Outdoor Recreation

Outdoor Recreation By Vicky Hay

A red dragonfly coasted over the trickle of water that passes as a stream. Maybe it wondered what odd procedure was taking place under its bulbous eyes: swishswish-swish, dip, swish-swish, swirl. But no. I paused, elbows propped on slightly bent knees in the pose recommended as most restful for my work, and watched the insect circle as it looked for food. It probably didn't even register the large object crouched by the water engaged in her own hunt.

GOLD'S THERE TO BE FOUND IF YOU'LL JUST PAN FOR IT

Black sand! I'd found a deposit of telltale magnetite, a dark iron-bearing mineral, on Turkey Creek in the Bradshaw Mountains, downstream from the site of a played-out gold mine. And, as all prospectors know, where there's black sand there's likely gold.

I was using a technique I'd learned on a tributary of the Yukon River in Canada. Put a shovelful of muck into the pan. Dip it into the water. Swish it around. Pull out the big debris with your fingers. Dip and swish till you have washed most of the brown dirt away. Wash till what's left is mostly black sand. Then you fan that out with a swirling motion and look for color.

Gold has a dull yellow patina, and it moves differently from the other grains in your water: it doesn't take to being shoved around.

Sunlight lay warm on the back of my neck. A breeze rattled a nearby cottonwood, lifting silver-bottomed leaves in a cascade like a summer aspen's. So far, I had not struck it rich.

But I knew there was gold in that creek. Since the 1850s, more than 14 million ounces have been extracted from our state's rock and sand, a phenomenal quantity where water, key to mining gold, is almost as rare as the coveted mineral. If an average of some 4,200 ounces of gold per year that have been recovered during the past 140 years seems scant, consider their value at today's rate, something more than $338 an ounce.

Frank Lynn, who owns A&B Prospecting in Mesa, knows there are a lot of gold panners in these hills, although I didn't run across a soul the day I went out to try my luck. Whole clubs of them, he says: the Lost Dutchman Mining Association, whose members own a ghost town. The New West Club. The Roadrunner Prospecting Club.

"Gold is there to be found," says Frank. "I go out every chance I get." Just now, he reports, a favorite among prospectors is Rich Hill, in the Weaver Mountains north of Wickenburg.

Swish-swish, dip, swish-swish, swirl. Lots of black sand. Nary a trace of yellow. I walked downstream, looking for another alluvial deposit. A few hundred yards on, a granite rock had come to rest in the creek bed. Good place for black sand and gold to fall out of moving water.

Shovel, dip, swish, swirl. This business of hunkering down in the stream was pretty tiresome. My back began to ache and the muscles in my calves and thighs complained.

Buzzing, a grasshopper added its urgent mating call to the melody of the desert. A cactus wren played counterpoint.

A trill: something shot past my ear. I looked up and came eyeto-eye with an Anna's hummingbird, scarlet head and throat iridescent in the afternoon light. It hovered 18 inches from my face and stared, as entranced as I.

By now, the sun was low in the sky. It was time to leave. As I climbed out of the streambed, row on row of paper-cutout hills marched into the shadowed distance. No, I hadn't hit pay dirt. But the real riches were all around me. Had been all day. Arizona gold.