Not seriously, I don't seek out rare specimens at collector shows, but I do like to bring home little mementos from trips. We have a house full of "pretty rocks" and I've build shelves out in the barn for the rest. I do have some collector grade muscovite (mica) and some very nice pegmatite specimens, as well as a few fossils. It's nice to run across them and remember the trips.
They'll never be worth much to anyone but me, and when I die, they'll probably get tossed in the yard. Maybe several years later some young child will find some of them and it will get them interested in the hobby. I kind of like that idea.
My wife loves rocks and for some reason they always end up in MY backpack. She will look at some 200 pound chunk and ask "Can you carry that out for me?". We have rocks sitting all over the house from all over the country.
I have rocks everywhere. In the house and in the yard, even in the cars.
But, you have to be careful of what kind of rock you pick up and where you get it from. One time I was hiking around the volcano fields north of Flagstaff, Arizona and came across a beautiful chunk of lava. It was the size of two bowling balls together
I pictured exactly where it was going to placed in the front yard and brough it home. I set it place even before I unlocked the front door. It looked perfect in the yard with all the other rocks there. Well, when I went in the house I found my bedroom flooded from a broken pipe in the foundation. The following week my truck broke down, I almost lost my job and the electric stove in the house had a literal melt down.
I'd lived in Hawaii as a kid and knew all about Pele, the volcano goddess, and her temper and power. I quickly made the association of all the bad things happening with the chunk of lava. I took it back the next weekend to the exact spot I grabbed it from and even made sure the orientation was the same.
Everything got better afterwards. A coincidence, I'm sure.
-------------- Seek Higher Ground Can you feel the silence
We have a pretty darn good collection on the Ranch including lots of local Limb Cast and Petrified Wood. I love the green stuff with the cream cheese in the middle.
-------------- We have nothing to fear but an industry of fear...and man skirts.
Funny story, DD. I have some black sand from a volcano beach on the Big Island, have had it for yrs, and no problems yet.
I brought home a large red sandstone rock from Utah and put it in my garden. Now, it has moss growing on it. Certainly not what I was expecting.
April used to ask me to carry some monstrous rock and bring it home. Sometimes I complied, but mostly we just laughed. Many times, they would not have fit in the bed of the truck, even if we had had the heavy equipment to get it there.
-------------- Everything I know, I learned by doing it wrong at least twice.
The easiest way to ruin a Friday is to realize it is only Tuesday.
Oh, wait, that wasn't what you meant! Yeah, I have lots of little stones and pretty bits from all over, including some from places you aren't supposed to take them, discovered in a child's pocket when far away.
-------------- Bits of writerly thoughts and random short fiction found at The Ninja Librarian Blog
I bring Mrs. big_load a rock from most adventures. Usually it's a mineral of some kind, but sometimes it's a just a smooth stone from the sea. From CO this year, I got some very low-quality aquamarine from Mt. Antero and a pink orthoclase crystal. From AZ, I brought some agate from the Superstitions. From UT, I brought a little chunk of petrified wood. I didn't find anything interesting in OR.
definitely. I don't have good ways to display most of them, however. I have some fossils, hunks of sandstone from my time in UT, some bits of petrified wood (the largest one I gave to my folks), and some other stuff. I even have a small rock that I swiped from the shores of Loch Ness. That one's my favorite.
My husband hates it, but both my Mom and I love to pick up bits of rock or shell that speak to us and tuck them into pockets or on bookshelves or aquariums or on top of the soil in a potted plant. A sparkle of mica or quartz from the black hills or granite from the Beartooths or agate from the beaches here or amber from the beaches on the Black Sea are all I need to transport me through time and space
-------------- If Light is in your heart, you will find your way Home. (Rumi)
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Chinese proverb
No seriously, but my fireplace mantle is nearly sagging from the weight of all of the "little" fossils, crystals, flint workings, pebbles from all of special places I've/ We've ever visited.
The larger pieces line our walkways/ flower pots/ gardens.
