Things of Beauty

So far, no one has asked me why I collect this stuff (and why our garage is filled with rocks waiting to be polished - or disposed of). Hard to explain really, but let me put it this way. I find the abstract patterns and designs in nature to be stunningly beautiful. It has been argued that nature is ultimately the inspiration for all art; certainly I find the variety of color and design I find on the beach to be as lovely as anything I have ever seen.

This rock, for example, with its subtle shades of color and striking web of black lines, is not so far from classic abstract expressionist art. In fact, I might take up a brush and try painting something like this.  Until then, however, I am content - delighted, in fact - that such beauty exists in so prosaic a setting as the cobble beach below my house.

Washington State Gemstone

I didn't know until recently that petrified wood is Washington State's official gemstone.  It makes sense: we have some wonderful sites for petrified wood around the state, most notably at Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park above the Columbia River near Vantage. There are many other sites as well, many accessible to the rockhound - and some, memorably, in people's back yards.

But to my knowledge, all of the best sites are scattered around Eastern Washington, many associated with lava flows and ash deposits from Washington's long volcanic history. There are far fewer really good sites on the western side of the Cascades. But for months I have found chunks of this black and brown petrified wood among beach cobbles here in Seattle (See August 25 post). I have found enough of them in fact, of very similar color and composition, that I can only think they are from a single source - somewhere north of here. (But as I have said many times, the glaciers that carved this area could have brought them from hundreds of miles away)

Still, it's always a treat to find them, though in their rough, surf-tumbled state, they are not always easy to recognize...

Home from the East

Opercula

I'm home from Sulawesi, but without any rocks. Most of my time there I was on the coast where everything is limestone and coral rubble. No chance of interesting minerals there. But although I came home without any rocks (and with lighter luggage than usual) I did stumble onto one interesting collectible - the "cat's eye"operculum.  These are the hard "doors" to some species of turban snails and they were common along the shoreline. They are graceful little things and - of course - I brought some home. Probably too soft to polish with stones, but I'll experiment.

Heading East - the FAR East...

Black jasper/agate, Puget Sound

I thought I would post one more local stone (from a Puget Sound beach) before I leave this weekend for Indonesia. It is a highly fractured, but rather lovely, agate-like piece, semi-transparent and hard.

My destination is the island of Sulawesi, and my mission is to document the life history of a unique bird that lives there - the Maleo.  But in the little reading I have done on the island, I have learned that it also has a complex geology including a mix-up of volcanics, and both ocean floor and continental  rocks.

I have no idea whether I'm likely to find any collectible rocks, but as always, I will keep an eye out... Back in a couple weeks.

Patterned Quartzite (?) and Petrified Wood, Olympic Peninsula

I set out this morning to look for a source of variolites, the polka-dotted rock I have posted about in the past, and which probably originates in the basalts of the Crescent Formation on the Olympic Peninsula. I tracked down a couple possible source areas - and found no evidence of variolites. In fact, I didn't find a single one, which is unusual - I have found them in a variety of locations along the Olympic coast. This would suggest that the source is somewhere further west than where I was looking today.  So another expedition is clearly required...

However, I did get some time to poke around the coast near Sequim, where I found - among many other things - these two beach cobbles: a stained quartzite (or Jasper?) and a handsome piece of petrified wood. Not bad for a quick beach walk.

Missed Opportunity

Owyhee Picture Jasper

I had big plans to head back to the Owyhee country in eastern Oregon this fall to search for more jasper. I had been there in the spring, but high water made access to some of the best collecting sites too difficult, so I promised myself to make an autumn trip.  Well, the rains have started, and autumn has arrived faster than I expected - and my schedule is now too full to allow a minimum three-day trip to the desert. I guess it will have to wait until next year.

These three fragments, polished chips from a piece I collected last spring, will remind me of what I'm missing: one of the greatest collecting locations in the Northwest.

What the Glacier Dragged In

Unknown Rock, Puget Sound beach

By now you will understand that patrolling the beaches of Puget Sound for unusual stones is one of my favorite spare-time activities. This rock helps explain why. I spent an all-too-short half hour on the beach recently, not finding anything special when this one caught my eye, full of stripes and marbling.  Agate, maybe?  Or something softer like travertine or diatomaceous earth?  I need to test the hardness.

Whatever it is, it is unlike anything I have ever found on the local beaches. Who knows where it's from? My hope, in fact, is that someone somewhere seeing these posted pictures will recognize the rocks from their part of the Northwest. It would be fun to know where the glaciers found them...