Collecting Rocks 01

When people are young it’s hard to predict what will turn them on after their brains connect all the synapses they are intended by biological dictates to have. And I’m not referring to bizarre sexual proclivities but to what, at first, most likely appear to be innocuous things that somehow come to mean a great deal as people dance their way through the tango of life on their way to becoming the dreadfully boring assholes their genetic predispositions meant them to be. Or not as it may be.

What I mean are those things that some people collect that are critical “tells” about who they are. Yes, Doris, in this usage the word “tell” has the same meaning as it does in gambling. It is a critical indicator about your game. Only in this case we’re not talking about gambling but life as lived.

Those tells may be modern art, but only if you have mega-bucks and can afford the twisted genius of Jeff Koons or the more ethereal genius of Helen Frankenthaler or Frank Stella. Or first edition, signed books. Or the push the envelope lived art of Memphis. Again, only if you have money to burn.

A lot of people groove on marketable collectibles. Those ugly-assed tchotchkes you see on shelves, etageres or what ever you call them. Pieces of crap they paid hundreds for and are so proud of they grab you and drag your sorry ass across the living room to their tasteless display case and demand you to go gaga over them. You know exactly what I mean. They can be baseball cards, sports paraphernalia, comic books, vinyl records, miniature animals (like porcelain dogs, owls, or frogs), stamps, coins, gemstones, dolls, angels, indescribable crap made by Horchow or Lenox, or even miniature racing and muscle cars. Or if you’re like Jay Leno and have money to piss away you might actually collect the full-sized vehicles and to hell with the stupid-ass miniatures.

Some folks one step from the funny farm groove on those idiotic Lladró porcelain figurines or the Thomas Kinkade pieces of crap only a tried and true right-winger would orgasm over. Others, mostly those who hang dead deer and moose heads on their walls, drive pick-ups, and wear John Deere hats everywhere and are into concealed carry, collect talking or signing drunken fish they put on their basement walls and toast with their plastered friends. Regardless, what people collect frequently gives us a window into their innermost selves.

In my particular case, I neither have money to burn nor poor taste. Therefore, I ignore "manufactured" or contemporary collectables and instead collect rocks and want to tell you why.

First, I don’t collect just any rock. My standards are exacting. All the rocks must be stream-rounded, not clastic fragments, which means visiting a highway road cut and picking up broken pieces on the shoulder is a definite no-no. The reason is I want the collected rocks to look natural when I place them in my garden, which is designed to look like a dry streambed. Second, I only collect rocks that have visual appeal. That appeal may be expressed in color variation, shape, mineral patterns like a varve, combinations of different rock types like igneous and sedimentary, unusual mineral/crystal growth, etc. Third, they have to be portable; after all, you can only walk so far in a streambed carrying a rock that weighs more than 80 pounds, which is the heaviest rock I carried for nearly a half mile and it liked to kill me, and that’s when I set that weight limit, which dropped each year I grew older.

The next question might be: Why rocks? Why not something more sensible, more typical? Or less ridiculous?

Short question, long answer. When I was about ten-years-old our parents bought an encyclopedia set. I was fascinated by the volumes in general but was absolutely riveted on the entry for geology. After reading that section I followed the strings leading to such similar entries as Yosemite, Yellowstone, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock. But it was the detailed description of the Grand Canyon pulled me like someone mesmerized. Kaibab Limestone, Toroweap Formation, Bright Angel Shale, Vishnu Schist. Their magical names beckoned me to learn more and more about the Earth’s tangled mysteries.

In short, in no time at all I wanted to be a geologist. That inchoate desire smoldered inside me for many years and finally burst into flames when I enrolled as a freshman at Saint Louis University and had to select a lab science. It didn’t take ten seconds for me to focus on physical geology. During my first two years I took as many courses in geology and physical geography as I could, loving each one, well, maybe not structural geology, but that’s understandable.

