On this soft, gray morning, Aki and I make our way up the old road to the Perseverance mining ruins. I am glad that we missed by eighty years the destruction of the Gold Creek Valley. Instead of ore stamping mills and high-powered hydraulic hoses, we hear robin and thrush sing. Except for a wide strip along the now clear running creek, alders and poplars cover disturbed ground. Elderberry and salmon berry blossoms thrive in their shade. As northern poet Robert Service once wrote, “There are strange things done in the mid-night sun by the men who moil for gold.” We are thankful that they moil no more in the Gold Creek Valley.