Go to your happy place...

    This is a photo of me in my happy place.

     Two of my friends wanted to give fossiling a try so I acted as their guide, taking them to a spot where I knew they would at least find some shark teeth.  The rigors of my happy place hadn't really occurred to me until I got them there, in the water...lovely Peace River water.  See the cows drinking on the left of the photo?  They also pee at the same time they are drinking.  A strange habit, I think.  I, of course, pee in the river but I don't drink that water.  What you can't see in this photo is that a cow had died just above the watering hole and the rancher never came and dragged her body away.  I had gotten used to blocking the stench from my mind while digging but my friends had a harder time with it.  This was probably one of their longest days in recent years, shivering in the cold water, digging and sifting gravel, and all the while thinking, "Aimee is bat shit crazy."

      But man, look at my grin!  :-)

Every journey begins with a single bowl of oatmeal

     I was happily digging away in the Peace River one weekend, my mind drifting from thought to thought when I pondered what a journey I was making every week to indulge my hobby.

(antler fragment, horse tooth, unknown tooth, megalodon tooth)

     I once heard a quote by the famous tarpon angler, Stu Apte, that every fish he caught, he caught the night before, meaning he had all his gear prepared when it was time to hit the water.  So I guess I could suggest that my fossil finds are assisted by a lot of prep work.  I have my kayak strapped down and locked onto my ladder rack; screens, shovels, probes, paddles lined out in the bed of my truck; milk crate with wet suit/waders, water bottle, dry bag, etc. in the front seat.  Before I go to bed I set out a bowl with a couple packets of instant oatmeal and grind some coffee beans so that I am ready to hit the road within 30 minutes of the alarm going off at 4:30 am.  The oatmeal is uninspired but mild on the stomach at the early hour and easy to eat during the 2-2.5 hour drive to my launch site.  By the time I get to the river I'm already about 3 hours into my journey.

     I put the kayak in the water, load it, and head off along the river.  The water part of the journey is challenging, even with a trolling motor.  During the dry season the level of the Peace River is so low that I constantly try to steer around sand banks, logs, rocks, etc. that beat up the propeller which is already set as high as possible while still maintaining some contact with the water.  I've perfected my method of leaning to the left to raise the prop even more when there is an obstacle, and leaning to the right to submerge it more when I have a stretch of open water.  What I didn't know when I started fossiling was I would also be dragging my fully loaded kayak, at times, across stretches of sand and river weed.  A distance of a couple miles can take me another hour to traverse and by then I'm feeling like a modern day Indian Jones, but without the poisonous snakes (for the most part) and golden idols.

(an interesting day's fossils, inc modern wild pig jaw, dolphin ear bone, antler fragments, crystalized sea urchin spines, and bullets)

     I don't mind fossiling alone but it can feel remote on days when no one else passes by on the river. 

I was told, from the beginning, to close up shop when the sun touches the tops of the palm trees.  I pushed it one afternoon, waiting until the sun had dropped lower, and wound up loading my kayak in the dark.  Did not like that!  So now, I reverse my journey in the early afternoon.  The paddle/drag/motor back to the truck is not aided as much as I would have hoped by heading downstream but I usually have some cool fossils in my bucket and a sense of contentment from spending the day outside doing something I truly enjoy.  If only there was a way to teleport home instead of repeating the 2 hour drive.

     So, every Friday during the dry season: 115-120 miles traveled over the road, across the water, through the muck and I can't wait for the season to start up again!

Off-season distraction

     The water level in the Peace River remains high which is not surprising as we are still enduring a mini-monsoon nearly every afternoon.  There are little indications, however, that my time away from the river is slowly drawing to a close, for example, a shortening of the days indicating the approach of the dry season, temperatures dipping into the 80's at night (brrr!), and see-through rain as opposed to blinding sheets of rain.
     Jack, once again, braved high water and fast current to assuage the need to dig.  He always manages to find a little something but not enough to entice me into the water...yet.  High waters in the Peace River can be dangerous and I told him that if I was his wife, I would kill him so at least it would be known where and how he died.
     I chose to engage in an off-season distraction by visiting a defunct gem mine in LaGrange, Georgia. The Hogg Mine was in operation beginning in the 30's (my info is a little sketchy as I was more into digging than listening) when only the large,  gem-producing veins were taken and the rest of the rock was discarded as refuse.  Over the intervening decades, the hills of spoil compacted and became overgrown with vegetation.  The current owners allow people to come in every other Saturday for a fee of $35 to dig in the hillsides with shovels and picks.

     I thought there might be more overlap between fossilers and gem fans but it didn't seem to be so.  Most of the other diggers were regulars and very focused on the quality of the beryl, aquamarine, and rose/smoky quartz they were finding as they planned on selling or cutting it.  I just wanted to FIND some of these stones they spoke of.  Everyone was very helpful and I followed their directions and also proceeded to move a lot of dirt and gravel as I am accustomed to doing when I fossil.
     The man who was digging next to me and giving me a lot of good info on the stones he was finding left to take a smoke break and as soon as he was gone, a clod of clay I was picking at fell away, revealing a stone with a blue glow.  I freaked!  I knew I had found something!  I was carefully digging it out when he returned and I said, "I think I found something good!"  He peered at the stone, declared, "Yes you did!" and ran off to get the owner.

