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| Approaching Skagway, Alaska |
Now that my father is gone, I come to Alaska and rediscover
him, following rumors of gold. The Great
Depression left him and his parents penniless.
So he traveled to the American River in California where gold was still
waiting to be panned and sluiced from gravel. I remember his dinnertime stories of bears
and horsemeat and selling just enough gold to send some money home.
But his stories don’t match those of that hoard of
accountants, school teachers, and draftsmen who sailed into Skagway Bay,
Alaska, in the 1890’s. Those
ill-prepared gold diggers tramped over the mountain to Bennett in the Yukon, waited
out frigid winter, then made rafts and floated into Dawson rivers, filled, in
their dreams, with gold. They had missed the California gold rush of 1849, and
they would not miss the Klondike Bonanza.  |
| Nearing Skagway, Alaska |
Our ship unloaded in Skagway, where the prospectors began their arduous journey, and with some effort, I hiked close to where they struggled over the mountain. I didn’t exactly retrace the steps of those intrepid gold seekers of the Klondike Stampede, but the hike to Lower Dewey Lake out of Skagway gave a feel for the mountain they crossed.
Looking down on Skagway, I imagined a town of 20,000 people in 1897. Today there are 12,000 including cruise ship passengers.
On the way up, I saw a familiar backpacker’s scene—food hanging in a tree, out of bears’ reach. And soon their camp appeared beside a lake.
A vein of Quartz in which gold sometimes precipitates from the liquid magma cooling slowly millions of years ago. This vein, high on a mountain, is still intact. But the Klondike Stampeders were looking for river gravel that contains eroded chunks of this rock.
It might have been in gravel like this on the shore of Dewey Lake that they panned and sluiced. These gravels are like a bond between glacier and river—father and daughter.
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| Frederick Trump |
Few of them sent any money home, as my father did, and most of them lost what they came with. But a few entrepreneurs got rich off the gold diggers, by mining the miners.
In 1898, Frederick Trump opened the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel in Bennett, which offered food and lodging in a sea of tents where prospectors were holed up for the winter. In 1900, he established the White Horse Restaurant and Inn and prepared 3,000 meals per day plus gambling and other “entertainments.”
Our current republican candidate for president is the grandson of Frederick Trump.
What a beautiful line, "These gravels are like a bond between glacier and river—father and daughter. " As the glacier gives birth to the river, and the connection of father and daughter carries the beautiful history you have offered about your father and his quest for gold.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan, what a nice and insightful comment.
DeleteA very interesting and poetic post that spans time and space from earth to sky past and present! What a personal tour of remembrance and discovery
ReplyDeleteThe Rush
from the misty past
gold dust collects
from the dark
the sparkle
in my father's eye
the eerie count
of who has left
golden egg
has it cracked
in the empty nest
what we inherit
the trudge in deep snow
over mountains
carrying the heavy
dark of dreams
we try to return
like moths to light
to those places
where it all began
on the uphill slant
often we slide
back down become our own
avalanche
the motion and silence
of what is forgotten
standing on the bluff
the emptied town of still
a few lights
in the paintbox
of sunset and sunrise
That's a beautiful rendering of my and my father's experiences - the sparkle of gold dust collecting after all those avalanche years, a golden egg of memory carried downstream to me to be processed, incongruently, on a luxury cruise ship. You have captured this and other essences. Thanks for adding poetry to experience.
DeleteTruest is the gold which you have mined from your memories.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to see gold among all the other kinds of gravel, Junnie, but really that's all it is. Somehow we assign it great importence. I wonder why.
DeleteMemory has it's license to create gold from gravel ~ that's one of the reasons to be a poet
DeletePlucking the gold 'from' the gravel is an art in itself
"Create gold!" The old alchemy quest. Based on the ancient idea that gold is good. Oh it has uses, but we attach mystic properties to yellow river stones, tumbling about like feldspar, mica, and the "fool's" iron pyrite. I wonder how it won the election.
Delete