Publisher's Synopsis
These gripping, dark and funny character driven short stories depict the crazy people who inhabit the under water gold mining world of Nome Alaska. With sardonic wit and unique voice author C.M. Brophy describes in 14 short stories the madness at the end of the Iditarod trail; the same people and scenarios, flora and fauna as seen on the popular Discovery Channel TV show BERING SEA GOLD... The following blog post is not in the book but indicates the tone and locale of this fascinating and surreal quick read.: I will be leaving Nome after 86 days the day after tomorrow forever most likely. It's been an unprofitable venture financially but not as bleak as for some, many, most first time miners. Yes, gold mining didn't pan out. Surprise. The amount of creative writing I've been able to produce is rewarding and the unique experiences will stay with me forever probably, the negatives falling away as the positives become enhanced in my memory. Adventures aren't supposed to be fun while they're happening. I recognize the folly some people back home consider this trip to be, and actual miners and locals are right to observe that I'm not really a miner either. Nomeites and Alaskans in general enjoy and suffer under the belief that they are frontiersmen and free to do as they please and that this is a vast open land of opportunity. Environmentally it is hard for them to see what they are doing as disastrous as lower 48 southerners readily remark. A local bumper sticker reads, "Mining: the family farm of the north." Another argument goes: us miners make wealth from the dirt, we, with our toil feed the economy, producing something from nothing. The dredging operations I was directly involved with here in the Bering sea on D.N.R. controlled leases and recreational areas work alongside commercial fisheries and indigenous fishing hunting grounds as well as sport hunting and fishing grounds. The bottom minerals that are are sluiced up and re deposited are monitored for effluent plume debris readings/ turbidity- and there is a lot of reworking of others tailing piles. It is not a coral reef. Jellies, starfish, crabs, eels, bullheads, whales, seals, orcas swim right around the greasy noisy dredges and multi varieties of salmon spawn in the rivers. Caribou and musk ox have been re introduced since being all eaten up during the original lucky swedes gold rush of the late 1800s. There never were any trees or amphibians in this part of the Seward peninsula. The thawing permafrost is probably a global warming thing but this is a region where disbelief or ambivalence over man made world temperature change is prevalent. Compared to the oil industry it appears to me and the locals that gold extraction as practiced in Nome is nominal and there is much federal government animosity. My take on it is that if the feds think Alaskans shouldn't be allowed to take a shit in Alaska they either have the juice or don't to stop them, but without experiencing what is happening here, on the ground, culturally, economically, grassroots, they will never be able to effect any change here. Go piss up a rope, Washington, as the saying goes. As for being complicit myself I take no blame, we are all complicit driving our cars around to the wal mart for polyester toys made by chinese children- etc. etc. I am happy to have immersed myself in this world fully, it's not any worse than any other place, just different. I'm off to San Francisco for a little post deprivation rum and buggery decompression therapy before re entering life as a suburban dad and husband. I was supported by friends family and strangers all the way down the line on this experiment and am thankful. Life is the only thing worth living for. We all can and should do whatever the fuck we want to do, try whatever strikes our fancy, check out where it all breaks down, improvise, reflect, rinse, repeat.
