“Jake, where are their parents?” I was in Jake’s kitchen overlooking his backyard where ten kids were running around, playing games or talking too loudly.
“I don’t let them come on these trips anymore. I tried it once and never again. Too many rules. They end up micromanaging all the fun out of it. ‘Don’t go there, it’s too dirty.’ ‘Why are you digging there, we tried that already.’ They won’t let kids be kids and they end up crippling their interest in mining. Everything they find has to be shared with their brothers or sisters, regardless of how much effort they put in to finding it. I’m looking for the next generation to run my mining company. I’m not looking for someone to run a commune and make sure that everyone’s feelings are taken into consideration.”
“Don’t hold back on me, Jake. Tell me what you really think.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want now. Someday you’ll want to hand-off your life’s work to your grandchildren and find that the children you raised are messing everything up and you’ll wonder where you went wrong. Not having their parents around let’s the kids be themselves and not simply a reflection of the expectations of their parents. With some of them, I can almost see them relax as their parents drive away.”
“With their parents away, how do you keep them in line?”
“That’s the easy part. If they cause too much trouble, they’re off the list for next year. No appeal possible. I’ve done it twice already. I don’t have a lot of rules, but they learn not to break the few that I do have.”
“That makes sense. You got any rules you need me and my friends to follow?”
“No, Abby, I’m sure you’ll behave. You should know though that at my request Rose and Connor didn’t tell their cousins about how you helped them find gemstones last year. That means no one will be hounding you to find anything for them and you’re free to help or not help as you see fit. That goes for Rosie and Connor as well. I’ve talked to them about it already.”
“Thanks Jake. I appreciate that. I’ll keep an eye out and see how things go. Maybe I’ll see a chance to ignite a love of mining in one of your grandkids besides Mark. He’s going to need help to run all those new mines that we’ll be opening up over the next few years.”
The next morning we were all arrayed in front of Steven and Susan Manning wearing rain boots and holding our shovels and picks. Steven and Susan greeted me like a long-lost daughter. Apparently, their business had really taken off after I found the rubies last year and they were hoping that lightening would strike twice and I’d find another once-in-a-lifetime gemstone. I had no intention of doing that as I didn’t want to make the headlines again, but there was no sense in killing off their hope. I just smiled and gave them my best, “I’ll do what I can”, expression.
With the huge influx of business they had since last year, Steven had opened up several new areas to mine from and he let us choose which one we’d like. They were all close to each other and we could look them over before choosing. This time the walk to the site was even longer and I was glad that we’d packed lunches and wouldn’t have to walk back mid day.
It was a matter of a few minutes for us to survey the three sites and I scanned each of them quickly. While everyone was discussing their preferred site, I caught Jake’s attention and held up three fingers. Even though the consensus had leaning towards the first site, Jake somehow managed to get everyone over to the third site without any trouble.
Jake’s words from the previous night stuck in my mind and instead of digging right in I watched the children. I noted which ones were more interested in their conversation and which ones sifted carefully, examining interesting rocks to see if they were really gemstones in disguise. Some of them would lose interest quickly when they didn’t find anything and they’d keep wandering off and trying different spots to dig in. In an hour of on and off watching, I’d narrowed Jake’s candidates for future heads of McKenzie Resources to two children; twelve-year-old Rose and ten-year-old boy named Zach. This was by no means definitive. It just seemed to me that they had the right temperament for this type of work.
Like with anything else though, temperament was only one small piece of the whole. Without proper focus, that temperament could lead the kids in variety of different directions. You needed to stoke the fire and get it to the correct temperature, depending on what you wanted to create in your forge. Jake had the right idea in bringing his grandchildren here to experience mining firsthand, but I thought he could use a little help in actively encouraging their interest.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Rose and Zach were sitting about five feet apart, each panning in the creek bed, and I sat down between them. Rose looked up at me hopefully. She wanted some of my ‘special’ help. Instead, I got her to show me what she’d found so far and I helped her identify the bits of beryl and quartz that she’d found. Soon, Zach had moved closer to us and I identified his stones, telling them about the properties of each, just as Mark had taught me at the geology center. As they continued to pan, I told them about all the ways in which the minerals and stones found the ground were used in everyday life; how metals are used to make everything from their iPhones to the shovels that they were using to scoop up more minerals and how stones like granite, slate and limestone were used in the construction of homes. I didn’t monologue for long. Just a minute or two. If what I said interested them, they’d ask questions.
