National Collect Rocks Day

I answered my phone fairly early yesterday morning and found Tad on the line.  “Do you know what day today is?” he asked.

“Nope,” I answered.

“Today is National Collect Rocks Day.  I just heard it on the radio.”

“I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“There is.  I think we need to collect rocks today.”

“I’m in,” I said.

Within a few hours, Tad and I were wandering through the rumpled landscape near my house, seeking rocks.  We slowly picked our way along rock-strewn slopes and tan shoulders of bentonite.  We also made our way to the “Chinese Diggings,” an area worked for gold by Chinese coolies in the late 1800’s in a quest for gold.  They left behind stacks of often beautiful rocks as they classified down to fines with gold.

Legend holds that the coolies cleared buckets of “nuisance” sapphires from their sluice boxes and dumped them back in the ground.

Maybe.

I always look for a pile of sapphires when I go there.    

Today, I am posting my finds from our version of honoring National Collect Rocks Day.

Specimens I collected on National Collect Rocks Day

—Mitchell Hegman