A Man Finds Himself

       The only reason it took me two weeks to travel from my diggings to the riverboat that would deliver me into the presence of my dear wife is a story onto itself!  Yes!  I entrusted Hearsy to watch over my son, Robben, while extracating all that is rightfully ours on a claim, duly filed and legal in the State of California.
Rich it is beyond my simple expectations.  When the side of a mountain collapsed, changing the waterway and releasing hiden bounty, geologically buried until an act of Nature released a natural buried organic treasure pushed up by the forming of the Earth itself!  Gold, measured by pounds became ours.  So Fearsy, my compatriot and friend and yet-more.  Brother, like no man has experienced.  My life for him is but a small address.  Now, he guards my son from a wilderness of greed, avarice, and selfishness, where all people doubt that when help is asked for and delivered it is done without  a price!  Friendship, fellowship and comradrie?  All doubt!  I am living testimony that friendship found is real and everlasting.
       Downstream on the American River would, under a normal sun, have brought me but one week and a day to the Sacramento River and town itself if I hadn't been waylaid by miscreants whose soul purpose here on this wonderful planet is to gainsay themselves at the expense of another that they rationalize that all people of wealth, stold the lifestyle they live off the backs of thieves just like themselves!  I have no mercy for this kind of thinking!  They boarded,without invitation or any friendship, our simple vessel with only one thing of mind!  To rob, steal and maybe kill for their lack of creative skill to come into their own in the way of financial gain!  They made an honest attempt to kill me and the passengers on this very small river vehicle that was bringing us down to the river that would bring me home to my wife in San Franscisco, Robin. The Sacramento River.
         I was sorry I killed two of them.  They wanted more than I could give.  The surviving two were conscious by the time I gave them to the sheriff of Sacramento.  Everyone aboard thanked me in abundance for being a kind of protector.  I didn't see it that way.  I saw effeminate men whose wealth was made off the backs of people like me.  If I had not been aboard, they would have been free of their money and their life.  I felt sorry for the distressed highwaymen.  Not for the rich double speaker!  Thieves, not only of hearts but when the law doesn't work for them they express vigilantism! Why do manipulators appear to victorious always?  
        I paid the bail and did goodspeak for the surviving two.  They trusted my word and found their way to Fearsy and my son.  Those surviving two are with me to this day.  One never leaves my wife's side.  The other never leaves my son's.  I have Fearsy and he has me.  We all have the truth in us.  Gold is in our hearts for those who can bear it!
        My re-union/re-acquaintance with my wife at our new house on Nob Hill is another story!  And so is what my daughter brought to my attention on the day of my return from the Forgotten Claim of the Motherlode that did nothing but quadruptle the wealth of a simple man who gladly walked his way!  ARRRAGGHHHHH!  Matey!

Razor Reef

     Who even know where it is or what it could mean?  A very small lagoon?  Nay, a tidepool.  Across the street from my house, for a time.  That ancient era is bygone and yet the memory still refreashes and instills
a radiant peace, tangible, touchable with it's substance.
     Is it the days and hours spent witnessing God's pryrotechnical explosive tropical sunrise and sunsets by myself and with only a few real friends?  Even cameras not able to properly capture the overlapping and ever changing kaleidoscopic pastels generated by sun rays dancing with cotton candy clouds, shimmering emerald green waters and a forever sky dipped in plumeria?  Changing moment to moment, like waves, traveling so far to fall and break on a foriegn shore, unique.  Manifesting itself and then returning into what it has always been and always will be.
     How many times and with how very few did we ride that silly little nothing wave laughing as our fins hit the reef, knowing it wasn't even a ridable wave but riding it anyway and in the doing both were defined.  We made it surf and performed and Razor Reef joyously conformed.  The tidepool and the surfer smiled together as if at a private joke!
     Was it because the teeth the reef revealed as Waimea Bay's back door during winter's swells was so majestic with upside down waterfalls. explosions with sound, water reaching heavenward then falling;  raw, natural power not allowing all the ocean to return to her body, suspending her in the air to breath, taste and smell?  To know her intimately.  To become one with her.  To submerge!
     From snorkeling the Razor, her cooling me off on those lazy, hot, intoxicating summer daze, I can see her bottom as if it were yesterday.  How many moods have I seen her display?  How many ways have I made love with her?  Does she remember me?  Yes, I believe she does.  Who could forget?
    
    

The Gold, an old claim!

      A river off another river drove me to a claim that I had recorded as mine.  It had not been visited for a length of time!  I was distracted by a  hard desire to find a dream that would free my family from the bondage of a world that forms people into a desire of wealth.  I found wealth and lost it but for a minute.
      I understand, now, a greater thing.  In the course of my life, to lose and win a fortune is in the eye of
the beholder?  What is wealth?  It is for you to decide.  I lost and won back my wife and children.
      As I returned to the Columnes River, past Latrobe, which wasn't even a city but a far cry from
even a country house, positioned by a railroad track, where a train never passes to ship the unshipable!
My gold is not far from Latrobe in California.  A place of scrub oaks and very little water.
     I hired a new hand to replace Mr. Donner.  They're five of us and two horses and three donkeys.
I am having a hard time recognizing my claim.
     Admittedly, I am so wealthy, I would never have to work a day of my life, again!
I have never thought that that is what  life is about! How about yourself?
     I can not believe that after all these years my claim has not been violated!  I asked Fearsy, " Can you believe it?" His answer was," Yes "!  Simple question, simple answer!  When we all noticed that the canyon
wall had collapsed, we realized that the gold that I had discovered, way back, just might have a chance ot surviving the hunters that killed chinese, mexican, indians, that knew about gold. They, the greedy white guys, established rules, called government!  Long story short.
       This time in San Francisco is a lot different than when I was shanghighed out of the city!
Not only have I left my daughter and wife in the city, I have allowed them, with the grace of wealth, and an unlimited currency exchange, to establish culture, ideas, spirit and friendships that only can be established when
there is nothing to fear.  If there is something to fear, let it be San Francisco, pre 1906!   How does one
spell, vigilantes?