At the end of my sophomore year I was ready to select geology as my major and had a sit-down session with Dr. Ken Brill, my favorite geologist and advisor. After going over all the requirements for required geology courses for majors, he happened to mention that since I had to have 15 hours of chemistry I might as well take an additional three hours to declare chem as my related minor.

I tried not to reveal anything but I nearly fell off the chair. Chemistry was one of my personal nemeses. In high school chemistry I was lucky to earn a C average. No way on earth could I minor in that shit at the university level. No way. Impossible.

As soon as the words fell from his lips I knew my aspirations to become a geologist were doomed. Doomed. Although I didn’t say a word to my parents, I moped around the house for weeks, still reeling from the shock. All through freshman and sophomore years I had assumed geology would be my major and failed to identify a fall back position. Now, faced with the absolute disaster of chemistry as a minor, I went comatose.

Truthfully, I had no idea of what to do so walked around in a daze for four or five weeks before stumbling on an alternative. Since I was also taking courses in physical geography, why not declare geography as my major and geology as the related minor? Whoa. Why not indeed? And that’s exactly what I did.

Although I soon came to love geography (which eventually took me into urban planning), I never lost my first love for geology. Or for the siren call of rocks and minerals. Throughout my life as an undergrad and then grad geography student I kept my interest in rocks. However, I didn’t start collecting them seriously until we moved from Michigan back to St. Louis.

One Sunday morning in the late 1980s I decided to take a walk in Bonhomme Creek in western St. Louis County near Babler State Park. It was a watershed decision that changed my life. In the creek bed I discovered an enormous number of rocks that shouldn’t have been there. At least not under “normal” conditions.

The rocks I found in the creek were not native to Missouri. That may sound impossible but not if you understand glacial dynamics. Thousands of years ago St. Louis sat on the southernmost edge of the Wisconsinian Ice Age, which extended from about 75,000 to 10,000 years before the present. The rocks I found both in the creek and deposited in adjacent alluvial stream banks were almost certainly from that Ice Age since their parent bedrocks were located in northern Iowa or southern Wisconsin and not Missouri. That discovery led me to the idea of installing a dry creek bed around my house with attractive and unusual rocks not typically found in nurseries. And so my mania began.

All that said, rock collecting is not as uncomplicated as might at first seem, at least for this St. Louis area resident. It requires that you travel to places where stream-rounded, visually interesting rocks live. For me, smack dab in the geologically boring Midwest, meaning lots of bland sedimentary rocks and few metamorphic or sedimentary, I have had to be creative about where to go to find potentially collectable specimens.

After several years of mining Bonhomme Creek of its distinctive rocks, I determined to branch out to other locales. One of the first places I explored was Rockwoods Reservation in southwest St. Louis County. And that’s the occasion of a little story.

One early Sunday morning I drove to what I thought was the edge of the Reservation on Highway 109, parked, and started collecting rocks. After about an hour trunk of my Oldsmobile was about a third full. As I was hauling two or three sizable rocks up the embankment an official Missouri Department of Conservation truck drove past, slowed, made a U-turn, and pulled behind my car. Even before the red lights flashed on I knew I had a problem.

Out popped a fairly young Conservation officer in official uniform complete with a ridiculous hat. She asked me what I was doing and I told the truth: rock collecting for a personal garden. When she asked where the rocks were from I pointed out the streambed and showed her the rocks. She became more than a little officious and told me it was illegal to take rocks from Missouri Department of Conservation property.

I was genuinely incredulous for two reasons. First, I told her I thought I was about two or three hundred yards from the Reservation. Wrong. She showed me a blue/purple paint mark on a nearby tree across the stream and said that was the boundary line. Which meant the rocks had been “harvested” (her word) from within that boundary. Second, I pointed out that from the indentations in the streambed that marked the previous resting place of the rocks, it was obvious they had only to travel a few feet and would then be beyond the property line.

No matter. Put the rocks back, she ordered. Which I did.

