Collecting Pretty Rocks
To me there has been a life-long fascination about a rock with unusual color or shape.
While others go to the beach and nap on blankets to tan, I enjoy walking the beach to see what new treasures might have been washed up with the incoming waves. Driftwood with unique shape, bits of broken colored glass with edges rounded smooth by the waves are sought because they might fit nicely with sand dollars, bits of coral and small sea shells. Together they could make an attractive corkboard collage. It is the intricately colored rocks that I find polished by interaction with the sand and waves that are my most sought after treasures on most days however.
Each colored stone that I find tells its own little story. My stones need not be valuable agates or mineral rock to catch my eye, they just need to be interesting. Some rocks have holes in they that appear to have been drilled by a powerful boring insect, others have edges that might have separated the stone from a vein of mineral or chipped off from where layered ancient deposit formed above or below them. Were the stones part of an ancient volcano? How old might they be? How far have the waves and currents carried them from their original formation? Perhaps I have a mission this day such as collecting rocks for each of the great lakes and making them into a stepping stone to prove that we were there. Possibly they will line flower beds or just added to driveway gravel to give it some variety? Some rock collectors fastidiously research and identify the many specimens they collect. Those that do usually have many back-up jars of material just in case they come up with a marketing ploy that will give them value. I enjoy running into estate sales that display a true rock hound’s life work.
The beach is not the only place that I go to collect my pretty rocks. Eastern Washington has places to pan for gold, look for petrified wood, silver, copper, and many types of agates. Several years ago, Linda and I watched programming on the Discovery Channel that identified places where you could go to discover and collect your own mineral wealth, usually with the help of a business entrepreneur. We have traveled to Murfreesboro Arkansas to dig for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park, to California to pan gold, and to northern Nevada to search out opal. We came back with valuable treasures from each outing. We keep flakes of real gold and pieces of opal on displays in little jars in our kitchen window. Each was collected with our own toil and effort. Our diamond, the size of a baseball, was unfortunately made of glass and collected from the gift shop. It was a souvenir all the same, bringing back fun memories of the trip. Our twenty-dollar souvenir was taken by a young burglar, later caught, lending credibility to its authentic appearance. We intend to replace it someday because the sight of it brought back pleasant memories. We were grateful that the original giant glass diamond distracted the thief from other more valuable items that would have been much harder to replace.
The key to continuing to collect and gather great rocks is to have a use for our finds.
Petrified wood lines flower beds along with less valuable iron pyrite and quartz. We decorate our fish pond with shells and rocks from the water such as Petoskey stone and sprinkle in a few arrow heads just for interest.
