A right lovely trail leads to Virginia City.

 July, ca 2013
Me and Ol’ Black Tahoe will make our way down the trail to Virginia City this day. The yellow dust that makes a man’s mind run wild with the thought of riches was discovered in them parts many year ago. Today it’s but a ghost town entertaining trail riders during some few months of summer. It is, however, the history of the place that draws me to it. Bannack (a short trail ride away) and Virginia City is where the first rough and rugged emigrants – so named of those who come from “America,” thought as a entire different country back in them days – come to these territories. Most was hoping to make fortune from the color in the ground but finding instead little other than despair. For them what found the placer gold, there was road agents to take it away (one of the most notable outlaws being a man name of Plummer, hiding behind a lawman’s badge and soon hisself hung for his vile deeds), as well the claim jumper, hard winter and other such dangers. Along the trail nowadays, I hear tell anyway, those who made their fortune in the California Silicon Valley, in cable television and in other business concerns own most of the property in them parts and down along the Ruby River. They's rumored to be willing to shoot a man dead should he trespass a propertied mark along river's edge. I shall ride clear of them harsh-minded land barons of this new west. 

Virginia City's old main thoroughfare. 


Trailing back home from Virginia City, I am amazed again at the beauty of these territories. But I have seen also the scars of white men who care little for the land, and much for gold. Taking the trail past the remnants of what onest was a prospering town, I saw gravel and stone by untold ton moved and mounded mountainous high along Alder creek that must have long ago flowed free and lovely. It was a devastation to weigh hard on the heart of any but those who put the color afore the earth. ‘Cepting for that etched in my mind’s eye, I made no photographic record of the damage, believin’ that the permanence of land’s own scar was sufficient reminder of such greed and gluttonous appetite for wealth. I have not died today. And that is a fine thing. Yours truly…

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