To my surprise, she never asked me to open my car or trunk, which were filled with contraband rocks. All I did was toss the illegal rocks back in the creek and leave the scene. Naturally, under her watchful eye.

The very next weekend I returned to the scene of my previous “crime” in our Olds and was busy “harvesting” rocks from the creek when the very same Conservation officer pulled up behind my car, lights flashing once again.

This time the officer walked up she wasn’t so polite. Frowning, she asked, “Aren’t you the same guy I talked to last week about illegally taking rocks from the Reservation?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “The one and the same.”

You could see she was royally pissed off as she pulled her ticket book out of her jacket and said in an officious tone, “In that case I’m going to have to issue you a ticket and summons.”

I laughed as I pointed across the creek. ”Do you see that tree over there with the bluish/purple paint mark?” I asked in all innocence.

“Yes,” she replied, lips pursed, pen held ready to strike.

“Last week you told me that marked the Reservation boundary. So, this morning I went southwest of that line. I never so much as stepped on Reservation Property or touched a rock within your boundaries. All the rocks I have collected this morning are from the property adjacent to the Reservation.”

I must admit I was enjoying the shocked look on her face.

“But that’s private property,” she said. “You have no right to trespass or steal rocks from those people.”

“In the first place,” I said, still smiling. “It’s none of your business since the Department of Conservation isn’t involved. In the second place, the property isn’t posted. In the third place, how do you know I don’t have permission from the property owner to collect rocks? Have you talked to them this morning?”

I stepped back toward my car, tossed the rocks in the trunk, and said with a bright smile, “Have a nice day, officer.”

After glaring daggers at me she flipped her ticket book shut, shoved her pen in her pocket, and drove off.

Naturally, shit-disturber I’ve always been, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. About two weeks later I drove our Mazda 626 and parked on the shoulder next to a small bridge on Rockwoods Reservation and descended into the creek bed to collect several very distinctive elongated limestone blocks found only in that specific location. I had come about an hour earlier than previously in the hope of avoiding the officer.

I had loaded my car with about ten or twelve large limestone “posts” and was standing in the creek bed, which was about fifteen feet below road grade, making sure I had collected the best examples when I heard the sound of a vehicle slowing to cross the bridge.

Oh oh, I thought. I bet it’s that damned Department of Conservation cop.

Knowing my ass would be grass if she stopped, I instantly turned my back to the road and put my hands to my face, as if I was holding a pair of binoculars and was looking for birds. I stood without moving or breathing.

The truck stopped and, after several heart-breaking seconds during which I was sure I was being observed, accelerated away. Seconds later I ran up the bank and, sure enough, it was the same officer. I jumped in my car and took off in the opposite direction, thankful I had had the good sense to change cars and to wear a different jacket and hat than the previous week. That was the last time I tempted fate at Rockwoods Reservation.

Most of the rocks in the several rock gardens around my house are not from local streams but from that part of the Missouri Ozark Plateau about 100 miles directly south of St. Louis. What makes that area so important for rock collectors is its distinctive geology. On a small dome at the east end of the Plateau, Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks that are about 1.48 to 1.1 billion years old are exposed in the St. Francois Mountains. I’m talking granites, rhyolites, ignimbrites, and felsites in Iron, Reynolds, Shannon, Madison, and Wayne Counties as well as Cambrian metamorphic rocks in many of those same areas.

The very best rock collecting site is on State Highway 143 in Sam A. Baker State Park on Big Creek. It is a virtual treasure trove of incredible rocks. Another great spot is the U.S. Forest Service’s Marble Creek Recreation Area on Highway E on the border of Iron and Madison Counties.

I also have many dozens of rocks collected from Michigan, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. And every time I travel I make it my business to collect a rock or two and bring them home. It’s an exciting hobby that takes you outdoors in lovely weather and keeps your eye sharp. I also tell people it keeps me out of the bars and away from the wild wicked women. Ha.