While a large number of locations have yielded some placer gold, most of the state’s placer production has come from a few productive districts.

Nuggets make for the best memories and this patch was just adding to mine. In the hours of daylight I had left, I worked from that nugget to the bottom of the patch, collecting eight more nuggets.

Then I came to a section of recently exposed gravel that looked unworked. Water seeped out all around, making the ground beneath a sea of slick mud.

Rivers are not just random and accidental; streams and other drainages are what they are because of the forces of erosion acting on the bedrock.