and I am now in government approved rehab to alleviate these promotional tendencies. (No, no no, not jail, I am living in Canada.) If they had continued for very long, and gotten much encouragement, people may have started working in gold mines, or worse.
I shudder to recall of how closely that fate was averted.
One thing I noted when I used to take geologists out to the claims and demonstrate to them the presence of gold in shear zones, was that the sight of gold elicited an unusual reaction amongst them all, without exception. In one pit, I had them scrape off some of the rusty sericite schist, and using a pan and a nearby pond, pan the material for themselves. I found I had to, with few exceptions, (one Noranda and one Australian geologist), tell the geologist how to use the pan so that they recovered gold.
The unusual reaction was that once the had completed the labour of panning the material, and they saw that bright gleam in the pan in the corner, they all did on thing. They smiled. It was the smile of excitement, expectation and discovery. It did not matter how negative they had been that day, how they were feeling, their company's philospohy on acquiring claims, or our price, they all smiled. They had found GOLD, by cracky! The world was theirs! (And yes, I did sell the claims occasionally. Not always. At this point the greed kicked in and they started to question me as to how much was there. I usually at this point asked them if they had access to a diamond drill. They didn't always get it.)
There is nothing like it. The feeling is something like the first time at the controls an airplane that you realize you are really flying.
You can find a 100 dollar bill on the street, It won't do the same thing.
EC<:-} |
