Welcome back to This World of Ours. I’m Christopher Frames. This next half hour, we have some very special guests with interesting stories. A poet who spent ninety days on a raft floating in no man’s land between Cuba and Florida garnering material for her new book. A Chef who has just begun to confit the legs of gluten free haute cuisine, so to speak. A baseball player recruited from Japan, who knew no English and was missing not one, but two limbs.
But, first:
Imagine yourself surrounded in a shroud of darkness, cool air around you, equipped with nothing but a shovel and pickaxe. Your eyes adjust to the darkness and you begin to search for something precious. This goes on for days at a time, only coming above ground to rest and regenerate. That was exactly what Elizabeth Reginalds did for one year at the Carlin-Nevada Complex, the third largest gold mine in the United States. She writes of her experience in her just released autobiography: ¨The Mine Was Mine”. We are joined by Elizabeth now. Welcome to “This World of Ours”
Elizabeth: Hey, yeah, thank you.
Christopher: So before we even talk about the book, I’d like to know a little bit about your childhood. Can you talk about your family and your interests a little bit, from an early age?
Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s right. Well, I grew up in a tiny little town in Utah called Helsberg, it’s about 2 hours outside of Salt Lake City. My parents were subsistence farmers, so we really did live off of our farm. And that was great. I learned early on how to harvest and crop. I’m a big farmer’s market type of girl. I was an only child, so I really did spend a lot of time alone, growing up.
Christopher: Okay, that’s interesting. So this year-long project wasn’t to sort of escape overcrowding or the people around you?
Elizabeth: No, and that’s funny, yeah, I get that a lot. No for me it was purely a test. I really wanted to explore something I had never done, for a long period of time to see how it would change me.
Christopher: Great and right before this started, what were you doing?
Elizabeth: I was actually living in Las Vegas right before I decided to start this endeavor. I was working as a short order cook at the Coffeeshop at the Riviera Hotel on the strip. I was working the Midnight to 8 AM shift. And this was another one of these tests I do for myself. I guess I could have written a larger book called “A Series of Odd Jobs”.
Christopher: Laughs. Wow. And so you were already in Nevada when this plan arose.
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.
Christopher: So What exactly were you doing at Carlin and can you tell me why Carlin?
Elizabeth: Well I kind of just looked it up. And I thought. You know all these guys there are mining for gold. What would happen if I just mined aimlessly?
Christopher: Okay, can you elaborate on that point?
Elizabeth: Mmm yeah, um, So I figured these guys, they must feel very successful, when they hit gold…in an unexpected place, you know. So what if I wasn’t searching for anything. What if I went underground for hours upon hours at a time with no purpose for to mine for something that I didn’t know I was looking for. Would I be fulfilled?
Christopher: It’s very bizarre to hear, but at the same time really intriguing. This concept. And can I ask what you lived off of, without earning any income for a year? And how did you get permission to do this?
Elizabeth: Getting permission was pretty easy. Umm, and as far as income, like I said, I can easily work any plot of land. So I lived outdoors and ate my own food for the entire year I spent at Carlin.
Christopher: How amazing. Really. Um, I want to read a short passage from the book, if I can.
Elizabeth: Sure. Sure.
Christopher: Ok.
“Black became not just a color. It was a taste, a sound. And the longer I stayed in the mine, the more I came to love the darkness. Because I could see everything so very clearly. What my eyes could no longer take in, they went beyond. And I just began to adapt, the way anyone would, to this new world in a mine.”
Elizabeth: Hmm. Yeah.
Christopher: Wow, so that’s really something. You know I feel kind of scared, thinking about my body completely changing its course of thinking.
Elizabeth: Yeah, well I guess that’s become my thing over the years, right? Adaptation. To circumstance and…