Mesa Trail ch. 10
Draft 2

How many know that gold's atomic number is 79? That it is thought to have been produced in a supernova nucleosynthesis?  Nuclei whose this? That it formed as a result of the collision of neutron stars and that because at this time of the heavy bombardment 4 billion years ago of the earth's surface by so many asteroids that this particular type of glittery dust boiled down into the earth crust's planetory core then hardened to form a mantle? As the miners of old, the Gold Rushers at Pike's Peak, or the Rushers out to the west coast at San Fransisco, saw that a nugget dug up not only looked precious but knew other things as well: the mind liked the look and feel of the stuff...it looked better than other metals, more pure, and was workable into other objects.  They knew that other civilizations had used this as a base of trade, that the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, so many others, might spend entire decades and centuries scouring the earth for the settlement of veins of the pretty glittery rocks.  Pirates sailed the seven seas so to capture the great locked boxes full of the bullion and that bankers back east would always pay out raw cash in its stead.  Water that gathered at the top of the Flatiron mountains in narrow creases turned to creeks and gravity swished and swashed away the granite and dolomite for so many eons that it might expose the cosmic dust turned atomic number 79 so that flakes might drag down to the bottom of the gulleys, some settling more, but some, some, if the miner was lucky, could be trapped inside a wooden contraption and filtered through a screen and onto a pan for examination. Hannah's great grandfather might have indeed bitten the flakes to see if it was the real stuff or quartz of some other element.  He might collect it in a vial and watch it fill up to the cap until he knew that when full it was worth to him hundreds and hundreds. Great grandfather already had plenty for himself.  With the help of his trusty mule Lucy, he scampered around the foothills looking for landmarks to remember his buried treasures by.  These notes were scrawled in cryptic language, barely legible, with coordinates like the third fur tree off the south fork of the Castle Rock Creek.  Look for the twisted pine at the horizon of the old Ute. His own dogs sniffed and snorted, dancing around these burial sights as though treasure hunters themselves.  Whoever got their hands on these maps would someday find herself in possession of a mountain treasure!