2000-09-21 - 19:53 MDT

September 21, 2000

Prospecting

Once a year Heather and I go prospecting in the mountains for the most refined and rarest of golds. It is only observable around this time or a bit later. We started at a fairly low elevation in the hills where we went last year. No gold there, so we wandered prospecting ever higher until we found a lode.

The most precious sight to me that I can think of in the vegetable world is the sight of a well formed aspen tree between the sun and me as an observer. Radiant, vibrant gold, not smeltable or bankable but precious to the soul and well being of this Colorado born guy.

The vista of apsen groves on a mountain side with the sun shining on them is wonderful and defys the delineation by an artist. Along with that is other vegetation going to red, reddish brown mixed with a background of evergreen.

I guess that driving through a forest of aspen trees with nothing mixed in would be rather boring and same-ish, but to see the mountain sides glowing here and there with aspen gold is a sight that makes me worshipful. It seems to be a reassurance to me, just as much as a rainbow is.

I rode shotgun today, Heather decided to do the driving in the mountains and having played chauffeur in years past my acquiesence was gratefully extended to her.

I was able to be an armchair geologist and marvel again at the forces involved to thrust up such broad areas of rock. And to see where the forces had rejumbled the whole thing like it had shuffled a deck of cards. So, the landscape was topsy turvy with formations tilted up in many different directions. Passing along watching the rock formations which had been cut into in the course of road making shows me how forces of nature squeezed, folded and opened crevices for other minerals to slide in. Self evident to me the heat and pressure that had been involved in unimaginable amounts.

There may be many places in Colorado were volcanic action is evidenced by great deposits of lava rock, but I haven't seen any. There probably has been in eons past, but here mostly is the upthrust shown by the crinkling of the earth's surface by the action of what ? the tectonic plates grinding against each other? Pressure making the layers of rock buckle, twist and tear ? There are places in Colorado where there are dykes, walls of solidified, once molten rock which had been forced up through open faults, which was of a harder material when cooled than the surrounding stone. Over centuries the softer material wore away leaving these remarkable walls sticking up towering over the normal surface.

I never realized that the west had been so volcanized until I began to travel that direction. In Idaho there were places where farmers had pushed volcanic rock (possibly thrown there by the Crater Lake eruption) to the edges of their property so they could farm.

In Oregon along U.S. 20 and State 242 can be seen just how active volcanos have been out west. Along U.S. 20 mountains of lava rock dwarf everything else in sight. State 242 goes through a lava field and tops out at the old vent where the rock originated. This old volcano didn't erupt, rather just squeezed out the lava like toothpaste out of a tube. Those rocks are greyish and full of gas holes. We visited Crater Lake and read the material there. It seems that the volcano which blew to form the basin containing the vast present day lake threw so many, many rocks that can be seen in other western states that it boggles my mind.

I have seen evidences of volcanic action in South Western Utah too.

I guess I should have continued my classes in geology in high school and gone on to college studying the subject. I never had the desire to be a mining geologist nor was I interested in the petroleum industry geology. My interest was more of a researcher's -- trying to discover all the things still unsolved about the formation of this sphere of sphinx-like puzzlery.

But, because I didn't go to medical school or the School of Mines I have around me a family more precious than any material things. I still have the interest and curiosity about things medical and geological which keep me thinking, looking, reading and wondering, while I bug the grand kids.

Whether it was for beauty, knowledge or even material gain my foremost wish for a mate and children fullfilled, I retired from full time prospecting.

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