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Owyhee Jaspers, Succor Creek, Oregon 

I am starting this blog just to record details of my completely unprofessional hobby of rockhounding.  I studied geology at the University of Washington three decades ago, and have always been interested in the subject, but only recently have I started actively looking for rocks as objects of beauty and design.  No, I am not a jeweler, and so far have resisted the temptation to invest in cabbing equipment and expensive polishers. Instead, I prefer the naturalistic forms of tumbled stones, particularly jaspers in all of their astonishing varieties of color and pattern.  As my wife can testify, our house is increasingly filled with polished stones.

These jaspers were all collected in a small streambed off of Succor Creek in Eastern Oregon, one of the best rockhounding locations I've ever seen.  Walking in the water, where the true colors of the stones were better displayed, I quickly filled up my collecting bag, not once, not twice, but three times - all in less than half a mile. I couldn't stop myself!  By the end of the day, I was more physically exhausted than I have ever been,  having spent 12 straight hours bent at the waist. That's the true nature of obsession...

More to come.