Zach was the first to break the silence and given his dinosaur t-shirt, I should have expected it.
“Do you think that we’ll find any fossils here?” Clearly, Zach viewed digging for gemstones and mining as a secondary interest.
“There always a chance. You’ll find most of the fossils in North Carolina in the eastern part of the state in what’s called the coastal plains. Aurora has the most famous fossils around there, huge shark teeth.” Zach eyes glowed with interest as I recited from the mental copy of a geology book that I’d scan read a few months ago.
“If you’re really interested in fossils, you should ask Grandpa Jake to take you out to see the T-Rex he’s digging up.”
Zach sat up straight and focused on me like a bird dog sensing its prey. “Grandpa Jake found a T-Rex?”
“Yup. His company is going to open a mine in Arizona and they found a T-Rex fossil on the property. It’s a complete skeleton. I think Jake has one of the local universities supervising the dig site.”
Zack was off like a shot, making a beeline for Jake and leaving his shovel and pan in the creek bed. I grabbed them before they slowly drifted away and aimlessly continued his work.
“You found the fossil, didn’t you, Abby?” Rose asked with a smirk on her face.
“I may have pointed Jake in the right direction.”
“Uh huh. I know that you went on that trip with Mark last summer.”
Rose grew quiet after that and we spent the next few minutes sifting before she caught me off guard with a mining question.
“Does Grandpa Jake’s company hurt the environment?”
“Why are you asking, Rose?”
“I’ve heard my mom talking about cleanup regulations and environmental assessments for mining permits.”
“Well, mining as an industry can be very harmful to the environment. It can scar the landscape and poison nearby groundwater. It’s even dangerous for the miners themselves. The key thing to remember though is that its necessary. Our civilization needs the metals and minerals that mines produce. People need homes and tools and transportation and medical equipment. There’s just no way around it. However, we can minimize the negative effects of mining. When a mine is closed, the mining company can re-landscape the area and plant trees. Polluted water that’s pumped out of mines is stored in tailing ponds and those ponds can be build better so that none of the water can leach into the ground and pollute rivers and streams. There are a lot of laws and regulations that mining companies have to follow to keep the harm down to a minimum and your mother makes sure that McKenzie Resources follows them and even exceeds them at times. You should talk to her about it. You might also want to talk with Mark about his ideas.”
“Mark? Really? I didn’t think he noticed the environment. He’s always going on about rocks and geology stuff.”
“Yes, he does love his rocks, but there’s more to him than that. He’s knows that he’s going to be following in Jakes’ footsteps and he has some ideas of his own. I think he’ll end up surprising Jake with some of them. I think he wants to create a division inside McKenzie Resources that will try to find ways to remediate or clean up those tailing ponds that I mentioned. There are thousands of them all over this country, most of them abandoned by mining companies that either went bust or just left them there for someone else to deal with.”
“He told you that he wants to do this?”
“Not directly, no, but I can put clues together. On our trip he talked a lot about the tailing pond problem and how he was going to try to avoid them in the future. He always paid special attention to the proposed location and construction of the pond. He mentioned that mine site clean up is a whole industry onto itself and that we needed to find new ways to deal with tailings. He’s also been taking several chemistry courses. You take all that and mix it with the Jake telling me that Mark was keeping a secret from him and there you go. I could be wrong, though. You should ask Mark about it. In front of Jake.”
“Oh, I will. You can bet on it.” Rose gave me conspiratorial look and reached over to scoop up more dirt and rocks from the creek. I lightly guided her hand over a foot to the left and she raised her eyebrows questioningly at me.
“Three or four scoops down.” I told her and she took to it with a will, placing each scoopful on the sifter.
“It’s beautiful! What is it?”, she exclaimed as she drew the orange-pink rock from the sifter two minutes later.
“Imperial topaz. This color isn’t common and given its size it should be worth a lot.”
“Like your rubies?”
“No. Not nearly that much. Thousands though.”
“I’m going to go show Grandpa!” and she ran off. I secured her equipment next to Zach’s and went off in search of Bobby, James, and Eva. I wondered how long it would take the Rose-bomb that I’d set to explode all over Mark and his secret plans. I sure hoped that I was there to see it.