GOLD GYPSY pt3

In my early days as a treasure hunter I had a cheap C-Scope metal detector that had no discrimination, and was basically just one step up from a mine detector, but it was good tutoring time in search patterns, steadfastness, single minded purpose, endurance, discovering my machines capabilities, my capability, my short comings, and, …and this is a big and, knowing when it’s time to give up and knock it on the head. There is a time to stop.
It doesn’t matter whether I am metal detecting or in gold production, there is only a certain amount of produce to come out of a piece of ground in any given season. It is a waste of my energy and time to stay in an area once it’s cleared. Come autumn and a turn of the plough shear it is a different story, as more booty is brought within range of my metal detector. A few winter flood storms scours more gravel away revealing new bedrock or deposits more gold in known gold trap areas. Winter storms nearly always seem to upturn trees whether it is on dry land or on river banks. These trees will have their root systems exposed encased in a large volume of soil; these again need to be diligently searched, I’ve lost count of the amount of coins etc that I have found in such an exposed ball root system. You see I must do all that I can in my allotted time frame, I must endure the weather, sometimes I have been known just to lay down and take in the sunshine, but it’s time lost, never to be found again. The other week on the Afon Wen I had a whole day of drizzle and rain as the water table began to rise. I’ve had days metal detecting when I’ve had all four seasons in one day.
I may not have what is termed a ‘proper job’, but what is a proper job? Monday to Friday 9-5; or working those stupid continental shift patterns; or permanent nights. I’ve been there, done that, and got the tee shirt. I got to where I didn’t know whether I was on my base or my apex, and it did my health no favours at all. The two things that I now know is, 1). I know I am very happy. 2) I am self supporting in my various ventures. I may not be accountable to a company boss, as I am my own boss and tea boy. But I am accountable to myself, which for the best part is a harder discipline.
I do appreciate that my lifestyle is not, shall we say, the accepted norm. But what is the expected norm? In my circle of acquaintances, it is accepted norm, and within my family and friends they are very supportive saying, ‘Well that’s Kit, that’s what he does’. Outside of this circle I have been the butt of jokes and ridicule, and I feel that this has come about because I do have an envious lifestyle, like a number of gold gypsies that I have come across.
In the past long ago when I worked for some big companies, I saw people at sixty five retiring and two week later I was attending their funeral, not being able to enjoy the fruits of their labours in their retirement. I have even been to funerals where friends and acquaintances have keeled over before receiving their gold watch for services rendered. I grew older by the day both physically, mentally and emotionally and I had somewhere down the line lost my really enjoyable youth, and it was this that I wanted to recapture doing what I wanted to do and not what others expected or wanted me to do.
I am no longer restrained by this worlds constraints, as I shed those shackles that anchored me to the world’s accepted considered norm.

If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.
To change what you’ve been getting, you have to change what you’ve been doing.