You can roll that stone
To the top of the hill
Drag your ball and chain behind you
You can carry that weight
With an iron will
Or let the pain remain behind you
Several weeks ago, I had the good fortune of visiting a gold mine smack in the middle of Ecuador's southeastern rainforest.
I accompanied a friend of mine from my village for the 3-day jaunt. He owns the gold mine, as well as around 2000 acres of virgin rainforest. The gold mine occupies a tiny fraction of his land, but the site of it was ugly. Trees had been torn out, the ground completely dug up, and the river full of sediment as the mining machinery did its dirty deeds.
To get to the site, we traveled by truck for 2 hours on a windy road, then canoed for another 2 hours. We passed by mining camps all along the rivers edge.
The mining camp we stayed at consisted of a couple of wooden houses, with no electricity and no bathroom. Only one woman was present at the mining camp; she worked as the full-time cook. Colombian, Peruvian and Ecuadorians worked on the gold mine day and night.
One day, my friend and I hiked into his rainforest. It was beautiful. He brought me there because he'd like to to help him get an eco-tourism project started there as a more sustainable alternative to gold mining.
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