In the static world of hard facts and figures it was approximately twenty-five minutes before the gold ceased glowing, but the moments that passed while we worked the river were neither brief or long, were in fact somehow removed from the very restriction or notion of time — we were outside of time, is how it felt to me; our experience was so uncommon we were elevated to a place where such concerns as minutes and seconds were not only irrelevant but did not exist. This feeling, speaking personally, was brought on not only by the wealth our evergrowing piles of gold represented, but also from the thought that this experience was born of one man’s unique mind, and though I had never before pondered the notion of humanity, or whether I was happy or unhappy to be human, I now felt a sense of pride at the human mind, its curiosity and perseverance; I was obstinately glad to be alive, and glad to be myself. The gold from our buckets shone in dense shafts of light and the branches and limbs of the surrounding trees were bathed in the glow of the river. There was a warm wind pushing down through the valley and off the surface of the water; it kissed my face and caused my hair to dance over my eyes. This moment, this one position of time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living, I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. At any rate, and perhaps this is just, it was not something we could hold on to for very long. Everything immediately after this went just black and wrong as could be imagined, everything after this was death in one or the other way.