A Peck of Gold

Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.

All the dust the wind blew high
Appeared like god in the sunset sky,
But I was one of the children told
Some of the dust was really gold.

Such was life in the Golden Gate:
Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
And I was one of the children told,
‘We all must eat our peck of gold.’

--Robert Frost

All of the gold-influenced names around here--Gold Hill, Goldstream, Gold Flake, Gold Nugget, etc--date from the Gold Rush, but in the Fall, you can really be convinced that these names come from the crazy yellow birch and aspens, and the aggressive Autumn light adding gold on top of gold, to dazzling effect.

And as long as we don't have snow, we have dust. Fine, glacial dust that gets under our nails, into our clothes, and all over our cars and homes. It's clean dust, mind you, far preferable to urban grime with its associated carcinogens and human-originated cooties. But not so aesthetically pleasing! I find that I spend most idle moments at red lights cleaning my hands.

The only thing we lack to make Robert Frost's scene is wind. But I'm not sorry about that!