That dusty green prospector, they said he was crazy. He wasn’t one of them with the wild grey beards, short and squat, with the overalls and the missing teeth. He was lean and tall, and his jeans were held up by leather suspenders. He was a young man who came out to California in the hopes to make it big in the mother lode, but he set off to a tract that everyone shook their heads at and chuckled. And he disappeared then, for weeks, for months, for years, and they just shrugged and said they knew that’d happen, what did you expect? When he finally came back he still didn’t have a beard, still wasn’t short and squat and missing teeth. He was the same young man as before, but sturdier for swinging that teak pickaxe and hauling that sack. He sets it down on the table and it falls open: Glow, and wide eyes.