blog #144 >> Rock On!

My camping post has inspired me to post about my rock collection. I started this when I was old enough to pick up a rock and put in my mouth. Since then I learned that they really don't taste very good, but they certainly are pretty to look at. Over the years it's grown and grown, and then shrank and shrank. Many of my rocks now live scattered about my parents backyard waiting to be re-discovered. It's just hard to move with so many boxes of rocks. Someone will lift a box and ask, "What's in this rocks?!" Yep. Rocks. I like um.


Here's my self o' rocks. Most of these are agates I picked up at the beach and classified into little jars. But some are ones that people picked up for me on trips. And some I found other places. And some I just don't remember where they came from or what they even are. It seems the coolest ones are always this way.



Here are some little specimen jars filled with different rocks, minerals, fossils, and gems.


A pretty Amethyst.


Here are some really cool ones my grandpa gave me when I was young. He was a science teacher and had a box a rocks from his old classroom in the garage. And every once in awhile he'd give me one until there weren't any left. I can't remember what these are called right now. Bornite? I remember once a teacher (not my mom) held up a piece of Bornite and asked what it was and I perked up and said, "Bornite!" Then was curtly rebuked for calling "Peacock Ore" Bornite. IT'S THE SAME THING!


Lazurite, at least I think that's what it is... I'm a little fuzzy on that one.


Here's a fossilized worm.


And here's a fossilized feather. It's either in Limestone or Talc. Talc more likely, it seems too soft and white for Limestone.


The Green Jello with Marshmallows Rock. Like most of my cool rocks, I don't know what this one is. But every once in awhile I'll see one pop up in strange places, like in old people's flower beds or it will be part of a rock wall lining a driveway. Once I asked a guy in a rock shop what it was and he said he thought they were created when a canning jar factory exploded and the green glass melted together with the calcite they used to make the glass and that formed the white bubbles in it. I'm not sure how true that story is, but after some quick research on-line this morning apparently the Oregon Packing Company, formally know as the Salem Canning Company burned in 1905. I'm not sure that was the fiery explosion that caused the glass to fuse together. But it does make sense. And it's the people who've lived in Oregon forever who's seen this stuff before. So it does seem to be indigenous to this state. It makes you wonder.


My mom and I looking at rocks many years ago. In fact had you asked me, "What I wanted to be when you grow up?" when I was twelve. I would have said, "A geologist." I could spell "geology" before I could spell "island."

Well, anyhow I've got a lot more rocks here but I suppose that's enough for now.
Enjoy!
T