How I Finally Learned The True Value Of Striking It Rich At Age 50

Back and forth, north and south, I reckon I had travelled more than 2,000 miles in two months, and, yes, I had found gold. The trouble was, I found only a gram here, a gram there, and that wasn't nearly enough.
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I couldn't sleep the night after I asked Gene Meyers to go prospecting for gold with me. It wasn't the heat inside my tent or the rasp of a million cicadas that kept me awake. No, it was my conscience, a voice cooler than the evening and quieter than the insects.

Gene, you see, was a miner extraordinaire, a man who had once found nine ounces in a single day (and, trust me, you won't find many people who can say that). I had been introduced to him and his wife, Cathy, near Grass Valley, California, earlier in the day and we had hit it off. She was bright and chatty underneath a cream-colored floppy hat; he was quiet and precise in his speech, no less than you might have expected from a retired math teacher.

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The problem was this -- Gene, a slim and otherwise fit 64-year old, was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and I had invited him to try to find the spot on the South Fork of the Feather River in the northern reaches of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where, some 30 years earlier, he had found those nine ounces.

Why make such a (cruel, I was thinking) request of a man whose memory was slipping away? My guess is because I had gold fever. I can say that now from a distance of two years, but I didn't know it then. I had it so bad I had convinced myself that it was in no way out of the ordinary for a 50-year-old man like me to leave behind his fiancé, put his regular work on hold and travel 5,000 miles from his home in London.

My malady had begun to take a hold of me way back in 2008, when the world economy fell off a cliff and gold surged through the $1,000-an-ounce barrier. I was sent by a British magazine to check out the mini-Californian gold rush that attended this financial landmark, and I think I must have become infected in the icy waters of the Stanislaus River the first time I saw "color" in the bottom of a pan.

I returned to England thinking that the miners I met were crazy. They had given up jobs (those that had them), left their loved ones and headed for California in the hope of striking it rich. And most of them were finding almost nothing at all.

Yet in the maelstrom of London, under its grey skies and lazy rains, I felt envious of these people. They woke every morning to clear mountain air, drank from sweet, icy springs and camped out under the stars in the knowledge that today could be their day, the day they struck it rich.

And they were right. As recently as last July a prospector found a five pound gold nugget in Butte County, California, that sold at auction for $400,000. His life had changed in the blink of an eye.

Beyond 2008, the price of gold kept rising and in 2011 analysts predicted it would smash through the $2,000 barrier some time during 2012. That's 6,000 years since the Pharaohs began mining gold for it to reach $1,000 an ounce and then just three more for it to double in value. This was the point at which my fever, dormant for so long, began to bloom and with it came the idea that when gold breached the $2,000 barrier, I would travel to California and look for it.

So blinded was I by the illness, that even though the price fell short of $2,000 -- peaking at $1,920 an ounce -- I packed a bag in July 2013 and went anyway.

So there I was, in my sleeping bag examining my motives for promising to take Gene out into the wilderness. Was it for him, or was it for me? As sleep finally came to me, I realized that I couldn't be sure; gold's wicked magnetism had set my moral compass spinning and its true north was gone.

Already I had prospected way up near the Oregon border on the Klamath River in the Siskiyou Wilderness, a verdant and pristine vastness little spoiled by roads or people. Near the wonderfully named town of Happy Camp (yes, it was Christened with a bottle of whiskey by miners who struck it rich there in 1851) I found my first gold -- just one flake -- and it set my pulse racing.

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After this I became a wandering Englishman, a little lost, perhaps, heading south to the Sierra Nevada and panning in the Downie, Yuba, Feather, American, Bear, Merced and Cosumnes rivers and a host of creeks as far down as Mariposa.

Highway 49 -- the road that weaves and pitches 300 miles through the mining towns that were born during the 1849 Gold Rush -- became my friend, taking me from Sierra City and Downieville in the north, through Nevada City, Grass Valley, Auburn, Coloma, Placerville, Angels Camp and on to Sonora.

