Desiree and I are on a quest. We intend to glean a sapphire from the ground somewhere nearby us that is big enough and clear enough to facet and place in a ring.
The
quest sounds fairly simple on the surface: find a rock. Moreover, our house is
quite literally surrounded by productive sapphire mines. But finding a sapphire
suffers from the same issues associated with any venture involving digging in
the dirt: it's hard work and it's messy. Additionally, you are likely to find a
handful of lousy to marginal sapphires before you find the one worthy of
displaying on jewelry.
On
Saturday, I accompanied my young friend Randy St. Clair on a drive to Eldorado
Bar to dig our own sapphire gravel at one of the mines. Though the mine is only
about three miles from my house as the crow flies, the drive around Hauser Lake
to reach the mine is closer to twenty miles. I ended up bringing home three
five(ish)-gallon bags of sapphire gravel. In the time since, Desiree and I have
processed one bag of gravel.
We
are finding sapphires. Big ones. But they are not the quality we need.
The
quest continues.
Randy
Classifying Sapphire Gravel
Our
Finds in the First Bag
—Mitchell
Hegman
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