Rocks and stuff from the beach and or river!

[OldBroad44]

Summer after first grade. Family moved to Colorado, and started taking family weekend trips to surroundings. I found an ammonite, a fossil of a mollusk that lived from about 400 million years ago through a number of mass extinctions to die out about the same time as the dinosaurs. My ammonite was about 4" across and looked a lot like this one:


I immediately realized that this represented the shell of a snail-like creature. And that the whole area must have been under water, presumably covered with an ocean. So lands that were now raised mountain areas must have been under the ocean at some point. So lands and seas weren't stable but shifted around with time. Furthermore, I had already lived in Florida and collected shells and seen many glorious shell collections. My ammonite didn't look like anything I had seen. Based upon this admittedly insufficient data I leaped to the conclusion that types of creatures weren't stable either. They changed. All that before plate tectonics was known. And before we knew that the entire center of North America had indeed been a vast shallow sea. And while we knew about evolution, I didnt. I was just six. But it was clear evolution happened, though I didn't yet know that word. I suspect many thousands of people realized these basics long before those we credit with the realizations started writing about them. Probably including thousands of other curious kids. To me it all came as an instant flash while standing in a field holding a freshly discovered fossil.

How did a living critter turn into a fossil? So what was going on with lands and oceans shifting around? What exactly had happened? And how and why? And why did the creatures change?? And why did some vanish? So the first book I ever bought for myself was a guide to rocks and minerals. Within a year I discovered the public library, fought my way into the adult section, and started reading all the books on geology, archeology, biology, etc. By the end of second grade I had read everything in the 500s, all the sciences. Family moved to Massachusetts, giving me a new public library and a different kind of local geology. Started over reading everything in the 500s in that library. We moved every year or two, giving me new libraries with each move. I of course had a rock collection. Each new place gave me a different kind of geology and repertoire of rocks. My mother actually picked up her interest in rock collecting from me. I ultimately ended up with a PhD in Biology/Genetics from Harvard. And I earn my living as a plant breeder, a guider of expedited plant evolution. But I still love geology, and fossils and evolution and most areas of science, and still read broadly in many areas of science for recreation. And now there are lots of YouTube videos on all areas of science. What fun!. Its been fascinating to watch us actually getting definitive answers to all those questions I had as a 6-year-old kid 71 years ago as I stood in a field with a fossil ammonite in my hand and excitement in my heart.

 

[Hemlock]

I grew up on a dairy farm. Every spring after the oats were planted the whole family had to go out in the fields, walk along with a moving flat rack wagon and pick up rocks and stones so the combine wouldn't pick them up during harvest. And that's all I know about stones and rocks. ha ha ha

 

[OldBroad44]

I grew up on a dairy farm. Every spring after the oats were planted the whole family had to go out in the fields, walk along with a moving flat rack wagon and pick up rocks and stones so the combine wouldn't pick them up during harvest. And that's all I know about stones and rocks. ha ha ha

That didn't happen to be a New England farm did it? Most New England farms are rocky. The settlers dug up the rocks and made walls out of them. But every winter the rounds of freezing and thawing of the soil thrusts new rocks to the surface. So a traditional spring task on a New England farm is to dig up and pick up and haul away the newly emerged rocks so they don't break your plow. Roger Swain, for many years Science Editor of Horticulture, used to describe the reaction of visitors to his New England farm something like this:
Visitor: "My. You sure do have a lot of rocks! Where'd all the rocks come from?"
Roger: "The glacier brought them."
Visitor: "Glacier? What glacier? I don't see any glacier."
Roger: "It's gone back for more rocks."

 

[1980VCGP]

My dad, Reno's grandfather was what you would call a real rock hound. We would spend the summer going to places like Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Washington just to find different rocks. Yes I still have some of what he collected and some thing he built just to try different aspects of cutting and polishing rocks. He started with tumbling and build 2 large tumbling units. These were run 24 hours a day using different compounds to get the finished stones to come out as perfect as possible.

Next he got into cutting stones and of course the saw was small at first. So he build his own rock saw and was able to cut up to 12 inches in one pass. All of these were out on the back yard patio. When we moved up to Northern California in 1965 we had to make a few trips to haul all of the rock stuff. After the move we didn't go rock hunting as much. But as a kid going rock hunting was also going camping. And of course we always met with other rock hunters.

One trip we went on was on the border of Oregon and Idaho. We were looking for tree limbs, petrified wood but this one was pink inside. The group of men were digging in this hole for most of the day. They decided to take a break so they got out and I jumped in and started digging. I hit something and pulled out one piece. Then another and another. Each piece would fit into the piece that was just removed. By the time I was done I had 5 different pieces that measured about 2 feet and all fit together. I was about 13 when I found that find of the day.

I have attached 4 pictures of some of what we collected and what my dad built to do other gem stones. I will let you figure out what he built and what it was for. The second picture is of a geode that has had most of the material knocked off and it has the shape of two inverted cones. It is hard to see from the picture but the inside looks like yellow-golden moss.