In the beginning . . .
I quit work at 65. Earning a living propelled me to rise five days a week and employ myself. Without a day job, however, I needed a reason to get out of bed, and while indolence to me is a happy state, after a time, even that became a bore. Rock collecting made sense. I thought it would be an activity to engage my mind and body so that neither would calcify from inactivity.
Identifying rocks and minerals involved a bottoms up, top down approach to earth science, a study that would surely carve new furrows into my brain. Exploring the landscape, digging through dirt and picking up rocks–all things fundamental to acquiring a rock collection–must benefit one’s physique. Additionally, I was gifted to live in Oregon whose mountains, beaches and deserts provided expansive venues for rock hound adventures.
In college, I struggled with geology courses. I took geology because I needed a science credit to graduate, and I was influenced by a friend who reasoned that if we studied together we would easily pass, but he dropped the course after the first test and left me bewildered. I passed because I volunteered to dig up a petrified tree in a soybean field in south Alabama. That tree turned to stone thousands of years ago, and the mound that formed over it left its root on the surface. Our excavation ditch deepened as we uncovered its top. It took several hours in an Alabama summer as hot and humid as only that place can be for us to uncover enough of it to satisfy the professor who relocated its petrified skeleton to a resting place beside a university maintenance shed.
The geology professor and his colleagues stood above the ditch drinking beer. They carried whisk brooms in the back pockets of their blue jeans. One of them actually got close enough to brush some dirt between swigs of his beer while those of us too inept to pass kept digging. The exertions earned me a passing grade, and now that tree shelters weeds beside a shed in Alabama where no one cares a whit about stone trees.
In my senior years, I decided to revisit geology at an ungraded and leisurely pace. My interest in academics for a grade ended over forty years ago after my college graduation.
To satisfy my geriatric interest in rocks, I found Central Point’s Crater Rock Museum operated by The Roxy Ann Gem & Mineral Society. It’s a place where like minded people unite for rockhounding field trips, where education and enlightenment of earth science and geology are part of their mission statement, and where one can buy, sell and view an assortment of semi precious gems, rock specimens and carvings from around the world. I spent hours in the museum’s back room cutting, shaping and polishing rough stones into semi precious gems. Oregon’s sparkling specimens–sun stone, agate and jasper–soon were not enough. Chrysocolla from Arizona, chrysoprase and opal from Australia, agate from Brazil, and jade from Canada, Korea, Wyoming and Siberia–all those and more like a scavenger crow, I gathered into my collection. I like shiny things. I neither know nor much care whether crystals and minerals exude metaphysical emanations, but I know for certain I felt a sense of well being amid the concentration of rocks.
So to conclude . . .
I offer these Items to you for reasons beyond my choice. My wife resents lapidary displays that gather dust and crowd her dollhouse collection. Friends and family refuse more gifts of rocks. Out of space, I’ve scattered so many specimens around trees and under bushes that future archaeologists who dig for truth in my backyard will be confused to explain the unusual assortment of rocks excavated there.
The best of my collection is presented to you on this website. The metal smithing, faceting, carving and some of the cabochons were done by Asian artisans in Thailand, Bali, China and India. I might shape a stone in Medford that was unearthed faraway and send it to India for faceting, and after to Thailand to be set in silver. Domestically, copper and silver wraps were done by Dick Woodward, a.k.a. ‘Dog Valley Dick’ from Delta, Utah. The process takes months, but I like the results and try to provide attribution for the work as best I can.