Feeling confident, I was strengthened by my successes as a prospector, and my horizons broadened. I had the money and the curiosity and the will to roam more widely. I didn’t have to explain myself: my work spoke for me. I was an ingot of gold. I was a pouch of gemstones. I was a thick bar of silver. Talk and speculation meant nothing—they were like Frank’s long stories, not interesting in themselves but suggesting a state of mind. In my chosen profession all that mattered were results, and mine were unmistakable, glittering for all to see.
Untethered to my family, and single, I could go anywhere I wished. Hardly conscious of it, or planning it, I’d prepared myself to be an explorer and traveler. I’d refined my skills as a prospector, and I’d discovered that I could be self-sufficient, able to camp in the wildest places. I’d learned how to repair my equipment and stay healthy, to prevail and flourish in the harshest conditions.
In the secretive world of prospecting I’d earned a whispered reputation as a gold finder. But finding gold was not what impressed the mining companies that later hired me as a consultant. It was my acceptance of risk, my dependability, my determination, my knowledge of geology, and my youth. It was also my hatred of promises, my belief in results. And it was something else, hard to define or teach: my instinct for finding what I was looking for, which amounted, in terms of rock hunting, almost to an exquisite sense of smell.
From Arizona and Nevada I traveled to Alaska, hired by a firm that bankrolled me to prospect for gold in the Yukon River Basin. The price of gold was at that time high enough for them to commission me to find whatever I could—modest amounts, as it turned out, but of great purity. My youth was an advantage. I was twenty-six and I didn’t know what I realized later, that competitive businesses are always on the lookout for young and ambitious workers, eager to learn, able to take orders, even-tempered and undemanding—no family, no mortgage, adaptable, portable, loyal, grateful, who will work for much less money than someone older, to build a résumé and make a reputation.
That was me. I was the young, hardworking risk-taker they wanted. What they did not understand was that I knew my worth; so I allowed them to give me orders, while suppressing my objections to their patronizing me, because I needed this experience. I was successful on the Yukon River, and instead of going back to Littleford for a summer holiday I took a vacation on the Seward Peninsula. There, I heard whispers of jade deposits locally, and after I fulfilled my Yukon River contract, I set out on my own in Seward to prospect for jade and jadeite.
It seems a paradox that I’d gone from the intense heat of the southwestern desert to thirty-below in Alaska. But it is not unusual. A healthy person can acclimatize to any severe conditions—heat or cold. It’s a matter of stamina and a mental challenge. Some of the men on Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole had come from working in the intense heat of India and Arabia and Burma. A person does not merely acquire the ability to endure a certain climate but rather attains a level of health that allows him, or her, to adapt to any extreme temperature. My years in Arizona and Nevada, active in that heat, prepared me for the cold in Alaska, where I had to leave my van idling all night in front of my hut so that I’d be able to drive it in the morning.
The challenge in the North was buying the instruments and equipment for this specialized prospecting. After forming my own small company, I looked for partnership with a big mining company in order to pay my bills and expand. Their confidence in me, and their investment in my modest operation, gave me the freedom to range more widely.
My partnering company had a number of mines in Australia. They offered to send me there to verify a number of gold deposits. I traveled under their auspices and reported on the gold reserves, but at the same time discovered new possibilities. At that time, the innovation of rechargeable batteries meant that rare earths were in greater demand: lithium, for one, dysprosium another for computer guts—an essential in hard drives. The name “rare earth” was misleading: they were not rare in the sense of being hard to find—there was plenty of the stuff in Australia, much more of them than other minerals. But they are called rare because they can’t be reproduced or duplicated. There was a finite amount. I made it my business to go out on my own and find these valuable deposits.
I liked Australia for its open spaces. Most of the people lived at the edges, on the coast. I favored the empty outback, the distant bush they called the woop-woop and the never-never. And something else that pleased me: Australian women were hardier than the men. Seeing that I was a Yank (and not a Pom), they teased me, and discovering that I could take the teasing—which seemed to me a form of flirting—I had many friends, and a few lovers. After my celibacy in Arizona, and a few casual encounters with women in Alaska (where the competition was fierce—too many men, not enough single women), my success in Australia heartened me.
I had never believed that I would find a woman to share the hardships of my life. My ideal was not a seductress in a boudoir but rather a woman who would be a teammate, who’d accompany me in the desert or the bush. I thought it was unlikely, but in Australia I met many women who were unfazed by the rigors of prospecting; they were themselves able geologists and knew their hot, red landscape.