I grew up a rock hound. My grandfather owned a rock shop. Petrified wood is my favorite. I do like the small stuff that gets thrown in a tumbler too though. It looks like rock candy if you know what I mean. Rocks are cool. If I see a funky one when I'm out hiking, sometimes I'll pick one up and throw it in my pack. I've actually got more rocks than I have room for so I store them in bins and switch them out every few years.
-------------- If I'm going to be lost, in the woods is where I want to be...
When we were kids, my brother and I collected quite an assortment of fossils from our ranch land. They were strewn across nearly every pasture. There are digs nearby these days where some serious paleontologists seek skeletons of the next Tyrannosaurus rex to be unearthed.
When we "graduated" from hiking the Thunder Basin area to backpacking Federal land in college, collecting pretty much halted. It became a process where we "took only photos and left only tracks."
Not officially - but I've got a few from over the years. When we bought our house and started landscaping the backyard we have a bank that we've turned into a rock garden - usually we find the rocks in the middle of some backcountry road somewheres. In the front yard I have two dry creekbeds lining the two drainages from our backyard to the street, that do flow occasionally when we get a desert downpour.
Do be wise about where you take rocks from - for instance, in our floodplains the rocks are nice and smooth and rounded and lots of people like to take them - but that's also endangered San Bernardino Kangaroo Rat habitat - so the rocks are serving a greater purpose where they are at.
I once carried a 51 pound piece of sandstone the last mile back to the car in Big South Fork Tennessee. It's multi-colored and twisted with harder dark ridges. Displayed it in the house for several years, and it's been in the garden for about a decade.
Lots of smaller rocks in the garden too, almost all from the southern Appalachians. Don't pick 'em up very often on hikes anymore, but I still look for interesting little pieces of the planet and bring one back occasionally.
-------------- We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. -- Native American proverb
Way too many haha. Largest one in my apartment is a squarish cubic foot piece of obsidian with one side the top of what had been the lava crust. Often pick up at least one small size stone on backpacks as momentos, especially those water smoothed. Have lot of unusual small stuff including crystals, arrowheads, petrified wood, and even likely gastroliths.
Yep, pick up pretty ones along the trail and they go in a little decorative dish on a side table. I come by it honestly, my mom and aunt both would finish every hike with pockets full of rocks. My mom spent a year in Iraq and shipped home so many rocks, including lots of geodes, which was kind of cool.
-------------- The future is no place to place your better days. Dave Matthews
A six foot bookshelf full of rocks and other oddities that have been picked up along hikes. Many others scattered about the house. I of the things that let me know my wife was the right one was comparing rock collections and number of backpacks on some of our first dates. I also drag home chunks of metal and shards of broken dishes I find along hikes. I can spend too much time exploring the dump piles of the old mining camps.
I have one rock sitting on my desk here at work (and a couple more at home) that I smuggled home from Greenland. Not worth anything financially, but it's a beautiful hunk of black marble from atop the "black cliffs" near Kangerlussuaq. I didn't know until after I'd shipped my field gear home (rocks included) that exporting rocks out of that country is a potentially serious international offense. There are enough mineral resources in that country that they aggressively protect their rocks to avoid illegal prospecting. Luckily, most everything got back home without hassle through customs, so now my hunk of Kangerlussuaq marble sits on my desk, probably the last and only rock I'll smuggle out of Greenland (shhh, don't tell Denmark!).
Beyond that, just a few pebbles from the beach. And a small vial of gold-ish sand from a remote creek in Southeast Alaska, of which I will never reveal the exact location. Such places would only invite exploitation if the word got out with an X on the map.
-------------- Wealth needs more. Happiness needs less. Simplify.
Not personally, but my father is a retired geologist and has an extensive collection of rocks and minerals, some quite rare, and a couple that are technically illegal for civilians to own (they make a geiger counter get a tad noisier than normal). When he passes, my two little brothers who followed in his footsteps will probably duke it out for possession.
-------------- Now shall I walk or shall I ride? Ride, said pleasure, Walk, Joy replied,
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