Friday, March 23, 2018
Golden heart
Alf and I spent many labourious hour in the bush looking for - and even more discussing over the kitchen table - gold, and how to get more of it! Those mosquito and fly infested hours in the bush, as well as the hours spent at the kitchen table or panning on the porch with Alf are very fond memories for me.
I first met Alf at Safeway in the mid 1980's when he was delivering groceries and I was a stock clerk. We didn't know each other outside the food store but we always had a good laugh over some joke when he was there.
It turns out we were both gold panning on the Peace River at that time - except neither of us knew that we were both looking in the same spots - on different days. Eventually we discovered our common interest and a great friendship was developed over many years to come.
We had many adventures out looking for gold and I feel so sad to be missing out on making more of those in the coming years. His humour was always quick and infectious and kept the mood light.
He seemed to have this cavernous memory for people, places and events and would tell me stories for hours while we drove to and from our next hot spot. "Do you know so and so?" he would say; " Well he is related to so and so who lives over there and knows so and so and they did this and that" .... always made me smile and amazed me.
He always wished he was just 20 years younger so we could really get after it but I always felt he didn't let age slow him down a whole lot. In the last years we would pan at the Peace River when we had a chance. Sometimes I would bring him some sand to clean the gold out of so he could still get a flash in the pan - even if it was on his porch - that way he could stay close to the couch :-)
We never found the buckets of gold we were looking for, and were always wishing for just one more good trip to the creek, but we did find a golden friendship and I'm sure Alf will still keep on looking. Rest well my friend, here's to a golden heart.