They loved the outback, they liked driving long distances, they could drink me under the table, they were capable of overcoming hardship, but they were also women, with reserves of tenderness and understanding. I am generalizing, because I was lucky enough to meet three such Australian women in my three years there, shuttling from my rental in Perth to various sites in the vast state of Western Australia, looking for gold, and then opals, and finally rare earths.
These women were as strong as me, and more patient. My success in Australia was due to the fact that because I was often prospecting with someone else, we could cover twice as much ground. And with these capable and independent women, I learned in Australia that a love affair was not merely a stewing in sensuality as I had with Julie Muffat in Littleford. Physical attraction was important—essential—but so was a sense of humor; so was respect, and much more.
Rejecting Frank’s opportunism with Frolic, winning her a big settlement and then latching on to it, I came to see what a love affair really was—a partnership—and the longest one of mine in Australia was fruitful in every respect. Most of all we were happy, we were strong for being a team, we found the ore we were looking for, and we paid our bills. On weekends or rest days we made love. That was Erill.
She knew what she wanted from me. She had an instinct for being able to please me, she was bawdy and unshockable. She taught me how to please her, she coached me and she was more experienced than me. She was not a coquette, simpering and being shy; she was dominant, with a hunger and ferocity that transformed her, an intensity that would not abate until she was satisfied.
Yes, like that—don’t stop.
In those early days I was inexperienced. I didn’t know what I wanted—or let’s say, only the simplest release. But Erill was able to tantalize me, extending the pleasure, showing me that I could stay in a state of heightened arousal for an hour or more in a condition of near delirium.
This apprenticeship in romance cleared my mind and prepared me for other relationships. I learned a simple, valuable lesson, that sexual compatibility is a wonderful thing—fulfilling, exciting, like a drug—but is not necessarily long-lasting. A real partnership needs much more than a libido to succeed; it needs equality, understanding, intelligence, patience, and most of all, kindness.
That’s what I learned from liberated Australian women. And how did they know so much? Because they had to deal with so many alpha males and macho types, they needed to understand them, they’d had to cope with opposition, and they had to work out their future. Such women knew the limitations of their men.
The women geologists were the best, the hardiest traveling companions—well-educated, funny, friendly, adaptable; able campers, instinctive prospectors, and straightforwardly sexual. They knew what they wanted, they knew what I wanted. They were my sexual education. And their greatest gift was that they did not mistake a night of passion as the prologue to a marriage. Such a night was complete in itself, not part of a complex bargain. No power dynamic was involved—it was that welcome thing, sex by mutual agreement.
As an American man I’d been led to think of sex as a favor. These Aussie women set me straight. I’d never seen a shrink, yet this sexual education was something I associated with psychotherapy. I’d gone to Australia with various preconceptions, and secrets, and the usual male hang-ups and embarrassments; but three years of traveling and working and making love had rid me of my anxieties. I became liberated, because they were. They showed me how to be truthful, how to be a better man.
After Australia, my chronology becomes muddled and truncated. I was offered a job in Tanzania, but opted instead for a return to Alaska for a spell. I took a long holiday in Mexico, riding my motorcycle through Baja and then taking the ferry to Mazatlán. In casual conversation there, in a bar with a drunken gringo, I heard, “It’s the fault of those feuding Zorrillas,” but I just smiled and agreed. I rode south on the Pan-American Highway through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, lingering in Costa Rica, and then finally I ran out of road in Panama.
Instead of returning home, I caught a ship from Colón to Santa Marta in Colombia, bringing my bike, and rode up country to Bogotá, where I knew that the mining company I’d partnered with in Alaska had an emerald concession. I looked them up; they knew my record with the company and were happy to meet me. They said they were expanding an emerald mine here and signed me up as a technical adviser in mineshaft monitoring. The mine was one of many, near the tiny mountain town of Muzo, about two hours north of Bogotá, on steep winding roads, a thrilling ride on my motorcycle.
Emeralds are maddening—even very expensive ones are often full of flaws, prone to cracking, with a lot of color variations and internal imperfections. I was happier digging the harder variscites in Nevada, the colors not so dramatic as emeralds but the stones tough and reliable and lasting. Yet it was the emeralds that led me to Vita.