Ginsenging in the Mountains
One sunny morning in May 2002 my dad and I were getting ready to go ginsenging. We were packing up to hit the mountains. We got bottles of water because it was very hot. You could fry an egg on a rock.
We got our sack and shovel and we hit the mountains. We walked and my dad spotted some ginseng. I ran over and he asked me if I’m seeing what he is. I said “Yes I sure do.” It was the biggest patch of ginseng I had ever seen. It was a little bit bigger than a football field. We stood there looking at the ginseng thinking of all the money we could get. Then we started digging and one of the roots was bigger the palm of my hand. It took four hours to get it all. Finally we were finished.
The sweat was running down my fore head. I grabbed a bottle of water and in five seconds the water was gone. We had one whole sack full of ginseng. The sack was too heavy for me so my dad had to carry it. I was so excited.
We walked some more. We looked over the hill and my dad saw a snake that had a rat in its mouth swallowing it whole. It was curled up and looked mad. It was gray and longer than a broom and had rattlers at the end of its tail. My dad took his shovel and ran over to where the snake was guarding a big patch of ginseng. He raised up his shovel and swung hard at the snake and it tried to bite him but it missed and it made the snake angry. So the snake tried to bite him then my dad got really, really furious. He ran over to the snake and with one big swing he chopped off the snakes head. The snake’s tail was still moving around. My dad told me that that was the snake’s nerves because I thought that it was still alive. My dad wiped off the shovel because it had blood on it. Then we got the ginseng that the snake was guarding.
Now we had three whole feed sacks jam-packed with ginseng. We thought that we were going to be rich. My dad and I went to sell all of the ginseng. We made over one thousand dollars. We went home and told my mom and she was ecstatic. My dad bought a new car and it was really shiny. My dad said that was the best day of his life.
BY Jonathan S.