Mineral Collecting
Image taken with Kodak DC-120
The specimen to the right is a three hundred and ninety pound single crystal of Smokey Quartz. It sits on an oak case I had specially made for it. It is located by the steps of my home, mainly because it was easier to put it there than anywhere else. This specimen was found near the Continental Divide at Butte, Montana. It is one the most prized members of my collection. Here, it is in the living room where I used to live, illuminated by sunlight coming into the living room from behind it, and to the right. You can see that the smokey color is not uniform throughout the crystal, and that the right edge is fairly clear compared to the rest of the piece. I brought this specimen home in my Geo Tracker, which dutifully carried it the several hundred miles, and then once home, spit out a sparkplug in apparent disgust. It nearly went through the hood of the car.
The next specimen is a spray of barite crystals which measures about 3 inches across. This item was found about thirty miles from my home on the shores of Fort Peck Lake. The collecting locality can only be reached by boat. I have numerous specimens of barite from this region, however no other spray of crystals is quite so spectacular. To recover this specimen, I used a sledgehammer to break into a boulder which was about four feet in diameter. These boulders are often hollow, as was the case here; inside them it is possible to find specimens of calcite, barite and selenite in massive and crystal forms. Interestingly, the boulders form a cavern environment in miniature, and exhibit stalactites, stagmites, and flowstone of cacite and barite. They are quite beautiful when first broken open, however the colors fade rapidly upon exposure to sunlight and the dry Montana air.
The last specimen is also barite, however these two crystals are far larger, and exhibit beautiful variations in color and transparency. They were found within a few miles of the crystal spray shown above, also within a large boulder.