Panning for Gold

Thoughts from a writer's conference.

She kneels by the stream, hands busy in the icy waters. The stream moves swiftly in spring. Fed by the winter’s snowmelt, it carries many things down from the mountain, leaves and branches and bits of detritus. Occasionally a dead insect or a mummified mouse floats by. But she is not interested in those things. She swirls the pan around and around, heedless of the numbing cold that makes her joints ache. The reward is worth it.

Sand and gravel rotate in the water as she patiently moves the pan in slow deliberate circles. Her crafty eyes probe through the rippling distortions for the sign. For the tiniest glimmer, the yellow gleam in the sunlight that signals success. There! Her fingers seem to take on a life of their own as they scrabble after the yellow lump. She pulls it dripping from the glacial water, examines it with a knowing eye--but shakes her head. No. She tosses it back into the roiling torrent where it barely splashes as it is swept away.

Undaunted, she picks up her pan and plunges it once again into the icy stream.

Such is the life of an agent hearing pitches.

Bart