March Community Living

March 2014

What is a claimstaker?

What is a claimstaker? Well, here’s the shortest description I can give. A claimstaker is what you call a person who gets hired by a mining company to go out to the middle of nowhere to put posts in the ground. As a rule, the job is almost never in a very nice place, and it’s almost never at a pleasurable time of year. It could be up a mountain on the top of a cliff or on the vastness of a dry playa bed. It could be in the heat of the middle of summer or the cold of the snowiest day you have ever seen. Generally, the job involves putting monuments in the ground to establish a physical boundary for mineral prospects and the recording of all of this with the appropriate government offices. There are many different laws and requirements depending on the size and general location of said group of claims. One I can think of is the requirement for a valid claim monument. In Arizona, a person has to have a five foot high 2X2 post sticking out of the ground in order to be valid. In other places, a three foot pile of rocks will suffice, and still in other places yet, one could scratch marks into a tree and that’s a good enough monument as any.

               Once, I can remember spending an entire afternoon looking on a hillside covered in pine trees and rocks. I was looking for a marker placed before the 1930’s which showed the corner of an important claim. Well, given the time difference between then and now and the overgrowth and subsequent variations from year to year, this made the task very daunting. The only thing I had with me was a copy of an old hand drawn map and a set of latitude longitude coordinates. I plugged the numbers into my fancy GPS machine and drove as far as I could up the hill on ATV to the general location I thought it would be. I had to hike another couple of hundred feet up the hill. After scrambling up and getting scratched from the thick growth of pines, I came to the exact location. My GPS showed that I was right on the spot that it was supposed to be, yet there were no significant markings or posts of any kind around. There was just a whole lot of scraggly pine trees, boulders and thick undergrowth. So I wandered around for a while; up and down the hillside. I can remember feeling frustrated because I knew it was something I had to find. After a while I wiped the sweat off my brow and I sat down to think for a moment. 

               It was a dry December day at a cold altitude, but I remember that the sky was clear. I knew I couldn’t leave the job until I found this monument. I had to have the coordinates so that I could draw a new more accurate map, I just couldn’t find it. And then, like a silent prayer, I looked up and thought I saw something on the tree. I moved closer and got my hand up on the tree to peel back the bark. Well, hallelujah, I thought to myself. I could see the markings that someone had etched in the tree. Though it was no longer legible, I could tell that someone had deliberately carved the name of the corner in the deepness of the bark. And on this day, almost 90 years after it was originally etched, I was finding it again.

               And you know, I think this is the best description of a claim staker that I can give. It’s a lot like life in a way, because I find myself lost a lot of the time, but after I sit down and really think about what it is I want to find, it’s usually right in front of my nose. Even if I can’t always understand why or how, usually the question has already been answered. All one has to do is find your marker and put it on your map.   

A Divine Map (finished)

Maps show so many things

Treasures and tales

Of lost golden rings.

Some maps are dirty

And yellowed with age

Some maps are crisp

Some printed on noble page.

Some are folded

Hidden in some corner

And some are rewarded

With county recorders.

Maps are like you-

Maps are like me

Born a blank page

Empty and free.

But as time rattles on

All of us draw our own maps

With pencils of experience

We plot our own path.

Who else but God

Could show you the way

When you have no idea where you are going

And no idea of what to say.

You are not born

With a draftsman’s keen eye

So, how can you tell

The mountains from the sky,

But if you look around on your map

There are a few hidden clues

To the state you were born

And the life you will choose.

One knows not

The roads you will take

Or the mountains you’ll climb

Or the fences of fate

Which cross the designated path

Often when least suspect

Covered in rusty nails and barbs

God draws you a fence.

The map you are drawing

Is unique and intense

And you must always remember

There’s a path around that nasty fence.

Look to the scale bar

To find out how long

An inch is a mile

But I might be wrong. 

But of the drawing of maps

The most important rule is such

That the North Arrow

Must always face up.

Like hands towards the sky

It acts as your guide

No matter the weather

Or if your map leads you awry.

So say a little prayer

And you’ll find your way.

Just look where you are going

And always have faith.