I guess nobody likes fossilers...not even other fossilers.
I seem to gravitate towards activities that aggravate people or maybe there's a hater out there for every hobby. I'm your hater if you walk around public gatherings carrying a creepily real-looking premie doll.
Whenever I surf fish, there is always at least one man who feels compelled to bitch at me about something (sharks, surfers, etc). The majority of people, thankfully, are curious and friendly and I believe the same would go for fossiling except we rarely see a varied crowd on the river.
There is an older couple that regularly plies the river on a paddle boat, blasting country music while the woman fishes for bass. Apparently she has felt compelled to complain to the fossilers about the holes we dig, stating that it kills the fish. I'm no expert but I'm going to disagree. Little fish scurry around us all day as we dig, munching on the different tidbits we stir up and as I watch them frolic, I think, perhaps, they may be more affected by the constant runoff from the phosphate mines, agricultural fields, and cattle operations that line the river. Just sayin'.
An old fossiler told me that a landowner sued him, and won, for digging on a stretch of river running through his land. The judge said the landowner paid taxes on the land under the water and thus had the right to control it. Sounds a bit thorny to me but I'm not a lawyer. I had to consider this landowner and how I might have behaved in his shoes. Hopefully, I'll never be so unhappy and full of bile.
Then there was the FWC officer making his rounds yesterday (holiday break means lots of people on the river). He tried to be friendly to us but he doesn't understand our obsession and couldn't hide a faint tinge of contempt. He said he hated our piles of gravel that made it hard for boats to get through. I will accept blame where blame is due, but that, my friend, is B.S.
Fossilers can't even start digging until the water is nearing its lowest point of the year and by the time we get back in the river, the water is already so low that we have to drag our kayaks over stretches of sand and rock, NOT over piles of gravel.
Fossilers dig holes in underwater gravel with garden shovels. The holes start to fill up with sand the minute we stop digging and when the water rises in the summer, the holes are completely filled in and the gravel piles are smoothed over and the whole process starts again.
When I fossil on holiday weekends, I get to engage with a mixed crowd of people on the river: families, college students, youth groups, etc. They are the friendly, curious counterbalance to the haters. A large group of canoeing teenagers passed around me as I was digging during Thanksgiving break. Beginning canoers are not always good at steering and whenever a group passes me, I spend a few minutes redirecting their canoes around me, not OVER me. I revel in their happiness.
After helping straighten and relaunch a canoe that had grounded on the sand beach, one of the teens inside called back, "You get good karma for that!"
Indeed.
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