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Recently I spent a few days with my family at the remote cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains where I had retraced an 1876 mining claim boundary two years prior. I wrote about that experience here.
During this recent visit my daughters and sons-in-law humored me by agreeing to let me show them the boundary while I shared some of the history of the area. Of course, we had to visit the Native American grinding stone that was an accessory to the first claim corner. From there we walked the perimeter of the five-acre claim. They stayed with me and appeared at least mildly interested throughout. Honestly, I thought it was more of an excuse for them to go on a hike in beautiful country than talking history and surveying with the “Old Man.”
A few hours later, my son-in-law thanked me for taking him out to show him the boundary on the ground, with the original map and field notes in hand. He said he really appreciated learning the history of the area, especially of the booming silver mining days, and me explaining how I used the historical record and the tools of the day to retrace the boundary 141 years later. Surprisingly, the rest of them chimed in too, thanking me for the experience. Needless to say, it made this old surveyor and father quite happy.
Later that evening, while everyone else was inside the cabin playing a vicious game of Monopoly (I don’t have the attention span for such things), I found myself reflecting on the day of spending time with the next generation. I thought about how rewarding it was to do the original retracement, including performing the research to piece together the history. I also thought of my deceased brother, who had helped me (well, at least walked with me) as I did the retracement. I lost him less than a year later, which I wrote about here.
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