The scent of Home

It was a plan, set off early on a Saturday. Instead of heading back to a place we knew was fruitful, head to a new region to search. We had read some other blogs about an area really close to us, an area known for smoky quartz and amethyst. We had visions of giant hunks of glassy purple gems. I warned the household (my sister and oldest daughter) that we are leaving at 9am. Be ready or we are going without you. They complied, and were ready to go, on the dot. Such is the siren call of backcountry rockhounding, it can make teenagers rise early on weekends.

I made apple cider muffins, a growler of coffee, packed up a basket of bananas and mugs and we loaded up the dogs. Everyone is decked out in their varying layers of Patagonia. Some of you might know that I work for them, allowing us to stock my family with the best of outdoor gear. I am layered with my recent capilene air base layers, which to someone like me, who is always friggin cold, are my most coveted items of clothing. I can now be out in the cold and not go numb in minutes. LAYERING is the single most important thing you can do in order to be not only comfortable out in the back country but also safe. You never know what might happen, and the high desert of the Sierra foothills don't play. We live mere miles from the infamous Donner Summit. Y'all might have heard of it, and as extreme as that situation was, it's a warning to all of those that come after those unfortunate souls.
The wilderness does NOT PLAY. Be prepared, bring food, first aid, layer correctly. We always bring an emergency kit, even if it's just a quick morning trip like this one. BE PREPARED.

We head out and take 395 north, our maps aren't the most precise and we are going off the vague instructions on some blog about a janky barbed wire fence,  5-7 miles after a certain junction. This is our norm, head out based on some gut feeling and a vague outline. We found a dirt road in the target area, and headed through the gate. We only had gone maybe 1/4 mile when an up and down gave me pause, we have an all-wheel drive vehicle. It is by no means a full blown off road vehicle. I told Don to pull over so I could get out and stare at the dirt, we did not expect to see anyone else out in this vast, and empty land so we just stopped inn the middle of the road.

I hopped out and started to scope out the wash nearby, as we were looking a 4x4 truck came down to face our little Hyundai. Don went over to speak man to them, as he speaks their language more so than I do. Their type is not a welcome sight for me, and I was glad to be out here with him and not just the girls and I this time. I hate to admit it, but there are some unsavory characters out in the beyond back here, and when I'm alone with just women, I do carry.  Apparently they all spoke a common tongue and so Don hopped in to move the car out of their way, and we all continued into the hills as they headed out. I knew immediately what they had been doing out here. Shooting. They recently shut down shooting on Peavine peak, due to all the litter and trigger trash, so these guys have gone further out onto public lands. They don't want to go to a range, or to the outdoor spot further down the 395. So they are back here, shooting their guns and leaving the casings all over.

We pulled up to this strange formation, and where the soil noticeably changed color. I wanted to inspect the pinyon pines for sap, and see what the grounds was doing. As soon as we got out of the car, I looked down and the ground was littered with fresh bullet casings. Wonderful, such responsible gun owners. There must be some gun fairy that comes and cleans up their trash, is that what they are told? At least why else would they leave it, or their mommas did a terrible job. My momma told me to clean up my mess, indoors or out. So all I can deduce is that they had terrible mommas, or their theme song is "Momma Tried".

This has become an incredibly huge problem out on public lands, and it also makes me nervous when I am out hunting for rocks. Who knows if they even think that a family is out there when they are shooting? If you are hunting, fine. That's one thing. But just shooting to shoot...go to a damn range, use you own damn property or join a gun club. My public lands are not for you to shoot up, litter and contaminate, you are not the only one out here.

On to the rocks, and off the soap box...sorry for the detour.

We found the strangest combinations of rocks, mostly in the wash because most of the open range is covered in the damn invasive cheat grass! A non-native invasive brought in by range cattle. I will address this issue in another more nuanced soap box post...but it does make it hard to search the dirt that is normally clear between the rabbit-brush. It's impossible, and when it dies it forms a solid grey ground cover, like a blanket, so even it dying off is making it harder and harder to see the ground like we used to.

We checked out a few spots, but really were just fighting with decomposing granite, shiny but poorly formed small crystals. Nothing much to look at. But finally we came to an up and down that I told Don, this is the end for today. At least in this car...time to walk. So the family piled out and we all started our walking through the wash in various directions. Immediately I started seeing fire-red jasper pieces, beautifully shiny. Standing out from the grey dirt and plain granite stones like beacons. Shades of yellow ochre, rusty red, burnt brown and even some flashy obsidian black. The quartz was really pure, with bright veins of rust and chunks so numerous,we didn't even bother picking it up. I was looking for colored quartz, not clear this time.

