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.

Shark tooth glamour shots

These things are just so beautiful.

It's a dog eat dog world in the river

     Being new to fossiling, I try to balance between helping other fossilers by sharing info on areas to dig, and being so tight-lipped about what I'm doing that anyone asking me for pointers might conclude I don't speak English.

    

     

     You have to be a little secretive when you find a good spot. In the beginning I would get excited and verbose when I found a good area and then watch in dismay as the old guys shamelessly moved in on it. I had to start containing my enthusiasm.  Jack told me that if I found a good spot, I shouldn't tell anyone and he added, laughing, "You shouldn't even tell me."

     No one owns the river; it's all fair game, and that lesson was hammered home one weekend with crushing clarity.  I was spending a Saturday working an area with Fossil Steve.  He is methodical and prefers to cover an area in a grid as opposed to "pot-holing" or digging willy nilly.  That day, I wasn't finding much at all and right before I had to pack up and leave, I gave a frustrated stab into the mucky clay at the bottom of our trench.  And I hit something.  It wasn't clay and it wasn't small gravel but it wasn't the solid rock of the river bottom either.  It was large chunks of tightly packed rock.  As I struggled to loosen them, Steve kindly moved right in to "help" me (I protested, to no avail).  Our first screens produced passable megs, horse teeth, large chunks of mammoth tooth, etc.  We began to dig frantically as we both had obligations that would force us to call it a day.

     Right about the time we had dug ourselves into a hole nearly chest deep a man comes canoeing along with his young son.  Steve and I looked at each other and our dismay was apparent.  The man said he wanted to "try" fossiling with his son but he had a boatload of gear and obviously wasn't a newbie.  We pointed to an area where we knew he would find shark teeth but he was studying us closely.  In an area of the river that wasn't even hip deep, Steve and I were stand shoulder to shoulder in a chest deep hole.  Kinda obvious.  But we had to leave, vowing to return on Monday.

     Less that 48 hours later we returned to find the whole spot dug out and a huge pile of discarded rock  poking up out of the river.  To the side of the discard pile was a castle and wall made out of rocks: the project of the young boy while his dad ROBBED US!  

     No, no, no...I know that's not how it is.  No one owns the river.  And let's be honest, I would've done the same damn thing.  

     We still worked the area for the rest of the day, finding some nice fossils including the biggest segments of mammoth tooth Jack had found to that date, but who knows what treasures our usurper took home that Saturday evening.

To Pee or Not to Pee...

     Yeah, I pee in my wet suit. 

If I'm in my wet suit in the water, you can bet I'm peeing.

     I fact, I get so relaxed about it that when I get back in my kayak I have to remind myself to stop.  

     But 2 of my wet suits were given to me and the 3rd cost me $12.99 at the thrift store so as soon as I get home, I throw them in the washing machine and then dry them in the sun.

     I hope this doesn't make you feel squeamish but you probably weren't going to ask to borrow my wet suit anyway.

Mastodon Puzzle

     It felt like a test, a rite of passage.  

     Fossil Steve (this nomenclature to distinguish him from another friend named Steve) handed me an old shoebox filled with fragments of mastodon tooth and 2 tubes of Super Glue (I added the beer later).

     Steve is 70 years old and still digging in the river every other day during the season.  He stands up on his canoe while he paddles and I cannot keep up with him in my kayak unless I'm using the trolling motor.  He is a country boy and a character and the real deal and he has a way of turning a phrase.  He once told me about a young woman who was digging downstream from him and screamed so loudly when she found a huge meg that he "run down there coz I thought she was gator bit."

     I know Steve likes me but I also know I irritate him.  It's that usual issue of men liking an independent woman...until they realize she's independent and won't do what they tell her.  We go round and round about the size of hardware mesh on my screens.  He insists that I use 1/4" so that I get all the tiny fossils.  I prefer 1/2" so that I don't get frustrated sifting through all that little gravel.  Right or wrong, I am comfortable leaving the bird claws and baby snake vertebra for someone else to find but I also realized that he was on the verge of getting truly upset about it.  So I use 1/4" when I'm digging with Fossil Steve.

     Anyway, I took the shoe box and worked myself crosseyed over that mastodon puzzle for an entire weekend. I made excruciatingly slow progress but ultimately, even that came to a grinding halt.

     I posted a photo of my project on FaceBook and a club member pointed out that there was definitely pieces of more than one tooth in the collection.  

     I had done all that I could do.  I carefully wrapped the reconstructed sections and placed them with the remaining fragments back in the shoe box.  When I handed it all to Steve, he initially looked disappointed with a tinge of "that's what I expected" until he opened the box and saw that I had been able to put together the framework of one entire tooth and parts of at least a couple others.  His whole demeanor changed and he got that excited glint in his eye.  "I gotta get back there and keep digging!"  Of course he won't tell me where "there" is but that's ok.  I can use a break from the mastodon puzzle.