Gold

Those dreams of the of the imagined reality of California, fade into black and white like the range of light walked by John Muir, and like the insubstantial gold the land grudgingly handed over to the rapacious men who spent their lives digging for it.

Gold, which went to the storehouse known as a federal treasury, and which would be used to finance the nation’s death suffered in the American Civil War. All for nothing - all for none - or one for all. Part of the historical mythology, something fatefully wrong in this California “Denmark”, some major defect in this golden island of Califia? Or had these elements simply been written out by the fates in some ancient mariner’s dream?

The real actual California, lay as a ghostly delta fog, existed in the gravel overturned to find the gold, gold which has all turned into so much glittering dust. As insubstantial as the fool’s gold which leaves traces for the unwary in the seams of quartz crystals