There is something almost holy about digging into Mother Earth, about chipping away at a rock cliff, at staring down into the river seeking gem-grade rocks. There is something almost innate in knowing what brown crusted gray rock holds a gem inside.
The Vernon Lapidary Club, which I belong too, owns their own claims and have claim-owners who take us to their claims to seek out the gems known for that area. This weekend, we are going out to find garnets. No matter how hard a climb, how long I have to walk, how hard the terrain to drag my little “paperboy” cart, I am game to give it a try at least once. I can say I have gone where no almost-seventy-six-year-old woman ought to be going.
I gather my stones sand gems, go to the club shop and cut, grind, and polish my own gems to coax out the most beauty I can out of my finds. I, then, bring them home and make cabochons, wrap them in wire, or set them in clasps and make beautiful jewelry out of them.
When we search for crystals in tall piles of the gravel pit, one has to train our eyes to find the molten-glass looking agates. When we are taken to claims with seams of a certain type of crystals, we have to follow the hidden line of the seam and dig until we find it so we can hack, or pry, shovel or pick the gems out. One of my favorite places to find gems is to go to the “Potato Field”. Potato-looking stones lie just below the moss-covered ground. All one has to do is lift a section of moss carpet and they lay there, right for the picking. Hours go by without notice.
The loamy smell around us when we claw, scrape, pry and chisel out our finds, is mesmerizing. W seek the kind of bedrock that certain gems are found. We are like detectives looking for clues as where to work. We know what area has what stones in it, (It is said that every inch of British Columbia soil has gems in it.) but we have to have a sense of knowing exactly what we are looking for. We need to know how gems can disguise themselves. Most times, we find small, broken fragments of gems with their potato skin covering broken enough that the gem pokes through. Our hands sink into the soil, our chisels are struck and a chip comes off of the cliff all, and suddenly, there it is. Millions of years ago these gems were made beautiful and unique and our own hands have uncovered them. Thes tory of the formation of earth lies in front of us. It takes one’s breath away. Sometimes it feels so holy. When it happens, I am aware of having wakened something in the heart of Mother Earth.
I am a rockhound. I have been a rockhound since I could walk and pick up a stone. As a child, I had stones that stood for something, for instance, I had a stone to hold when I was sad, another stone for another feeling and another symbolic meaning. Where that came from, I do not know, but I believed. My mother often fussed over me because there were rocks tumbling in the washer or dryer. She was not a born rockhound. But, my daughter and several of my grandchildren are. It touches my heart when they share their findings and keepers with me. I tell them rock stories. I encourage their relationship with Mother Earth.
I wish you the ability to go to waters’ edges and seek the beauty that others have missed. I wish you a ‘touchstone’. I wish you to find a stone that causes you to lick it so you can clearly see the color. I wish you the peace and calm and scariness of seeking beauty to make more beauty.
©Carol Desjarlais 6.13.23
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