[Velvet Lounger]

Come early spring and school holidays stretching across the year, my little sis, our best friend and I drive down to the West Country to make our gold panning hobby a reality. This relatively new passion has been simple panning for gold, otherwise known as gold prospecting. Our late mother left us a house with quite a few acres of land. Using a sluice on the hard bedrock of the river that bisects our semi-forested property, the land has become the perfect place to unwind and get back control of my emotional problems, my sister also. We each pan for gold and find amazing little gold flecks, and sometimes goil nuggets. Life is so good out in the country when gold panning. The hobby has become a whole new life bringing joy. I come home feeling stronger.

When panning concentrate into the sluice, all my worries and anxieties literally wash away as the first few specks of fine gold and small pickers appear on the sluicing mat. Also, it's simply the gentle action of holding a pan, tilting it left and right and spinning water round and round so the water moves around the material loosening away the small stones to reveal little flecks of gold. Unlike others who regularly video on their You Tube channel, we don't share our enthusiasm for our hobby on any social media, because this has brought nothing but grief and hurt from trolls and haters. Though gold panning can be a solitary hobby, it can be shared with family and children who in turn find gold panning so exciting; also relaxing and very rewarding.

There is one thing I've learned through this gold panning hobby is to get out there, do the things you love. Don't let anyone tell you different. Don't worry about people who don't like what you do. You go out and enjoy the things that you enjoy. People gonna hate it regardless. It's amazing that just a panning session can bring up as much as a half-gram or even a gram of fine gold. At current prices, just one gram of fine gold is £32! Since I started this hobby, we've collected several ounces. Bit by bit it all adds up. For safety's sake I stow our gold findings into my bank's deposit box. One day when the price of gold rockets higher, we'll have a nice little nest egg.

The illness of PTSD has beset me so badly in the past, but listening to the running water in a babbling stream is peace in itself. So imagine finding ten or twenty little flecks of fine gold, and experience the joy of finding little yellow nuggets in your pan from crevicing in boulders. I've bought self help books on anxiety, but nothing heals faster than days out in our secret location, and then a barbeque if the evenings are warm.

For those of you who live in Australia or the Americas there is a fulfilling relaxing hobby in panning for gold just waiting for you to try it. For us it's not for profit, but for fun. And being together.

Agreed on all you said! We love in the Southwest U.S. and have endless places to go panning, drywashing, and nugget shooting. It is truly an escape from everything and the best family time around!

[Velvet Lounger]

Thank you! I wish you the best of everything, then.