These are towns established in haste yet nurtured steadily with love and care. Architecturally, many of them are treasures. When I hear ignorant Europeans say that America "has no history" I want to bring them here and watch their jaws drop.

Back and forth, north and south, I reckon I had travelled more than 2,000 miles in two months, and, yes, I had found gold. The trouble was, I found only a gram here, a gram there, and that wasn't nearly enough.

Surely, with Gene, I would find much more...?

I picked him up after dawn at his home in Chicago Park, near Grass Valley, and we drove 90 minutes north towards Forbestown, a tiny community east of Oroville. Gene was quiet and sometimes a little confused, but he confessed to being excited -- he didn't get out much into the wilderness any more -- while privately I nursed my guilt.

He told me his condition allowed him to recall generalities but not specifics. "I can't describe what it's like," he told me during one of many lulls in conversation. "It's as if you know there's something there and you're trying to take a hold of it but it stays just out of reach."

As we neared the spot where he thought he had found his gold, he steered me up this track and down that before waves of perplexity and frustration washed over him. "Better turn round," he would say over and again.

My sense of guilt reaching a peak, I was about to suggest that we forget this expedition and head somewhere -- anywhere -- else, when suddenly Gene's face lit up. "There!" he shouted. "Turn there!"

We drove for some time along an isolated track before parking under huge oak trees and ponderosa pines, and then we hiked down and down and down, two hours towards the South Fork of the Feather River a mile below us. There was a steep gradient and no path to the water, yet each hard-earned yard seemed to breathe new life into Gene.

Finally, a couple of hundred yards above one of the most beautiful, crystalline stretches of river I had seen anywhere in the world, he stopped and pointed.

"There it is," he said, triumphantly. "That's where I found my nine ounces."

And there wasn't a hint of doubt in his voice.

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"I was just floating above the river bed, fanning material out of the way with my hand when I saw something and thought, 'What the heck's that?' I picked it up and it was a two-and-a-half-ounce nugget. I thought, 'Wow! Things like this just don't happen.' Then I found a three-ounce nugget and then one weighing one-and-a-half ounces.

"There were other nuggets too, and I collected them and finished with nine ounces of gold in twenty-four hours. It was the most productive day of my life."

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I had brought a small pick, trowel and pan in the hope of prospecting under Gene's supervision, but I found myself unable to fetch them from my backpack as the miner hopped from rock to rock, his face beaming with joy, something vital returning to him minute by minute.

"See that boulder?" he yelled, pointing beyond elephantine ears of Indian rhubarb and clouds of wild sage. "I moved that to get at some gold. Rigged up a grip hoist and cables to those trees and hauled it out of the way. Helluva job. Took me two days. And there! I pulled some nuggets from there but I had to move that fallen tree trunk out of the way first."

The day wore on with Gene showing me his old campsite and his favorite spot for fishing. And not once did I pull out my pan. My compass had stopped spinning and I understood for the first time in months just how worthless gold was when compared with the truly important things in life.

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We climbed out of the canyon before dusk and as we neared Grass Valley, Gene grew quiet again. We shared dinner with Cathy and I talked endlessly about our day. She wanted to hear it all; about how vitality had returned to her husband and how we had mined his memories -- infinitesimally lighter than gold but much more precious. And all the while Gene sat in dignified silence.

I left California a few days later, after calling my fiancé, Suzanne, and saying: "I love you. I'm an idiot and I'm coming home."

I still keep in touch with Gene and Cathy, though she tells me he hasn't been into the wilderness for quite some time and he misses it.

Suzanne and I were married last October and our honeymoon included a road trip on the 49 from Mariposa to Sierra City. She loved it, and all the more because I never felt tempted to pick up a shovel and dig for gold, not even once.

Honestly.

Steve Boggan has been an investigative journalist for more than 30 years. He is the author of GOLD FEVER: One Man's Adventures on the Trail of the Gold Rush (Oneworld Publications, available now.)
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