Mr. Brierley, first and foremost, thank you for your kind words. It actually came as a shock to not get flamed for a change.
Second, you bring up an excellent point regarding consistency which I have also pondered many times. The geologic record of this area is very complex but very simple at the same time. The simple part is that it is quite literally a large valley which was filled over millions of years by sediment from the underground river which runs through the middle of the property AND sediment runoff from the long since eroded mountains surrounding what used to be a valley. Only one mountain, Eagle Mountain, remains.
Now for the complex part. If indeed the nature of the deposit is a function of water flow, wind erosion, soil erosion, relative densities of material and gravity, all working together with all the variations in rain and water from between seasons, years, decades and centuries AND if the resulting deposit is a function of millions of years of layers of deposited sediment from the river and from the mountains, how could it be possible that all layers and therefor all years, decades, centuries created completely uniform concentration of deposit? Not likely. And that is what is UNLIKE the hard rock mines where a vein is discovered of pure metal mixed in with surrounding material.
I think your point has a tremendous amount of merit. I also agree that when all is said and done, and Naxos can start to show overall averages of recovery, there will be numbers from good to great to WOW, but it is highly probable that some layers, which means some years, there was a higher concentration of metal in the runoff and sediment deposit than others.
Thanks for your comments.
Tom F.
And by the way, 1:54 AM? I hope that was from the west coast. |
