Wear and tear do's and don'ts

     Digging for fossils is a physically demanding sport.  My first year, I dove right in and had to learn some hard lessons, fast!

     #1.  Protect your back at all costs.  Standing in the water can provide some back support but after a strain that took me a couple weeks to fully recover from, I became much more aware of my digging form.

     #2.  Pace yourself.  My instinct is to dig like crazy, all day, until the sun goes down.  I only did that a couple of times before I learned the whole experience was much more enjoyable if I could stay awake during the 2 hour drive home and didn't spend the whole ride suffering from shooting pains in my hamstrings and aching hands barely able to hold the steering wheel.

     #3.  Maintain your health.  I refuse to stop for an official lunch break although gifts of yummy food will occasionally convince me to sit down for an al fresco meal that may look a bit foreign to the uninitiated.

     Frequent bites of food and swigs of water keep my energy level steady during all the exertion; digging in water may provide some support but it also adds an inordinate amount of resistance to every movement.

I'm rarely bothered by insects on the water but the sun is a big concern.  I always apply sunscreen but just noticed these additional instructions:

     I thought the whole point of the spray was not having to rub it in!

#4.  Keep your gear light.  I have been teased for taking too much stuff with me but if I get chilled in the water, it's over.  I have to get out and warm up to regain functionality and that's a big chunk of time wasted.  Depending on the weather, I will load up an extra dry bag with a fleece shirt and leggings and wool socks as well as chemical handwarmers, in case my core temperature drops; I've never been good at retaining body heat.  I was using my 14' kayak with the trolling motor and battery but that weight is more of an issue when loading up at the end of the day.  Still, when a neighbor offered me an 8' kayak for FREE, I snagged it, thinking I could surely paddle an 8' kayak for miles without getting tired.

     This little kayak was small enough I could pull it into my living room to puzzle out how to attach my gear but when I got it on the river, it was hard to steer and sluggish, completely the opposite of my expectations.  So I attached the trolling motor to it.  

     Spectacular failure!  Luckily, no one was around to witness it.  Once again, I felt strong admiration for the well-used 14' Wilderness Systems Tarpon 140:  it's a barge, but it's a sleek, stable barge.  Now the 8' kayak is relegated to the rare friend who wants to come along and instead of making them paddle, I tow them up and down the river.

     This is Mike, on his one and only time accompanying me to the river, being a tremendously good sport as we transported frames for our screens.

     This summer I've been working out in anticipation of my second season on the river.  These guys thought I could move some gravel before.  I'll be a machine this year!

Aimee's first honey hole

     While learning the fossiling ropes last season I had plenty of opportunity to peruse the old guys' amazing finds and try to be a good sport about my lack of amazing finds.  I understand I have to pay my dues but I came to this hobby late in life and I'm also a product of an instant gratification culture and I want fossils...NOW!
     Shortly after the first of the year I met up with Pam to search for a good digging spot.  We started paddling upstream, working the river bottom with our probes all along the way.  Pam expressed interest in stopping at a shallow, well-dug area and scraping the thing layer of debris along the rock bottom.  I know fossils can be found that way and due to the nature of the hobby, a lot of good fossils fall off of shovels on their way from the under the water to our floating screens but I had an intense desire to find a pocket that hadn't been dug before.  Understand, the Peace River has been HEAVILY dug for decades by tens of thousands of people.  An undug spot is a rarity.
     I told Pam I was going to keep paddling and she, being a very good sport, came with me.  We paddled for a long time without finding any gravel at all and when we finally got to a rocky area (obvious signs of other digging, of course) I announced that I was stopping right there coz I wasn't going to paddle another stroke (remember: I'm not a fan of paddling).  Pam started digging about 20 yards upstream from me while I found a layer of rock and gravel and began my own search.

     Almost immediately, I pulled up the first complete horse tooth I had ever found.  After months of listening to the old guys call out, "Horse tooth!" I finally got to do the same!  

     Over the course of a few more visits, I found over 50 horse teeth, many in excellent condition, including a few teeth from extinct 3-toed horses.  That first day, Pam wasn't having any luck so I encouraged her to dig by me...but NOT exactly where I was digging, lol.  She also began to find good fossils although not to the degree that I was.  Every screen yielded treasures and as a beginner, they were all pretty much new to my collection.

     I found my first large chunks of mammoth and mastodon teeth, including an almost complete baby mammoth tooth, as well as beautiful bison, camel and tapir teeth.  My first tooth from a giant ground sloth, a little banged up but a keeper all the same.  Several perfect armor scutes from glyptodons and giant armadillos, turtle fossils galore.  Vertebra, teeth and ear bones from marine mammals and several gator teeth.  A list of list of animal fossils so varied and extensive that Pam was inspired to nickname me the Zookeeper.  

The above photos are the front and back of a horse's wolf tooth.  I didn't even know they had such a thing!

     I took Jack to my location, once again crazy protective of the very small pocket I had found that was the most productive, and he also found great fossils.  He sternly instructed me NOT to tell anyone else where the location was so I had to laugh when went by myself one morning and found a youth group and chaperones, numbering close to 40 people, camped in the immediate vicinity.  Nothing is truly secret on the Peace River.

     After a couple more visits, Jack, a veteran fossiler, wrote to me in an email, "This is the single best Peace River location that I have seen or heard about since I started looking [several] years ago--that includes me and anyone I know.  No spot has produced as much as this one this quickly.  Treasure your digging there--it will be over too soon and finding another like it may take years..."

     And the "gold rush" part of my honey hole did end within a few visits.  I've often imagined a 3-d image of this pocket of treasures, undisturbed for who knows how long, until I happened upon it.

Horse incisor, minus the root.

     Skill and experience factor heavily but sometimes it's just luck.

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.