Going for the gold

Mat-Su Valley from Hatcher's Pass

"Have you gazed on naked grandeur

where there's nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven,

which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley

with the green stream streaking through it,

Searthed the Vastness for a something you have lost"

Have you strung your soul to silence?

Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost...."

"The call of the Wild", Robert Service

We did!

Independence Mine tracks

The next generation of gold miners at Independance Mine Hatcher's Pass

I remember summers in Nova Scotia, listening to relatives talking about the lure of the gold. Relatives on both sides worked in gold mines and seemed to be always on the look out for nuggets in streams and slag piles. So it is only right (or wrong) to raise up the next generation searching for the gold. As Robert Service wrote in " The Spell of the Yukon"

"I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy- I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it-

Came out with a fortune last fall, -

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn't all...."

                                                                    

and panning for gold

at Cooper's Landing,  Kenai peninsula AK

And "Olympic practise" at Wasilla Ice rink

Family time is precious.

But "Lord you are more precious than silver, Lord you are more costly than gold... and nothing I desire compares with you." music and words by Lynn DeShazo