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7/8/2006 12:00 AM 

Greetings from the Cripple River Gold Camp! The sun is shining her glorious golden rays all over camp!!! The tundra and hills are glowing with light, the snow white birds in the turquoise sky glisten and sparkle with light. Man and beast are out and about dancing in the warm sunlight. Our air is so pure and clean with just a tiny tinge of healthy sea salt; it could be bottled and sold in health stores in the lower forty-eight. (It’s a good thing our politicians haven’t found a way to tax perfect days and healthy air, at least not yet anyway---or days like today would cost a small fortune!) The Bering Sea is smooth, it is a glorious day to be alive and in Alaska, perfect for beach mining! Normally the gold on the beach is fine as flour, however this year there is also quite a bit of coarse gold and more “beach nuggets or small pickers” being found than in past.

Yesterday, I took a short walk to the beach where the Cripple River meets the Bering Sea (About four minutes from the chow hall), to check out the fishing situation. I observed six different fishermen/women practicing their craft. Almost every cast was followed up by a fish striking the lures, and the anglers were landing about three fish for every four to five casts! Most of the fish were in the four to five pound weight class and were ‘pinks’ or Pink Salmon, with Dolly Varden making a showing. Several Chum were also caught, which is unusual. Silver or gold lures were very busy, and lures resembling tiny fish were quite popular with the finny-folk. Most fishermen were releasing their catch, but a few made it up to camp, as invited dinner guests.

Katie Rucker from Murrieta California is a tall, pretty 14 ½ year old dark blonde young lady, who also happens to be a crackerjack fisherwoman. She enjoys fishing, beachcombing, and traveling around. Her favorite lure for our salmon is the silver colored Blue Fox. She was catching a fish for almost every cast, mostly Pink Salmon about 3-3½ pounds. Katie said she really likes the fact that there are ‘no mean spirited people in camp, and almost everyone is optimistic’. She admitted she does miss flush toilets, but she knows people in the United States are lucky to enjoy many advantages that inhabitants of poorer countries do without. Miss Rucker shared, “The countryside here is beautiful even when it rains, and is even more beautiful when the sun is out. It will feel strange to go back home where it gets dark. I used to dream about places that were sunny all the time. Now I am here and it’s like my dream has come true.” She is staying for three weeks, and it is rare to find so much genuine caring and courtesy in someone so darn young and cute. I predict that Miss Rucker will continue to be a beautiful woman both inside and out when she grows up, and she has a golden future ahead of her as she can do anything she sets her mind to. Maybe she or another favorite person of mine, Miss Georgia Massie, also a beautiful young woman of rare kindness and quality will be President of The United States one day.

It is amazing just how many really nice young people we see here are at Cripple River. It is comforting to know that future generations of good caring Americans are alive and well. With our prospecting rights, and individual personal rights being under constant attack we need a strong younger generation to keep our freedoms alive. Prospecting is a great way to enjoy quality family time, and raise a healthy family with good values. And the GOLD you find along the way is nice too!

There have been numerous animal sightings, moose, reindeer or caribou, fox, Arctic Ground Squirrels, voles, Musk Ox and way out of camp a Brown Bear (that is what many Alaskans call a Grizzly Bear), a whale, seal, walrus, and way too many different species of birds to even mention. Miss Georgia Massie reports that with trees being almost non-existent in this area of Alaska due to the permafrost, the tundra just outside camp, (actually about a hundred yards from the showers) is covered with bird nests full of unfledged baby birds much too young to fly yet. Miss Massie requests that miners and other people be careful not to step on these little birds. Please watch where your feet are going, and don’t harm Mother Nature’s newest additions to her insect removal crew. They will eat lots of pesky bugs when they grow up, including those pesky voracious mosquitoes. Thanks for the heads up Georgia!

Interesting people from all over the world prospect at Cripple River, and each week I try to interview a few for this Chronicle. This week I spoke to Sharon Foster. She and her loving husband Doug are here from Kansas City, Mo. Doug has twenty years prospecting experience and Sharon relates, “I have only been prospecting for twelve years, I kind of married into it, and I enjoy prospecting very much.” They are members of local G.P.A.A. chapter The Show Me Gold Prospectors that was formed four years ago. Members of this group have wanted to come to Cripple River for several years, and this year four people did! Sharon and Doug Foster and their friends Don Cashan and Steve Wojack have been prospecting for between ten and twenty years, so this is a more experienced group of gold hunters. They are staying for two weeks on this trip. Sharon loves the camp, and especially likes the look of the old wooden buildings and the many different ways they have been decorated with local “color”. From shells, rocks with holes in them, fishing floats, old mining paraphernalia, or whatever, many hooch’s reflect the interest or personality of their occupants. Would you believe, Sharon, that some men (possibly those that lack the exterior decorating genes many discerning women have) consider these artifacts of old mining camps just plain old JUNK!

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Location: Blogs Cripple River Chronicle 2006