By now, you may have assumed that I wanted to dig for gold to buy back my possessions and to become rich. If so, that is partly wrong. Since I was a kid, geology and nature have been pertinent to my surviving and thriving in this world, always igniting the ember of happiness in my little brain. When my parents died a few days after my 13th birthday, surviving became the top priority, knocking rocks to rock bottom. I became a blacksmith, one of the most well-paying jobs in the 1890s for young women. I need to find gold so I can survive, as it is so rare and valuable, however it also will take me back to the times where I could do what I love for hours on end, not what I need to do in order to live. The luminous and fascinating concepts of geology will engross my mind when I am digging for gold, which in turn will help distract me from digging and therefore allow me to dig longer. Most importantly, Callie deserves more than being a blacksmith’s companion-she has got me through such hard times that I regret not being able to feed her and take care of her as well as I should be, considering she saved my life when I was about to be picked apart by foxes a few years ago.
Up until they passed away, my mother, father, and I would go camping once a month for a week in summer and a few times during the school year, so I had plenty of experience surviving in the great but grueling outdoors. No need to lug one ton of supplies to the Yukon-the Canadian government have their hopes up pretty high if they plan on having to rescue me. I have never been to Alaska, but Maine must be quite similar with its cold winters and dense forests. Callie will become useful as we venture farther North-”Danger lurks in remote, virtually undiscovered places” my father used to say, and the route to Alaska is filled with thick forests and shrubbery. I hope to glimpse furtive creatures you don’t come across in daily life in Maine: foxes, deer or caribou, moose, bears, wolves, and the occasional snowy owl. Fishing will come in handy when we start to run out of food (I am a big salmon gal). A close friend of mine told me to hop on a train with an empty boxcar for part of the journey-thank goodness that fool of a kid isn’t coming with me or Callie might have had to catch the cuff of his shirt between her teeth to keep him from being grinded apart by the train wheels. Other than that, Alaska is an outlandish stranger. I do expect to find gold though, even if it is the last thing I do.