Mercurial minds

When I was a child I loved to play with mercury, there was nothing more exciting than when a thermometer dropped and broke, scattering the small silver orbs across the floor My grandmother showed me how to roll the scattered quicksilver back together again into a large ball.

I was mesmerized by how it was attracted to itself. Both a liquid a solid at the same time. I loved playing with the mercury, smashing it, making it scatter to the four directions, then bring it home again. I was master of a small universe. I had no idea that it was lethal, or that it was absorbed through the skin, I had no idea that I was inviting myself to a future mad hatter’s tea party. Alice be damned. It was all about the mercury.

The place where I grew up was mercurial. West Marin was a place of serpentine and iron—and mercury. I had no idea that the quicksilver that we played with as children was also a part of a larger landscape. Years later, after the Nicasio reservoir had settled in for a long nap, punctuated by drought and deluge, and people flocked to it shores to fish, I barely noticed the mercury signs posted on the shore. Dire warnings not to eat the fish.

But when I went to looking for the information online, it was obfuscated. Yes, there were mercury mines in West Marin and West Sonoma County, yes, there was a superfund to clean up the Gambonini mine, but there was no overview of the role that mercury played in the North Bay. Certainly in the state of California, mercury was tantamount to gold, for without it, the rocks wouldn’t yield their precious cargo of silver and gold.