Reston: The Magazine Shocker: There's Gold in Them Thar Clusters!

We usually flip straight to the DRB-inspired word find in Reston: The Magazine, but the most recent issue delivered to our home by uniformed federal agents had some real News You Can Use. Apparently sitting right below our beloved earth-toned community is a bunch of gold, just there for the taking!

We know there is a lot of quartz in Reston, and where there is quartz, there (sometimes) is gold…. Reston is even in the Gold-Pyrite Belt, which is a 140-mile-long gold belt from Maryland, extending southwest through Reston and into Virginia's Buckingham County.

Sweet! Time to quit our jobs and buy a really bitchin' shovel.

Oh, wait:

It is important to note that all the easily reached gold in Virginia has been collected over the last 250 years, so the probability of you finding anything, even over a lifetime of looking, is virtually improbable.

Bummer. Still might be worth poking around Level G-17 of the Wiehle Avenue Metro garage once it opens, maybe.

Now for the bad news. Not to worry, but apparently Reston Parkway sits right atop the dividing line between the "Peters Creek Schist," which is, in geological terms, "a big honking rock," and the "Triassic lowland," which sounds kind of gooey and muddy. But don't take our word for it, check out this fancy geological map:

Now, we're no geologists (and who would know where to find one of those around here?), but if you live between Reston Parkway and Wiehle Avenue, you might want to make sure you've got a good pair of rain boots before the next torrential flood or earthquake, the end.