Dawson Dolly: Prophet of Skagway

In the Brewery attached to the Dredge the walls are covered in graffiti. I was particularly fond of this one. Dawson Dolly's message is the Zeitgeist of this town. Gold was never found in Skagway, most of the gold here was swindled from fools or spent on idle pleasures and compounding misery. As someone who handles gold for a living now, I can say this is truly how I feel. I'm of the opinion of Robert Service:

"There's gold, and it's haunting, it's haunting
And calling me on as of old.
But it's not so much the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold."

After eating breakfast this morning at the Brewery, my coworkers and I went Ziplining, something I thought I'd never do, much less willingly. It was terrifying, but exhilarating. My moment of zen was when the guy securing my harness asked me if I wanted what he called the "Skagway 300". I have learned to just say yes to things as a way of approaching the unknown because I need the opportunity to do something out of the ordinary without having qualms. The point of danger needs to be indulged, and so, when he kicked me backwards off the 80 foot high platform yelling THIS IS SKAGWAY! and I fell into a momentary void, I knew that the gold was inside, for it stayed with me as the weightlessness took my guts and my sense of self for the half a second of complete annihilation. "I am here" I thought, and everything else is atoms falling through space. I thanked my God for the harness, for the professionalism of the man hooking me in, for the opportunity to be saved as all threatened nothing but empty death in formlessness, and then I expressed my first pure thought in a long time:

"OH SHIT!"