. . .Nick awoke bemused. After arriving home from work (commercial plumbing), he had taken a late Friday afternoon nap in his rented single-wide mobile home near Clam Beach (CA, USA). In a very-real-feeling dream, he was walking along the in-the-vicinity Little River, when he suddenly found himself in a lush-and-emerald-green-like-Ireland meadow. A Caucasian farmer then came up to him – seemingly from out of nowhere – and handed him a sheet of paper. Nick, a thirty-four-year-old Dutch American, zoomed in on the image. It appeared to be a detail of a USGS (United States Geological Survey) topographic quadrangle. For some unknown-to-him reason, the farmer then began to gesture with his hands as if he were perplexed, but he didn’t say anything. Nick thought: Is he mute? Then Nick looked back at the unlabeled physical map. The contour lines started to pulsate. The shading intensified. A voice – was it in his head? – spoke up. “This is where a gold nugget weighing almost 49 troy oun. . . Read More