“Yeah, yeah.” I snapped back at her. Why didn’t anything ever spook her? We decided to hike a little way down towards Skinner Meadows. Layla said there was more likely to be gold further down the mountain, since the river carries stuff downhill. I asked her why there would be any gold at all if the river was carrying it away. She couldn’t answer that one. So, we just pretended I hadn’t asked the question.

The road from the lake back to the meadow seemed even steeper going down than it had coming up. We were covering a lot of ground really fast. Fortunately, even though it was dark out, Layla had figured out a way to make sure we were headed in the right direction. She noticed on the map that the main stream coming out of Darkhorse Lake led directly down to Skinner Meadows. So, we knew that as long as we could see or hear that main rushing stream we were still going towards the meadow. Suddenly though, we were at the meadow. The stream we had been following disappeared. The water just spread out all over the glistening field. The moon was shining, and all its light was reflected on the snow and water. Layla and I just looked at each other. I think we were both having fun but getting a little nervous that we had already gone much farther from the campsite than we meant to go. Still, we decided to keep going.

We walked across the meadow. When we made it to the other side, the water running off from the field came together in dents in the muddy ground. It ran downhill. Each little stream carved its own path down the hill— going wherever was easiest. Sometimes the little streams would cross each other. Sometimes they would merge into one bigger stream. Layla and I walked down through the trees for a while, until we found some flatter areas where the streams slowed down a little before continuing downhill. Layla thought we could start panning right there.