Relaxing by the River, Envisioning the Lamentations of My Enemies
By Danny VanDerschelden
There is a certain spot along the Illinois River, the locals refer to it as the “Green Bridge”, where I like to go to clear my head. I have been going to this spot for years. I used to mine there nearly a decade ago. Nowadays, I go there to think and to remember. Sometimes, I walk back and forth for hours stopping at certain landmarks to relive a memory that occurred at that particular spot in the past. Sometimes, I will sit down at the waters edge and listen to the music of natures orchestra. I do these things until my heart starts beating faster. Until my breathing simultaneously slows down and intensifies. Until my eyes squint and focus in on an nonexistent image of a soon to exist future. The truth is the title of this essay is a bit misleading. I don’t go to the river to relax, I go to get pissed.
While it is technically true that I used to mine there 9 years ago, practically speaking many lifetimes have passed since then. It was June 2011 when I first arrived there with my mining partner Andy, and an old beat up keene 3” dredge. That dredge wasn’t much but to me it was everything. I dropped out of college and gave back my scholarships to go mining. I spent the summer and fall packing foundation panels in the middle of the godforsaken desert to save the money needed to buy it and fund the expedition. This essay would be a book if I wrote about all the challenges I had to overcome just to arrive at the Green Bridge with a dredge. But, I did arrive, and as far as I was concerned I had everything in the world.
I ended up going bust that particular expedition, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one. The next one after that also flopped. Then I went bust a few more times. The next couple of expeditions also ended in failure. But the one after that…ended in complete catastrophe! In fact it took me about 3 years of mining full time to get the experience required to make a living at it.
The campground at the green bridge was practically a small boom town. I found that colonies of that boom town could be found at nearly every campground in SW Oregon. I couldn’t go mining without making several new friends. There was the guy at the Green Bridge. He dredged because he injured his back. However, the lack of gravity underwater allowed him to feel the fulfillment of hard labor without the debilitating pain he felt on land. There was the old man at the Island Creek rec area in Douglas County. He dredged because he felt like it was the one thing he had to stay alive for.
It took me a long time to get over the learning curve and to become a “professional dredger”. Actually, it took to long. The same season I finally got over that hump SB 838 passed and became law. Dredging was outlawed. As someone who dedicated himself and his life to dredging, it felt like my existence was now illegal. I did not realize at the time that there were still some streams open to dredging in the state. Neither did most miners. The community I loved disappeared, and the miners that did continue mining did so in the shadows. I do not know if the Green Bridge guy found another way to experience the gratification of a hard-days work, or if that old man found another reason keep living. I do know one thing for sure. I never saw them again.
I thought my career would follow a path like the dreamers we see in movies. A cliché story of how nobody believed in me at first. However, after fighting the odds and proving them wrong society would celebrate me and my success. I was wrong. If caught succeeding in my dream I would be thrown in prison for a year. Eventually I took up a job being the watchmen of the Sugar Pine Mine in Galice and exiled myself to the wilderness. After several months enjoying my peace and solitude the government once again decided to destroy me.
They wanted to steal the Sugar Pine Mine and turn it in to a park. After the owners of the mine refused to back down the government decided to frame me for assault with a deadly weapon against a Federal Agent, unless I “talked”. I did not talk. While awaiting an answer from the Grand Jury things got very interesting and 1000 armed men and women showed up at the mine to protect it and myself from the government. Rather then make an armed invasion of the mine the government subjected us to months of mental torture.
This is a long story that I actually wrote about already. If you are a member of the RMPA checkout “A Dream of Gold” in the members library. Ultimately we outlasted them. The Year after that was the most challenging of my life. But that is a story best saved for a later date, after the passage of time allows me to laugh at old griefs.
However this is not an essay about my victim hood.
First of all my story is just one of thousands that could be written about the dreams and lives destroyed by the environmentalist agenda. An entire library of obituaries could be built with the stories of literal deaths of despair of loggers, miners and ranchers. This essay is just a figurative obituary. Dedicated to a naïve starry eyed miner who drove over the green bridge one summer morning years ago. Torment and persecution killed him, and then rebuilt him.
If it wasn’t for the these events of my past I would have been content with my little dredge earning a small living. Eventually I would have worked my way up to a larger commercial operation and I am sure I would have made a small fortune on that path. But now it ain’t enough. I need to build an enormous corporation that can wield its power to push back against the environmentalist lobby. When I lose focus or motivation to build my company, I go to the river.
We miners have done nearly everything possible to get our rights back. We have protested, petitioned, used science, used the courts, and have used the ballot box. There are only two other peaceful means of change we have not utilized. First of which is the power of just doing it. Just go out and mine. We miners made a terrible mistake by shutting ourselves down for them. The State of Oregon only outlawed dredging on Essential Salmon Habitat Streams. However, many of us stopped dredging even on streams we are allowed to dredge on. Not only are we not disobeying the laws, we are actually being more strict then Kate Brown herself.
Secondly we never used the power of corporate influence. I am now, along with a team of other pissed off miners (Kerby, Derek, Craig, and my beautiful wife Veronica) are building a soon to be powerful corporation. Republic Mining is not just getting miners back to work by selling claims and club memberships. As our company grows we will use our influence and resources to push back against the environmentalist and turn the tide. Mining will come back. We will win this war together.
Believe me, there is a plan. Both divine, and worldly. Fate, in its perfection, has brought us here at this time to fight back against the anti-human movement plaguing this country. We have a plan to make use of the time we were brought in to. Just you wait for it to unfurl. Joining Republic Mining doesn’t just give you access to mining claims. You are pre-ordering a ticket to the coming festivities and adding your name to the list of miners who haven’t been beaten into submission. Do you have any fight left in you? If so click here to join our team today.