Ava came down one wash with stunning, opaque strips of agate that looked like sunsets frozen in miniature. Even Don, who usually just wanders was staring at the ground, gathering stones. I think since I told him that he could not use my trove of specimens to carve at lapidary class, that he had to find his own magic, he decided to start looking. I think he also wants to one up me, as is the nature of our relationship. It's fun...nothing wrong with a little healthy competition. My sister had found an odd half-stone of either malachite or fluorite?, not sure and so she had already made a great find, with solid green crystals in the middle, and she was minding the car and relaxing in the sun with the dogs.

After some time piling rocks, and then deciding which were worth carrying and which should remain, we head back to join my sister and head back to "town"for a Reuben sandwich and onion rings at the little Bordertown casino. Covered with dirt, pockets full of treasure and another area explored and noted for what it contains, and for the stunning vistas that it has seared into my soul. One thing that I will never tire of is the ability to get into and be immersed in absolute desolation within 15 mins of my home. I'm surrounded by some of the most incredible wilderness, landscapes that just drop your jaw. Boulders and mountainsides, snow capped peaks, tall and short trees and color changes that no artist could do justice with and that cameras struggle to capture.  Rocks are what we are looking for, but that's not really the point, my family likes to adventure together. I am really lucky that my college kid will spend her whole Saturday with her aunt and her parents out in the wilderness staring at the dirt, appreciating the outdoors instead of staring at her phone.

We then use what we find to create together! I did get some pine sap to make incense with, and the scent of all my wildcrafting (another hobby of mine) balms and lotions this year is what I've been calling "home". Not only because of Nevada's theme song, but because this is my home. It's been calling me since those forays as a child. It's a blend of cedar, sage and wild rose, now I will add the pinyon pine sap. One thing we always comment on over and over while out in the chaparral, is the smell. When I lived in the south, I had a baggie containing some dirt, old rabbit brush and some pine needles from the desert up near Bodie. When I was homesick, I would open that baggie and inhale. I don't need to fill my nose with the dried up herbs in an old baggie anymore, I'm actually where my soul says "home".

Rock nerd?

I was going to start this first blog post with some anecdote about my childhood, and my passion for digging in the dirt. How my love of finding geodes, fossils and crystals was born of my parents showing me how, but it was actually born of loneliness. Take THAT warm fuzzy, childhood origin story! I liked to be out by myself with my head down, walking slowly and living in my head. The origins of noticing the ground, and the things on it.


I do remember my grandparents telling me that their parents were rock hounds, and my grandfather gently showing me how to use his rock tumbler. Being from California their geology was more exposed than our east coast upbringing's habitat. I do have some grainy black and white photos of my great-grandpas up on some slope in the Eastern Sierra with rock hammers,  hands full of pebbles of some sort. I used to stare at the photo and wishing so hard they would share with me their favorite spots, and that I must be related because I was obsessed with rocks.  I bet these long lost great grandpas would understand me, and my weird love of rocks, I built a narrative in my head around this for a long time, it made my reality a bit less lonely, and seemed a lot less strange than an imaginary friend. A dead great grandpa that my grandmother always reminded me that I had a lot in common with seemed like a good person to talk to in my head. I was obsessed with not only rocks but whales. Good thing I'm a capricorn, half mountain goat, half fish because that really is my personality. I'm a dual purpose obsessive weirdo, and my two passions collide when I'm combing the beach for smooth stones while trying to spot whales or dolphins, or when I would hunt for good shark teeth fossils while working on the boats, in the cliffs surrounding our dive sites.

I did spend a lot of time in the summers and Christmas break with my father and stepmom, tooling around the California and Nevada desert in our Land Cruiser, looking in to old mines (before they were mostly fenced off) and finding moon like landscapes of pink pumice. Most of these adventures tinged with the danger of the back country, and my Dad's poor road choices. He had a knack for finding the one road that our vehicle could not clear and doing it anyway, putting us in peril over and over. But it was glorious fun.  We would find weird vertical mine shafts where big, white owls flew right at us out of the gloom when we dropped stones down to see how long before we could hear them hit the bottom. Like a ghost of some dead miner warning us that our searching was futile, and I don't even know what we were actually looking for. We never found much of anything, but I do think that was also because we didn't know how to look.

My favorite room at the Natural History museum where I grew up in DC, was the geology and gallery of gems. Of course I liked the dioramas of dinosaurs and the giant squid, but the rocks....the giant crystals that looked like filaments of some old lady's white hair. The glow in the dark opals from far off places, and the amethyst logs so big you could almost curl up inside them completely. The HOPE Diamond! The magic and mystery of it all. I had some internal fantasy of finding one of these masterpieces, born of pressure and persistence. I imagined being some young Indiana Jones type woman out in some jungle digging up giant crystals for reasons that only made sense to a child.

