Ever since I can remember I have been a rockhound. My mother would get all pissed off when I’d bring back a lumpy, muddy, chunk of something and put it on my bureau in my room. A piece of Rose Quartz or a fossil from the stream bed near our home. That was in the late 70’s.
I’ve since matured into full blown amateur rockhounding expeditions where the finds become even better. Fire Agate* from Bisbee, AZ. Amethyst* from Four Peaks, North of Phoenix, AZ. Blue Agate* from Douglas, AZ. And of course all the fossils you can handle from the Mogollon Rim. Some of the finer pieces I have on display on my mantle and book shelves, but I would like to make some really nice glass enclosures to house these wonders of pressure and time. To quote Shawshank Redemtion, “Geology is the study of pressure and time” I’m starting to make more time for myself to dedictae to this very fun hobby.
Who else likes rocks, minerals and fossils? And why do you enjoy them so much?
I have tried to not pick up pocket fulls of rocks when hiking or walking on the beach, but the inclination is too much, and I end up with a few extra pounds of rocks in my pockets after walking along a beach, or hiking in the woods. It verges on a compulsion.
I think my main rationale is that I like to see the natural beauty created by the earth, and to know man had nothing to do with these products of pressure and time. How about you?
*All of these links are of examples of the stones I’ve found, not the actual ones that are in my collection. The main reason for this, is I have not the time to catalogue my collection and put it into some semblence of categorized form.`
Geologist here for many of the reasons you mentioned above. Always been fascinated by them, even as a youngster, and that’s only increased as I’ve become educated about the processes involved in their creation/preservation.
Much of what I have on display at home is stuff I’ve bought over the years. Eventually they began to crowd what I’d collected in the field and so recently I’ve moved that group outside into some of my raised bed cactus and assorted succulents landscape. It pretty attractive there, a Curiosity cactus, mountain laurel or some hardy Australian flora randomly surrounded by belemnites, dog’s tooth calcite, amazonite, peacock ore, etc.
I used to have a big rock collection when I was a kid, and it went the way of many things that kids collect then leave at their parents’ house when they go away to college (where I intended to major in geology, but, shit happens, and I ended up with a BFA in theater. Go figure.)
I never had anything spectacular – a couple of cool fossils, a piece of pumice, a chunk of basalt with a vein of olivine.
I also had a rock tumbler when I was a kid, and I still have a couple of pieces of agate and amethyst I tumbled that put in my little tabletop fountain on my screened porch.
I ALWAYS pick up rocks and bring them back from wherever I travel. And I have on my desk a little box of those “fill a bag for a dollar” polished rocks (some of which are dyed stupid colors) that you see at tourist traps, because they make me happy (the rocks, not the tourist traps).
I like your rationale about why you like them. Sums it up for me pretty succinctly.
I wanted to be a paleontologist fpor the longest time. I grew up an hour’s commute from NYC, so I went to the Museum of Natural History all the time. I got books on fossils, and kept looking for them, never finding any.
Until I started looking at the stream-eroded areas near my house. There were lots of rocks left after the streams cut through the earth and clay, and finally – FINALLY – I found a fossil bryozoan (I could identify it from my guidebooks).
I hit the jackpot when they levelled a bif area not far away for a school that was never built. The erosion that resulted was atrocious (and it silted in our local swimming pond), but it left a bounty of new stones to be examined, among which I found many fossils. All bryozoans, crinoids, corals, and a few shells. no fish (such as you could find at the Delaware Water gap) or anything even more complex. still, they were records of prehistoric life that I found, myself. That connection to ancient life was a great rush.
I love rocks. I have a friend who is obsessed. He lives in the wilderness. He has piles, buckets and barrels of rocks. He has grinders, saws and vibrators. When I go to his house, I play with all the toys, or spend hours sitting in the dirt with a brush and soapy water cleaning rocks.
I don’t know why!
In my house, I have bowls, and jars full of pretty rocks. I have a tumbler, but most of the rocks I polish, are just rocks. I love them anyway.
I have petrified wood, agates, geodes, big slabs of sand stone full of garnets, but most have no names (Well, of course, they do, but I don’t know them. I have books, but, they only give me hints.)
My husband tolerates my rocks, but he doesn’t really understand. When I was a kid, my mother told me I must have rocks in my head. I think she was right!
I used to love them when I was a kid - especially the pink quartz (hey - I’m a girl)
I loved them so much my mom bought me a little pocket book of gems & minerals. I was so taken, that I wrote the editor of the book on my Girl Scout stationery asking him how he got interested. He WROTE ME BACK! (on the back of my letter) and sent me a little cotton-lined box of minerals - including a beautiful piece of pink quartz. I can’t find the letter, but I still have the little pocket book & the box of minerals
The other day, I was in the Hall of Improbable Minerals at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. It’s hard when you’re there not to think that rocks and minerals are super-cool. But at the same time, you know that what what they have there is so beyond what you could find or even buy that it’s a little depressing. For instance, they have this bathtub-sized geode lined with amethysts. What are the chances of my finding one of those on my way to work?
