NUGGETS AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE
By R. V. Larson
What is going on with the first nugget you find? And why, or how, could it be that you found it in your first pan?
I know there are a lot of stories out there of remarkable finds that were made in someone's first pan. I have thought that The Journal could run an ongoing segment where readers could submit their experiences with the phenomenon of their first pan. A nugget in the first pan does happen and the laws of probability will not allow it to be coincidence. So where can we go from here? Does Mother Nature have a hand in this? A reward, so to speak, for your caring enough to be out there prospecting?
We may never know the reasons why, but let me tell you of my experiences with this mystery nugget thing, and then perhaps some of you out there will feel compelled to tell your stories as well.
I was a new comer to the Similkameen River, but not new to panning for gold. I found a new partner while in the real estate business. He was looking for a home with room to park his gold dredge. He and his wife were serious prospectors. They told me about the best dredging river in our state, the Similkameen. It was my first trip with them that my first pan nugget came to pass.
With a shovel in one hand and a gold pan in the other I surveyed the lay of the land and river. A short way up the bank there was a very old tree stump. I reasoned that at flood time that stump could have provided a resting place for some gold. I dug down between the old rotten roots of the stump, filled my gold pan, found a suitable rock beside the river, and panned it down. The result was a nugget about the size of a pea. Where did you get that gravel my friends wife asked? I pointed out the stump and she went to work. By the end of the day she had almost dug that old stump out of the ground, but no more gold. To this day, seventeen years later, the Similkameen has been where I prospect, but I have not found a larger nugget.
Who could have dreamed that this first pan nugget thing would be replicated a few years later, a short ways downriver?
After years of effort, sinking a shaft to seventy nine feet a short ways from the river, my partner and his wife took leave of the project. Now what was I to do? I wasn't ready to retire from the project I knew would someday payoff, so I had to find new partners. One of the first to step up was my cousin Stan. We soon found ourselves camped in a beautiful spot beside The Similkameen. Stan and his wife in their beautiful motor home and my wife and I in our 63 model travel trailer. Cousin Stan was anxious to try his hand at panning. We went to the river for his first lesson. "Where should I dig?" he asked. I pointed out a spot downstream from a protrusion of bed rock.
He dug a scoop of gravel and started to pan.
A first panning attempt can be an interesting thing to watch. It makes you want to say "no - no - no", then take the pan and say, "do it like this." He had a strong side to side motion that caused material to escape first over one side of the pan and then the other. I was about to show this novice how it's done when he said "I think I'm finding something." I looked at the pan at just the right time to see a bright gold object appear for an instant before the sloshing motion took it back beneath the gravel. After what seemed like forever he reached the point where he picked up the nugget. It was a beauty. Larger than any I had ever found, and in his first pan. He immediately accused me of having planting the nugget as a trick or something. I still remember exactly what my words were in response to his allegation:
"Stan, if that were my nugget, there ain't no way it would end up in your gold pan!"
What is it, this nugget in the first pan thing? Is it Mother Nature's way of thanking you for being out there, in hopes it will keep you coming back? There has to be something going on here that we don't yet understand. It has taken beginners luck to a whole new level.