Gold Rush (Competitive Digger's Story!)
Hello, dear readers. My story is dedicated to the events that my hubby told me about. Sit back and read carefully.
Everything I’m going to tell you about happened before he married me. It was 2010. My hubby (his name is Mikhail) was working at a crushed stone plant at that time. The work is very hard: both in the heat and in the cold – all the time outside. He always came home tired and irritated. Come on, that's not what the story is about. He worked in shifts. And on long winter evenings at work, men discuss various topics. So to speak, they like to rub their tongues, and they also say that women are chatterboxes. They started a conversation with colleagues about their roots, about who their ancestors were. My husband says that every self-respecting person should know his family to the seventh generation.
One of the husband’s interlocutors began to enthusiastically tell where his great-grandfather was from and what he did. It turned out that he worked in gold mines in the 30s of the last century. And those same mines are located in the Republic of Bashkortostan. At that time, Misha had just started treasure hunting, so he listened with enthusiasm to his colleague’s story and remembered every word he said. From the words of the interlocutor it followed that the miners did not hand over all the gold to the state, but hid some of it. Why this was done – I don’t know, probably for a future better life – life was quite difficult in those days. It goes without saying that if two people know, then everyone knows. Someone was probably drunk or stupidly spilled the beans, so to speak, the information got to where it needed to be. So they were all scooped up. In those years, they didn’t explain for a long time how bad you were, they didn’t re-educate you – a bullet in the forehead or to the gold mines, where it’s always winter, and even for a bowl of stew. According to stories, the NKVD never found the gold. Or maybe he wasn’t there?!
And then my hubby decided to get rich, he was tired of going to work every day. Oh well!!! To get information about those very mines, I spent a long time digging through books and magazines in the archives. We can say that I found that place with an accuracy of up to a meter. True, it was located in a deep forest, and it was only possible to get there on your own two feet, since everything had long been overgrown with bushes and trees. But this won’t scare Misha! Having waited until summer, Mishanya went to look for his treasure.
At that time, my husband did not yet have a car, and he got to point “A”, that is, to the regional center, by public transport – by bus. This is where the comfortable journey ended. Now he had to cover a 12 km path through a dense and impassable forest, in which (quite possibly) there were hungry wild animals. The forest immediately received him unfriendly: he only had time to shake off the ticks (those creatures, once they stick, you can’t tear them off).
Now the funniest part begins, from his words, but for me it’s the worst thing. It was getting dark… Evening was quickly approaching, and we had to spend the night in the forest!!! Yeah… When you're lying at home on the sofa, you're a hero, but how can you get into such a forest, even if you scream guard! There are squeals, squeaks, and crackles in the forest. Someone is being devoured and beaten nearby, and my hubby, a city dweller, is standing in the middle of the forest, his eyes are bulging and he doesn’t know what to do. It's too late to turn back. Sitting down on a fallen tree, he hugged the backpack tightly, like his own mother. And the noise in the forest did not stop. And then my beloved was not at a loss and, in order to disperse his fear, began to scream songs. Just yelling, there is no other way to describe such singing, since a bear stepped on his ear, and it was scary. And it seemed to help: all the animals fled and could not stand his original vocals. He was afraid to light a fire – that year turned out to be hot, and the forest was dry. Misha is a very thrifty person, he took firecrackers with him, and not just one pack, but so many that he could hold a perimeter defense against wild animals for a week. So he set off explosions all night, reminding the forest inhabitants that he worked at a crushed stone plant. So to speak, I organized an unplanned holiday.
With the onset of dawn, Misha moved on. I was very surprised when he said that he had found the place. There really were a lot of bushes and fallen trees, which made it very difficult to conduct a search using an MD (metal detector). I don’t know exactly what kind of metal detector he had at that time; he called it “Eureka.” Some buildings have been preserved at the mine site, but in terrible condition: rickety walls without a roof, windows or doors. Here and there you could see pits where gold had previously been mined, but Misha was not interested in them, he needed to grab a big jackpot right away.
My gold miner was hungry and spent a lot of energy overcoming such a serious obstacle as a wild forest. Having made himself more comfortable, Mishanya took out his provisions. After having lunch and drinking tea, he lay down on his sleeping bag and let’s dream about where he would spend the found treasure, how he would dispose of it. The sleepless night made itself felt, and even, as if on purpose, the rays of the sun were breaking through the trees and warming the husband. And then he found himself in the sleepy kingdom of Morpheus. According to him, he fell asleep for a moment, but his soul was still restless: after all, he was alone in the forest. Then a fir cone falls from a tree and lands squarely on his forehead. Misha jumps out of fright at the speed of sound and begins to yell in his already well-known voice throughout the forest, while performing the dances of a primitive man.
Realizing that there was no one nearby and that this was just a bump that was bothering him, he calmed down, but his heart was beating at a frantic rhythm, and there was quite a lot of adrenaline in his blood. There was no time for sleep, and Misha began to search for untold riches.
The grass was very tall and made work difficult; I had to trample down the grass in front of me in order to pass the metal detector coil, and then, as luck would have it, various nails, shell casings and other small things came across under the coil. Well, in general, as Misha says, he’s a shmurdyak. I walked until late in the evening, but did not find anything interesting. We had to look for a place to spend the night. He liked the old, rickety barracks; after all, the walls, even though they were like that, would protect him. After having dinner and preparing a place to sleep, Misha began to think about what was better for him – a bird in the hands or a pie in the sky. I decided that I would run through the pits for another hour and a half in the morning and go home. The overnight stay was peaceful for him, he slept like the dead, tired, poor fellow.
At the first rays of the sun, run through the pits, fortunately the grass there is not so thick. Various unnecessary metal objects again came across the coil, and suddenly a sound that was not familiar to the ear was heard, so soft and pleasant. My husband's heart skipped a beat. Is it really!.. Putting the metal detector aside, he began to dig, stirring up the earth mixed with clay. I didn’t find anything valuable, there were only stones and grass roots. I started running the metal detector again – suddenly it just seemed… No! The signal was there and even became even stronger. So the target is on the surface! Again he sorts through, but what, what is it – just stones! Then it dawned on him, and he began to scan the stones. Suddenly one of the stones made a signal. And so clear, long-awaited and pleasing to the ear! It looked like a quartz stone, but when Misha looked closer, he couldn’t believe his eyes: a gold nugget was shining in this stone!!! In the first seconds, Misha was speechless; joy overwhelmed him. And then he started screaming, scaring the wild animals in the forest. Delight knew no bounds!
After resting a little and collecting his belongings, Misha wandered home, never finding the miners’ hidden gold. But his soul still sang to him, because in his pocket he had 3 grams of honestly mined gold.
He came out of the forest in the evening, when the buses no longer ran. I found a place to spend the night, something like a hotel. He says it was quite cozy there. And I think it seemed after spending the night in the forest… I went through all my things, shook off bugs, spiders and ticks from them. And he took off one of the sucking bloodsucker.
After that trip, he never visited that place again; he kept dreaming of going there. But I’m afraid to let him go alone, so I’m thinking about going with him. What if I get lucky and find that hidden gold? He sometimes takes me to the cops, but I constantly pester him there with various questions and, without meaning to, I disturb him. He is trying to persuade me to buy another metal detector so that I can go searching myself and not interfere with him. Do you think I can handle it? Tempting…
If everything goes well with him and we go on vacation together, we will definitely go there in search of treasure. But that will be a completely different story…
Sent by Svetlana K.