Today I awoke to fog and cold; weather changes quickly in a northern climate.  A week earlier, when I visited the rapids, it had been a picture-perfect fall day. It was the kind of weather people in these parts call Indian Summer. I had been searching for a place to pan for gold and found a stretch of rapids on Google Earth that looked promising. The rapids looked to be pretty remote; the closest access point an old logging road coming within a mile or so of the stretch.

On my first visit, breaking a trail through the woods from the road was relatively easy. The underbrush was not too thick, and the hardwoods and pines spaced far enough apart for easy passage. I carried a small backpack with some trail food and water with my pans lashed to the outside of the pack. I had pulled my car into the tall grass on the side of the logging road and looking around, tried to find a marker that could help me relocate it when I returned. Not seeing anything useful, I locked the car and made my way into the woods.

After ten minutes of walking, I could hear the sound of rushing water in the distance, and upon reaching the river’s edge, I found my location to be near the end of the stretch of rapids I had seen on the map. Here, the water was smooth and flowed quietly down a gentler plain. The river bed was shallow, and the clear water revealed a bottom of large flat rocks with sand and river rock patches in between. The water coming down the rapids made a pleasant sound, and its pace seemed leisurely as it flowed between and over boulders strewn along the several hundred yard stretch of falling elevation.

Untieing my pans, I put on my water shoes and made my way toward the middle of the river bed. The water was 12 to 18 inches in depth with some deeper pools further downstream. As with most of my panning experiences, I spent most of the day sifting through sand pebbles, and rock scooped from the river’s bottom with no trace of the elusive gold I was after. The beauty of the day, the seclusion of the site, and the sound of the water flowing along the rapids still made the outing worthwhile.

When the sun began to sink below the trees, it put the river bed into shadows and was a sign that I needed to start packing up before it got too dark. I had just filled my pan with the raw materials of river rock and sand from the area I had been working for the last hour. As I  swirled the content of the pan, I partially submerged it into the current so that it could carry off the lighter particles of sand and smaller lighter pebbles. When I lifted the pan out of the water and began to swirl the remaining contents, I saw a flash of gold from within a clump of larger pebbles. I carefully lowered the pan back into the current, and another cloud of sand and small pebbles floated away downstream.

This time as I raised the pan out of the water, the gold I had seen had separated from the other pebbles and was sitting on the bottom of the pan. It was about the length of a dime and about half of its width with deep black creases, which only served to enhance the brilliance of the gold of the rest of its surface. Picking up the piece, I noticed it was heavy for its size, and could scarcely believe I was holding the real thing. I had seen a lot of gold nuggets in pictures, and what I was looking at matched those pictures exactly.

The sun sinking lower, now cast a dark shadow over the entire river bed, and the water looked less inviting than when I had first arrived. I made my way to the shore and retrieved my pack, and started back in the direction of the road through woods. Hopefully, I would come out somewhere in the vicinity of my car. I did not want to be navigating the woods in darkness.

From everything I read, there was a good chance more gold could be in the area where I found the first nugget. Today was my first opportunity to make a return trip to the river since finding the nugget. The weather forecast called for more of the cold rain that had been falling intermittently for two days. A dismal forecast was not enough of a deterrent to dissuade me from the possibility of finding more gold, though. I packed additional clothes because of the cold, along with a waterproof poncho that would allow me to work in the rain.

Reaching the location on the dirt road where I had parked before, I carefully checked my supplies before starting my trek through the woods. This time, as I made my way into the woods, I noticed I could hear the rapids after only a few moments of walking. Everything looked different today; the grey clouds cast a depressing pale on a scene that had been sunny and cheerful on my first visit. The roar of rushing water was louder and more powerful than I had remembered, and as I got nearer to the edge of the river, I was second-guessing whether I was even in the right place.

The stretch of rapids I saw now from between the trees, did not have any resemblance to the place I had visited the previous week. It had not occurred to me that the rain we received locally was also falling across the state, and causing creeks and rivers to swell. Standing at the edge of the woods, I did not dare go any closer. The water careening over the rapids had an urgency to its motion as if reaching the next fall was paramount for its survival. The surface of the water between each fall is frothy and agitated as if being boiled, and then turning smooth when moving into next fall; the waters surface reflecting the dark rocks underneath. Silver ribbons of water reflecting the grey sky had the look of glass and intertwined with the darker water giving the flow depth and dimension.

The roar of the water moving through the rapids was powerful like standing near a railroad crossing as a freight train passes at full speed.  I moved in the direction of where the rapids ended, staying inside the tree line to guard against slipping into the torrent. The river flowing out from the rapids had doubled its width and was threatening to overflow its banks. The area I had been standing in when I found the gold was now several feet deep with swiftly moving water rushing downstream.

Finding a fallen tree along the embankment, I sat and watched the seemingly endless supply of water tumbling down into the river bed and lamenting the fact that searching for more gold was not going to be a possibility today.