From microscopic flake to gram weight nugget, each seemed to show the same intensity character. Battered and broken, pounded and polished, they told me of their lives' journeys. As I cradled them in my arms the sun's rays scintillated at their slightest movement. I was overwhelmed by their magnificence. They had breathed their magic into my soul and I was ablaze with the fever that day.
Life can be a very powerful force when so much of it fills the senses.
Though the Earth bears no malice when it gives the abundance of itself, there can come with even a modest amount of gold the fulfillment of dreams. There in the rays of the sun shone the brightest light of my dreams, fulfilled with the flick of my wrists. So intense was my feeling and exhilaration in the presence of that gold that I think I might have developed an overwhelming addiction to the experience of finding it if I had much longer continued my search that day. Gold fever, I believe, is an addiction to one's own natural chemistry dispensed with the euphoria of the sensory and emotional event, and caused by the richness of the experience of finding gold, no less intoxicating than an illicit drug. Though I believe I was spared the worst consequences of that addiction, I am glad to have had the experience.