In 1949, a young student finds his life upturned. Expelled from Thailand’s top university, ‘Archin Panjabhan’ is sent away from the city by his father to the wilderness of southern Thailand. Arriving at a mining camp, he embarks on a four-year odyssey of self-discovery, a university course in life that will take from him the last days of youth and return him a gift far greater. There, on a tin dredge, among the bosses and miners, he will learn to live to the simple rhythms of river and season, work and play, love and loss. There, he will finally find himself and graduate a man because, sometimes, higher learning can be found in the ground beneath your feet.