“Everybody has their own reason why they are into it. Some people, you know, you find what you got and you try at once to find a little bit of gold. This is kind of like gambling, you know, it’s the lure of winning, of finding the jackpot(彩票头奖).”

 

Still, just like back in the time of the old prospectors, very few ever find that big jackpot.

 

“It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of skill and dedication, and a lot of good business sense to be a miner. To strike a rich thing is definitely very much a misnomer(误称). Good mining is nothing more than a business, and if done properly, you can make money out of it. But the reality is almost all prospectors and miners go broke.”

 

Good business sense is why Herschbach isn’t broke. Besides owning 355 claims, he and his business partner also jumped on an opportunity to sell mining gear(用具) back when the price of gold was still regulated by the federal government. Now with gold at its current price of 950 dollars per ounce, a new generation of prospectors are getting in the game. And to do that, they need equipment whereas large-scale commercial mining involved a huge investment and machines that drill down to the source of gold. Placer mining requires only water and some simple tools.

 

“It’s where you are using an gold pan or the sluice（斜槽,水闸） box of the dredges(挖泥机), and you are working around creeks to go and find nuggets(金块).”

 

That’s what Dennis Jameson, a department of defense employee and a 20-year recreational miner was doing when I caught up with him submerged in the cold Alaskan water at Crow Creek Mine.

 

“How did you get into it?”

 

“Uh, a guy in the army in El Paso brought in a man-aged jar full of gold nuggets when I was stationed down there, and I saw that and I said I’ve got to go to Alaska, got chance to go to Alaska, and never left.”

 

With a classic case of gold fever, Jameson’s struck it rich enough to pay for the equipment he uses-- in this instance, a two-engine six-inch dredge.

 

“What it does is the gold dredge has these suction(吸附) holes at the other end, it’s like a giant underwater vacuum cleaner, and you start sucking up all the sand and the rock, the big rock you have to roll out of the way. And anything that will go through the holes goes through the sluice box. And that’s hopefully where you will find the gold.”

 

He turns off the machine and lets the water runs for a bit and then,

 

“Ah, there is definitely some gold right there.”

 

Despite that, Jameson’s not quitting his day job any time soon.

 

“This spot here hasn’t been so good, but we are still doing maybe a hundred to two hundred dollars a day. A lot of people make good money doing this for a living you know, but I don’t think I can make enough to survive on.”

 

Instead he does it for the same reasons anyone else has a hobby.

 

“It’s a stress reliever, you get under the water, and you start seeing gold and before you know it, 4 or 5 hours has gone by, and you just, lots of relaxation.”

 

Still if this gold nugget around Herschbach's neck is any indication, it’s a hobby that can be very lucrative and definitely addictive.

 

At Crow Creek Mine from Discovery News, I am Jorge Ribas