Metal Detecting "Random Musings"

Detecting down on the river is the complete opposite in regards to both the conditions and the approach that comes with swinging my Nexus machines in the fields. I can't detect my fields at the moment because they're all waterlogged, I need them to dry up before I can get back to hunting. That's the thing with pasture, digging when it's really dry will damage the veneer of the land and digging when it's too wet makes it really messy. Let's say I like it to be moist, when the spade cuts the plug in a very satisfying motion and the soil is sticky enough not to crumble away. 

I never meet anyone when I'm in the fields, the opposite can be said for when I'm on the river, I meet all different types of people stopping me and wanting to talk about what I'm actually doing. Many don't know what a metal detector is so they're really fascinated with it. Many want to know what I find, most of the time, on the day, I don't state if I've found anything at all because word might get about and then my quiet little spots will turn into hunting grounds for others. I still stand by my view that many wouldn't bother with the foreshore once they actually swing a detector on it for a short time, it's a hard environment to work with.

It's The Moments Along The Way

Taking into account all the different types of people I talk to, the one reoccurring question is Do You Sell What You Find? it's nearly always asked in the same sort of tone, insinuating that must be the reason I'm doing it, for financial gain. For me this is a really weird question because never in all my years of detecting have I ever thought about selling anything that I've found. It has never crossed my mind because metal detecting to me is a process, it's a continuous journey that never stops. Everything I find helps stitch together the journey, the items I find are like pins in a map, when you touch them you can recall where and when you found them. No monetary value can be put on that feeling you get when you dig an old coin or some sort of treasure, it's a feeling I never get tired of. Not only that but most of the things I've found are worthless in the monetary sense.

As I've also explained in the past, it doesn't have to be treasure for me to get excited, if I'm digging deep trash with my Nexus machines, I get a real buzz from understanding what a deep signal sounds like, digging it and recovering it. What it ends up being is neither here nor there, it's the fact you understood your machine, acted on what it's communicating to you and you recovered the signal. That's a process in itself and this can be hard for people that don't detect to understand. For me the motions that you go through are the best part, it's when you're swinging your detector not knowing when the next "BEEP" is going to occur and if it's going to be trash or treasure. I'd get bored if I dug treasure all the time, I like it to be unexpected. 

When it came to carp fishing the question from those who have never done it was Why Sit There For All Those Hours If You're Only Going To Put The Fish Back? What was misunderstood here was the process you went through to catch the fish in the first place, you've tied your own rigs, worked out where the carp feed, spent hours on the water, watching and learning the movements of the fish. Within that process was the peace, the early morning sunrise and the dew dripping from the trees and bushes and endless sunny days where it literally felt like everything in the world had stopped. Then to stitch all these perfect moments together was that fact you caught a few carp along the way. There's nothing quite like that moment your bite alarm screams off alerting you to the potential monster on the end of your line.

The End Result

The bite alarm beeping gives me the same buzz as my metal detector beeping, it's alerting me to the unseen, I've made a connection, be it with a piece of the wild like a hard fighting carp, or a fragment of the past that connects me to lives gone by, It's these forms of communication that are good for the soul, they're experiences, new material possessions only give you a temporary buzz but life experiences live with you for years. I've written in the past about consumerism being a pandemic in the modern age, we live in an "easy come, easy go" society, hell you don't even need real money to buy the next fad, you just hand over a plastic card. Because of this, people are existing on 'temporary highs' it's the buzz of the purchase but this only lasts a little while before the item is either thrown out or put on eBay, nothing appears to have any worth anymore. 

Then they purchase the next 'quick buzz' and so the theme continues, for me personally, I don't need to surround myself with a load of material shit to make me feel like I'm winning. For me it goes a lot deeper than that, mainly though, I understand the value of money and I love everything that I choose to purchase. I'm not an easy come easy go kind of guy, people often ask me if I'd sell any of my older Nexus machines because I have the latest V3, hell no, they mean too much to me and will be used loads in the future. I don't care about the apparent best, people seem to have to own the latest "BEST" and when the new "BEST" comes out they get rid of the old "BEST" and so the cycle continues again and again. This is just another example of what I mentioned in the paragraph above, "easy come easy go", where nothing has any real value. Splice into that, internet and social media addiction, is it any wonder most people have the attention span of a goldfish.  

Let Me Checkin With The Nothing

Just because I have the latest Nexus detector does that suddenly make all the old models bad? just because I chose to buy a Tesoro Outlaw does that mean I need to sell all my Golden Mask machines? I love all my machines, they all have their own voices and they're all lovely to swing, I would never sell any of them. If it wasn't for all these detectors I wouldn't be out on the river or in the fields and I wouldn't be able to feel the buzz of finding something cool, hell .... even digging trash has a strange cathartic effect on me.  We all know by now that with the trash comes the treasure and it's all part of the continuous process that is 'Metal Detecting'. 

When you go back to the start of this blog where I told you I get presented a lot with the question Do You Sell What You Find? I can't help but feel that this falls into the easy come easy go mentality that vast amounts of people have nowadays. "Time Is Money Dude", for me it isn't, I can't put a price on both the joy metal detecting brings to me and how much I value my machines and what I find, be it a coin, a button or an old piece of shrapnel. All these items where destine to remain buried forever more, the fact I'm unearthing them and storing them all in my possession, that alone makes them valuable to me. In regards to the mountains of trash that I dig, getting it out the ground and into a recycling centre goes towards keeping Mother Earth in good shape so that's a valuable task as well, hell ....... from where I'm standing it's a win win situation.