Fog shrouds the beach at dawn. Low tide exposes pools of sea stars and mussels. I walk down a steeply angled face of sand (face is actually a scientific term describing a section of the beach) with the ocean to my left.<\/p>\n
I traverse the fog with cheap coffee. My mind is both loose and taut. A few gulls feast on crab. I brought along a banana.<\/p>\n
In the distance, I see a man on his knees digging in the wet sand with some kind of long-handled bucket contraption. He’s certainly not clamming in that position. What…?<\/p>\n
It hits me\u2014gold mining. I move to investigate because I am fascinated by all things gold mining on the beach. The non-industrial kind that is.<\/p>\n
The sun begins to rise over the Coast Range, shooting beams of light into the fog. The man adjusts his position and turns away from me. I see half his ass lit up by a beam. Gold miner’s crack at dawn. I laugh a little.<\/p>\n
I pass within 20 yards of the man but he never stops mining. He’s almost frenetic in his process. I keep moving across the face. I walk for a couple of miles, shore up a couple forts, and hunt for beaverwood.<\/p>\n
Time to turn around. I walk toward the gold miner. He’s still at it, but standing upright, now in the surf up to his shins. His pants are pulled up fine.<\/p>\n
I sit down on a log and sip my coffee and watch the man work.<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n Fog shrouds the beach at dawn. Low tide exposes pools of sea stars and mussels. I walk down a steeply angled face of sand (face is actually a scientific term describing a section of the beach) with the ocean to my left. I traverse the fog with cheap coffee. My mind is both loose and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[36,858,6,96,48,13,100],"class_list":["post-4199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-beaches","tag-gold-mining","tag-matt-love","tag-ocean","tag-oregon-beaches","tag-oregon-coast","tag-secret-oregon-coast","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4201,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199\/revisions\/4201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}