It’s very likely while panning a stream and you’re coming up with #8 birdshot and no trace of color you aren’t going to find any amount of gold. We have one of the most marvelous native trout streams here in the Kern River Valley; Bull Run Creek. The largest trout I’ve pulled out of this pristine, mountain stream weighed five-pounds, but the biggest I hooked and lost raised a rooster tail nearly two-feet high with my line sawing through the water as it made its run through one of the deeper pools and dislodged the hook before I could lessen the drag on my reel.

In 1969 I filed on an old lode silver mine up the stream, not with the intention of working it but to try to keep it from being trashed while also keeping the trail open for forestry and other avid fishermen like me. I had first learned of the mine and the stream from an old fellow that came by our cabin one day in 1949. When he discovered my interest in fishing, he drew a rough map of how to get there and I had been fishing it ever since until I was no longer able to make the hike.

Years ago forestry put a gate at the end of the pavement of Burlando Road, for which I was grateful. Any place easy to get to in nature is inevitably going to be trashed, and the entry to Bull Run was showing evidence of this when the lake went in and the population here in the valley began to increase.

There is an old saying; Gold is where you find it. I’ve done enough prospecting to learn the truth of this. But the beauty of Bull Run Creek had always been gold enough for me; the natural and unspoiled trout stream in a wilderness environment is something no amount of gold can buy. Fishing such a stream is time not subtracted from our natural span, and I often think of the judge who when asked why he spent so much time fishing replied, “Because it keeps me mindful of how very unimportant so many things in life really are.”

To lie beside Bull Run Creek at night taking in the scent of the surrounding forest while a light evening breeze soughs through pine needles, listening to the stream and viewing the stars overhead unaffected by any extraneous manmade light is to see and experience heaven in its real glory so far as we earthbound creatures can do so. But I was to learn not everybody is sensitive to such glory, and one instance of this left an indelible impression on me.

A young fellow who wanted to go fishing with me at Bull Run also wanted to learn how to pan. So, along with the fishing gear I packed a couple of my gold pans. I knew there wasn’t much chance of finding gold in Bull Run, but this young fellow was anxious to try his hand at panning.

Arriving at one of the more beautiful spots in the stream where there was a goodly amount of black sand I showed him the fine art of working the pan. But to my consternation all thought of fishing, all thought of the surrounding beauty of our environment was lost to this young fellow as he spent the hours in a vain attempt to find some gold. To this day the mental image of this young fellow wading in the pristine, crystal clear water of this marvelous stream working that pan and wasting the precious hours of the day remains vividly with me, and I realized gold fever isn’t caught only by the sight of gold, but the hope of it as well.

There is many a homily to be drawn from this story, and over the years I have done so. One of the things that makes life a living hell on earth is the fact where people don’t care about the environment you will find trash. If there had been gold in Bull Run, it is doubtful it would remain the beautiful trout stream it is today. But when a nation is producing millions of unproductive mouths demanding to be fed, eventually the beauty of places like Bull Run will be sacrificed by politicians.

I’m all for the present demand for drilling for oil that will meet our needs. Other nations are not going to care for the environment no matter how green America tries to be. That pragmatic part of me realizes the futility of trying to save the planet when it has so many unproductive mouths demanding to be fed, when politicians, tyrants and despots are determined on their paths of power and wealth. But when you cram people together like rats you have to expect some to behave like rats.

I realize our species is not on the path to heaven being the global environment. But it’s the relentless gold fever of so many that seems to be pushing our species to extinction all the while the real gold of our planet is being sacrificed to greed and the kind of ignorance that makes slaves of billions. I’ve experienced Norman Rockwell’s America and I’ve experienced Bull Run Creek, and it would be a poor trade for the selfish interests of politicians and their corporate bosses to prevail over these. But the best of what our planet has to offer can only be saved through the cooperation of nations, and given our track record as a species this doesn’t look promising.