     I had found a nice big chunk of an aquamarine-producing beryl crystal.  I'm hamming it up in the above photo; the crystal is still mostly buried next to my right elbow.  The guys said I could sell my rock for $200, as is, but they correctly surmised that I was just going to put it on a shelf and look at it.

     This photo shows my beryl haul for the day.  After I found the first, big chunk, I felt such a sense of contentment, I kept thinking of heading back to the hotel for a shower and a nap, but I continued to dig and found a nice representation of rose and smoky quartz (so translucent and beautiful, the rose quartz looks like pink ice cubes) and black tourmaline.

     In full appreciation of the wonderful mix of people I know, the note below was posted on FB in regards to my beryl photo that incorporates a quarter for scale:

     Serious LOL'ing for me!  I love a slightly twisted mind.  :-)

     I had a different variety of aches and pains from the ones I get in the river, mostly because I didn't have the water to support my back and cool me off.  Digging anywhere is hard work!

     I won't exchange gem mining for fossiling but I also won't miss an opportunity to go back to the Hogg Mine, if one arises.  

   

Ladder rack how-to

     I use the ladder rack on my truck for everything EXCEPT carrying ladders.  When I bought my first kayak on Craigslist I also found a used ladder rack for $85.  I spend another $100 having it professionally mounted and replacing some of the rusted fittings for the removable middle bars, and it was still an amazing bargain!

     I'm embarrassed to say that it took me a few years to realize I could hang my Ecuador hammock from the rack when I was camping but better late than never.  About every 3rd weekend, last season, I would camp on Friday night so that I could get in a 2nd fossil day on Saturday.  The only problem with sipping my gin and tonic while lounging in my truck hammock is that it attracts an enormous amount of initial attention.  Everyone is friendly and curious but I have a lot of questions to answer before I can kick back into fossil-daydream mode.

     The ladder rack works overtime hauling my kayaks but I constantly deal with the problem that my Wilderness Systems Tarpon 140 is a barge, weighing in around 68 lbs unloaded, and while I am fairly strong for my gender and age, it's a feat to get it on top on the rack after a full day of digging in the Peace River.

     I previously blogged about figuring out how to pull my kayak and gear up the river banks with a rope attached to my truck.  How could I use my truck to help me get the kayak loaded?  I have lots of mental sketches involving the cranks used to pull boats onto trailers but I haven't gotten around to creating that system yet.  What I did do was figure out a way to use a tie down strap to at least pull the nose of the yak off the ground and stabilize it while I finish the task.  I knot the strap on the ladder rack's prongs, loop it over the top rail, and tie it to the nose of the yak.  Lots of trial and error as there has to be just the right amount of slack and the strap must be positioned exactly, but overall, for a basic caveman approach, it helps when my shoulders are feeling a bit rubbery at the end of the day.

     Someday, this Ford Ranger is going to give up on me and when it does, I will have to move on to...the exact same setup! 

Fossilized deer antler from Peace River, Florida.

Survival Tips

     My dad has been sending me pages from an old desk calendar where every day was a new tip for surviving an extreme situation. I would like to say I'll never need that information but my mind gets wrapped up in the possibility that I'll be faced with jumping out of a building into a dumpster and if I don't know how to do it correctly, well, it's my own damn fault.
     One of the tips, however, dealt with escaping from quicksand.  I haven't ever experienced true quicksand but here in Florida there is some serious muck that has given me pause.
     I originally got into the kayak lifestyle when an acquaintance offered to step up my game of surf fishing for pompano to kayak fishing for redfish in the Florida lagoons.  On one of our first outings, I was walking a muddy shoreline of the Indian River Lagoon when I instantly sank to my knees in muck. There was a moment of panic until I realized the sinking part of the experience had gone as far as it would go, but I was stuck and my fishing buddy was on the other side of a tall gravel embankment and it was very windy so he couldn't hear me.  I pulled myself together and slowly worked my way out of the goo.  It was an interesting wake up call about being aware of your surroundings in an unfamiliar environment.

     This redfish was the most amazing payoff from those years and I still show off these photos every chance I get.

     And just so you know, I resuscitated the fish (in progress in the above photo) and it swam away.

     Fossiling in the Peace River has presented a new set of challenges...

     ...with equally enticing payoffs.

     The cypress trees along the river beg to have their photo taken and I begged to have my photo taken with them.  I started to wade over to this tree...

...but when the murky waters went over my thighs I retreated and paddled over instead.  I'm the first to admit I'm a puss but for all the time I'm spending in the river, I like to err on the side of caution.