OP-ED COLUMNIST

Striking It Poor

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 7, 2009

I wasn’t sure this column would pan out.

But with my savings and salary shrinking, it seemed worth a try. Heck, how hard could it be? I’d seen “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the 1948 classic starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston. (“Badges? ... I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”) That movie was the best meditation on prospecting for gold, and falling prey to greed, ever done — until the Bernie Madoff story.

Besides, with the American dream wobbling and the Golden State’s luster dimmed, it seemed fitting to return to the Mother Lode of the Sierra Nevada foothills where the dream of audaciously striking it rich overnight was born 160 years ago, a Gold Rush that stimulated the world economy.

The 49ers — who Mark Twain described as “a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society” of “unspeakably happy” men — stopped in San Francisco, two-and-a-half hours west of here, to buy supplies, such as bullets, salt meat and Levis. (And to buy shady ladies, or “soiled doves,” as they were known, but we won’t get into that.) My San Francisco supplies were more modern: pre-torn jeans, a skim latte, a G.P.S., a cellphone and a laptop to get updates on the price of gold. With the dollar diminished and financial institutions in the doghouse, a hard nugget suddenly seems a safer bet than an ephemeral derivative. (Gold is trading at about $880 an ounce.)

News reports are heralding a neo-Gold Rush from Modesto to the Mojave Desert, a revival in prospectors at California’s streambeds, spurred by the sputtering national economy, the state’s 10.5 percent unemployment rate leaving many with free time and the weighty price of gold.

Panners have been finding “the sweat of the sun,” as the Incas called gold. Mining claims, membership in prospecting clubs and sales at mining supply stores are up all over the state. One prospector from the East Coast boasted to NBC of finding $10,000 in gold in one day.

My adventure did feel like time travel into the past, especially when the G.P.S. began flashing near Yosemite that we were “entering an area where turn-by-turn guidance cannot be provided.” As with Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale,” with its moral of “radix malorum est cupiditas” or “greed is the root of all evil,” my two friends and I quickly fell to arguing about whether we would keep our own booty or split it three ways, suspicions blooming.

As we walked into Brent Shock’s gold prospecting shop on Main Street here, we heard someone singing that old Burl Ives staple “Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care.” We paid $200 for our two-hour “sluice and pan,” and headed down to Shock’s resurrected mining camp at Woods Creek, where about 15 people, including some families, were out digging in waders.

John Fonseca, a 27-year-old Brazilian from Salt Lake City, was there with his uncle, Jorge de Jesus, who had heard about Jamestown on The Travel Channel. Fonseca, who has done millwork for stores like Chanel and Armani, says work has slowed down, so he figured he’d hunt for gold. He had a small vial full of gold flakes from three hours of mining that day, which he said ruefully was “not enough to sell” or “pay the bills.”

Gary Speed, 58, who works for McClatchy’s Cars.com unit, drove half an hour from Groveland, Calif., with his wife, Margaret, to celebrate her birthday. He’s considering gold panning “as another source of income because I’m going to retire soon.” He was intent on not losing the gold flakes in his sluice. “That can buy a can of cat food,” he noted.

With a gray beard, a mouth of missing teeth, intense blue eyes and a Marlboro Red dangling from his lip, the 57-year-old Shock is a throwback to prospectors of yore. “Gold has been driving people crazy for years,” he said. “Man is man.”

For kids, Shock sometimes helps Mother Nature, salting the river with fool’s gold, pyrite, so they can be sure to find some treasure.

I picked up a glittery nugget, but Shock disabused me. “We call that California leverite,” he said, “as in, leave ’er right here.”

He taught us how to swirl the pan around, with only your wrist and “no body language,” and separate silt from flecks.

Aaron Levin, a 33-year-old FedEx manager from San Jose, said it was such hard work for so little return that if he needed extra money, he’d rather “get a second job delivering pizzas.”

In the end, Shock helped us round up a few flakes, which did not even merit a “Eureka!” and looked more like goldfish food than the ticket out of a fishy economy. “It’s $1,000 worth of conversation,” Shock reassured us. It’s also one more reminder that get-rich-quick schemes are often the road to empty pockets.

Back at the National Hotel bar on Main Street, where grizzled prospectors traded gold for whiskey long ago, we tried to trade our vial of flakes for Ramos gin fizzes and a lemon drop martini.

“Sure, I’ll take it,” said the bartender, “along with a credit card.”

A version of this article appeared in print on April 8, 2009, on page A25 of the New York edition.