The truth is, I just liked being outdoors and I liked earth science. When my Stepdad would go up to the Blue Ridge Mountains to putz around our little cabin, and I would tag along, I would walk down the wash behind it. I had discovered a few trips earlier that there were citrine colored crystals covering some blue slate rocks. If you stared at the ground for long enough, in the right sun, you could sometimes find the magical little shapes all alone. Especially after a rain, then you could find whole gardens of them. I would be out there for hours, alone staring at the ground. My hands would go numb, my pockets filled with shining earth-made glitter. None of these were museum pieces, but to me they were treasure. Magic in a physical form. The time spent in that ditch was quiet in my head, I never worried about the bullies or the kids who made fun of me constantly. I didn't hear my mother's constant criticisms repeating in my brain over and over, I only saw the gravel and the glint of the next crystal. Time was meaningless, I didn't need to be entertained or told to sit still.

My stepdad never paid much attention to how long I was out there, and I know he was just grateful to have me out of his hair. He never spoke to me much anyway, but I do remember one day being gone down that wash all the way to the lake, it was off season and a weekday, so it was empty. I remember looking up from the dirt and mud and seeing a bobcat, I was so quiet that it hadn't even noticed me either. I stood super, stock still. Frozen in observation. The bobcat was drinking and it did turn around and see me finally, but did not start. It silently walked back into the bushes, and I remember thinking how fantastic that silent encounter was. I slowly made my way back up the wash, light getting dim.

When I got back to the cabin, hoo boy was I in trouble. They had been about 5 mins from calling the police. Nobody had thought to go down the wash and look for me, because my endless rambling about rocks and crystals had gone in one ear and out the other. I tried to tell them about my pockets of treasure and the bobcat. It was all lies, I was just being bad. Hiding from them, making trouble as usual. The bobcat story was added to some of my fishing fibs over time and I had forgotten it until I started writing this story. I had lost track of time because of the quiet in my brain, and caused panic in my mother. Panic and my mother went hand in hand, it was her comfort zone. An unfortunate family trait she left to all of us in varying degrees.

Over the years as I settled in the west, I never lost my passion for staring at the ground, wasting time my eyes moving from stone to stone eyeballing details everywhere we went. I lived in the Eastern Sierra for a tumultuous time, but was not in the right frame of mind to collect anything very good. My luck was not there, nor was I very serious about hounding. When my husband and I decided to move back west after languishing in the south for a while, the first thought I had was "ROCKS"! I have started showing my almost-grown daughters how to find the good stuff, where to look for soil changes, what glints are false and what makes my heart speed up.

I am not a scientist, nor a geologist. I am a lay person. I am an environmentalist and activist, and I grew up surrounded by scientists and artists, with all their flaws. I was lucky to have the forays into the wilderness that I had, which made the biggest impacts on me. I tried to study it in books and learn about it via the usual challenges, but I'm not built that way. My journey is as a hobbyist, and my next journeys will be what I decide to do with my various specimens. I am taking classes to learn lapidary, and if I have any talent to take my rough rocks and bring out what I see in them internally. I can't explain what grabs me about certain specimens, but living here in the high desert is like being at a buffet every single day. There is so much to choose from, and the conditions here are exactly perfect for rock hounding. I have traveled to some pretty cool places all over the world, and each place I go, I bring back rocks. Always rocks, and my luggage fees are always protesting this fact. I can grab a certain rock from my shelf and tell you where it came from and what was happening when I found it. I have bowls of rocks all around, and even the tiny ones, I can tell you the same thing. Ireland used to be a tropical rainforest, and I have a slab of fossilized riverbed from that ancient rainforest that now make up the immense Cliffs of Moher. Who needs a keychain, when that lowly piece of slate rock tells such an incredible tale, and was part of the Princess Bride. I mean, I did say I was a rock "nerd".

I may share locations, but mostly I wont. I may take you with me to look if you ask nice. But you have to find your own rocks. I found what turns my brain off, for me it's out there...in the desert, the forest or on the beach. I will be wrong a lot, I wont know what things are a lot. I have guide books and access to the UNR geology department where I can bring things in to ask them, "what the heck is this"? My tools are crude and I forget them a lot. My eyesight fails as I have advancing Glaucoma, and I want to see all the rocks and formations, cliffs and mountains I can before the blur and dark creep in too much to allow detail searching. I want to see that glint and grab that shiny crystal, or the unmistakable milky of the true opal.  I forget to take good pictures, they never do any of it justice anyway...but as this journey goes, it might veer into self discovery or quips on aging, parenting or the environment. My husband and I might share videos on camping or wildlife or flowers, but I am a rock nerd. It all comes back to my love of walking down a wash, with a quiet brain, staring at the ground. My brain quiet, my hands numb and my pockets full of treasure.