I've never before paid anyone for the privilege of walking through a muddy field and digging around in the muck for hours. In fact, though I've had to clean muddy farm implements and have on more than one occasion dug my car out of a muddy spot where I had gotten stuck, I've usually tried to avoid digging in the mud or walking in it. The last time I came across a motorist stuck in the mud, I attached the tow rope to my semitrailer and let the driver of the car who was foolish enough to drive off the road and into the mud crawl under his vehicle and connect his end before I pulled him out. Well, all that changed a couple of weekends ago when a grandson came to visit and was determined we needed to pay a visit to Arkansas' diamond mine.
He had even made a list of people for whom he intended to find diamonds on a Saturday afternoon visit to the mine. He was an optimistic 7-year-old. I objected some, saying it was more than a four-hour drive and just plain dumb to head off late on a Saturday morning for the possibility of only an hour or two at the mine before it closed, but I lost and we were off over mountains, through the woods and around lots of curves until we finally arrived around 3 p.m. at Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro.
Even though I had heard about it before, it wasn't what I expected. I was really thinking of a place where one could dig around in dry dirt rich in coal and volcanic rock. Instead, it was more like a tiny corner of a muddy cornfield where a fellow would do better to keep tall grasses growing so it wouldn't all wash away every time it rained.
And the place was packed with optimistic diamond hunters. In fact, I'm pretty sure the acres of full parking lots exceeded the acres of diamond mine. We did find a parking spot, and I paid the entrance fees and then pulled on my rubber boots and grabbed some shovels and spades so we could be off on a muddy adventure. The little 37-acre field had recently been plowed, and it had rained the previous night -- the best time to find diamonds, a park employee told us.
Water stood in the furrows and a mud-laden stream flowed through the middle of the field. A misstep could result in being knee deep in the slimy stuff and losing boots and shoes when trying to escape. And there were a good number of people who came out of the place barefooted and told us their shoes were buried somewhere in the muddy field, probably lost until the weather dries and the plow does its work and brings them up from their muddy grave.
We found lots of jasper but no diamonds. I told my son and daughter-in-law, who voted against me on the sensibility of taking the Arkansas adventure, that any diamonds sprinkled here and there on the ground by park employees before the park opened in the morning had either been found earlier in the day or trampled down deep into the mud to be discovered at a later date.
Maybe there really are a few diamonds to be found there, but I figure the park is bringing in a lot more money by charging admission than it could by actually mining for diamonds. And if the park officials can keep hopes alive by dropping a diamond or two from time to time and have new finds in the news, more people will be willing to spend good money to play in the mud and look for what they are unlikely to find.
After an hour and a half of digging and playing in the slime, we left, muddy, hungry and tired. We stopped and grabbed a hamburger before the long drive back home -- probably the best part of the trip. The disappointment of my grandson was somewhat assuaged by a souvenir rock from the park's gift shop (perhaps the park was mining our pockets). His younger brother didn't care. He had a great time playing in the water puddles and mud and was indeed a muddy mess when we left.
I'm pretty sure it was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I could have made a mud hole in the back yard and sent the grandkids out to play in it with spades and shovels to find gold. The end result would have been the same.
Will we ever go back? I'm not planning on it. But, then, there are about 26 more grandchildren who haven't been there yet. And you never know what I might find when I get around to cleaning all the mud out of the back of my car and knock off the caked mud from our boots and shovels.
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 04/05/2017