As we talked, Rusty stopped, backed up, bent down and began chipping at some rock in the road. He said he suspected there was a stringer right here that crossed the road.

I probably swung over a few targets without noticing them. My first target came  about ten minutes later as I went over a part of the high bench in this wide section of the dry wash.

After burning more than 350 square miles, the Carr Fire near Redding, California, was finally out. Luckily our home was spared, and I had the opportunity to go metal detecting in burned areas previously too overgrown to access.

While recovery rates are important, they must necessarily be secondary to the volume of material processed. Running more material at lower recovery rates is generally preferable to increasing the efficiency of the system.

At first, I tried to shift things around, but then a hand with a rock would appear, so I would stop trying to adjust my gear and grab the rock to keep things moving.