Still, you can’t help coming away impressed with the sheer variety of minerals and the lavishness of their shapes and colors. It’s worth a visit if you haven’t been there.
I love finding fossils like Cal Meacham said, because it creates an immediate link between me (semi-smart ape) and some long gone prehistoric animal. Touching the vertibrae of a Brachiosaurus, knowing that the thing in your hand was living ??-million years ago, and weighed 20 tons… I love that stuff! Thinking about the real time aspect of the bone in your hands. It’s a little cosmic but who cares…that’s what imagination is for. Or the fern embedded in the shale … thinking about how it waved in the wind several million years ago…
Everywhere I go, rocks, shells, fossils, sticks, feathers, seed pods, the list goes on and on.
As with you others, my house is chock full of these things.
I had no idea there was such a thing as a Hall of Improbable Minerals at Harvard University. Now, of course, I must go there.
There used to be a Rare Stone Museum in Singapore. I went with friends, they were disappointed to discover it was not valuable gems but collections of stones of rare beauty.
Stones with naturally occurring inclusions with seeming images of animals, plants, Chinese characters, numbers. Some emperor much have had his entire population out searching for the things, it would have taken several lifetimes to fine so many. It was awesome, I was not disappointed in the least! It has since disappeared but I will never forget it.
I remember being in Indonesia years ago and buying a smallish fossilized jawbone for but a couple of dollars. As we were exiting the tiny shop I was crowing delightedly over my purchase, so fabulous only a couple of bucks! My husband said he was pretty sure the guy in the shop was right now crowing to his wife how he’d made a couple of fast bucks off something he found on the ground!
My lifelong habit is picking up rocks. I can spot patterns, variations, veins from a moving car. As a child I ruined vaccuum cleaners, scratched dryers, stopped washing machine agitators with my pocket rocks. I am fascinated with slate, and am in the process of laying slate tile in my bathroom and laundry.
As an adult I have bowls and jars full of rocks, doorstops, keepsakes. I stack them like a madperson everywhere I go. Stacking rocks is how I meditate, and how I stretch my bones.
I met my soulmate when we bumped heads to pick up the same stone- sadly, Owen was nearly 90 and died of cancer just after we found one another. His widow handed me his favorite pocket stones after I read his eulogy.
I have several rocks, and two nice examples of petrified wood that I display with my plants and potted trees.
My front yard, and back yard both have large swaths of gravel, and my front yard has 5 boulders that I installed that altogether weigh about 1.5 tons (avg. of 600 pounds per rock). I really want to put a completely over-scaled monolith out there, but I don’t think the neighbors would dig it.
I pick up cool rocks occasionally, but I’m not what anyone would think of as a rockhound.
My Dad worked as a geologist for years. Vacations nearly always ended up as fossil hunts. I can’t say I was that into it when I was young, but as I grew older I appreciate it more. My father’s fossil collection has reached the point where his house could be considered a museum - when you walk in the door, there’s a display case with some of his favorite peices. Even now when I’m in my 30’s. I love to bring friends over to his house just to let Dad give them the tour.
I recently asked him to help me obtain a couple of peices and he was blown away - he’d assumed all his kids had no interest. He got me a really cool ammonite from Morocco and a trilobite the size of your hand from the mountains of Germany. I’m sure these were quite expensive, and I tried to get him to accept some compensation but he refused.
I think what I like best about fossils is the way everyone finds them engaging. When people come over to visit, they’ll glance at the pictures I have up, linger for a moment looking at my guitars, but its only when they get to the fossils that their eyes get bigger and they start asking questions. I think it’s just because no one expects to see fossils in your house, only in museums.
That’s really beautiful. The words and the slate tile
And
Leviosaurus - I agree 100% with you. I wonder why you never got into the geology thing with your dad as a kid? I’m hoping my children who are as of yet unborn, will like rockhounding like I do. But I guess one cannot make anyone like something. Appreciate it yes, but not have the same passion as another.
I added some more pics of my habit to the album. This is my home, but I leave stacks everywhere I hike and almost every home I visit- I can’t help it. The stacks survive floods, ice, and storms; but never little boys.
I like the colors and textures. Personal fave: red granite. Greatest regret: not pushing harder when my wife tried to talk me out of buying a headstone salesman’s sample of red granite, rough hewn onr the sides and polished on the front. She thought I was just being gruesome.
Wow very beautiful stuff. My wife enjoys doing much the same thing We are big fans of Andy Goldsworthy . You’ll drool over some of these. Especially if you like stacking rocks!
