There was a day in May of 1985 that was the single best mineral collecting day of my life. Leaving my campsite before dawn, I gathered perfect garnets from a mountain of rhyolite, culled barite and staurolite crystals from rocky outwash slopes and stumbled upon pegmatites so fat that they seemed to be pregnant. By late afternoon I found myself standing in front of a monstrous chain-linked fence topped with angry barbed wire. A black, yellow and red sign on the fence stated, in no uncertain terms: “U.S. GOVERNMENT MINERAL DEPOSIT. DO NOT ENTER. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.” Now the U.S. Government isn’t going to build a fence around a mineral deposit unless it’s really, really special…
I was under that fence in 30 seconds.
*Sorry, I did it again. Click HERE to finish this story at jeff-howe.net*


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