finding someone's discards in far outback of New Mexico
Jun 24, 2016 17:09:48 GMT -5
Fossilman, kk, and 2 more like this
Post by Peruano on Jun 24, 2016 17:09:48 GMT -5
Sometimes the rocks just beg to be taken home and I recently realized I had found a pile of rocks that were nagging me. Long story . . .
I hike and explore a very remote area of the Manzano Mts in New Mexico, and several years ago, I picked up a piece of olivine (at that time just identifiable as a green rock), but it had flat surfaces on both sides and appeared as if it had been sawed. There was no logical explaination for the rock having been sawed and the locality was forgotten.
In January of this year, my wife and I took a long hike after we parked the truck at the mouth of large arroyo running out from the steepest foothills of the Manzanos. I returned to the truck somewhat ahead of her and sought shade under a juniper tree not more than 150 feet from the truck. Under that tree was a pretty piece of petrified wood, noteworthy because the geology of the area is totally metamorphics. Its alluvium from a major uplift of the Rio Grande fault (on this side of the river) and hence all Precambrian metamorphics. To find wood, agates you have to go much further from the uplift and or to the other side of the River.
These rocks just shouldn’t be here. Scratching around a bit more, I turned up a few pieces of milky agate with some druze, a few red agate/jasper pieces , and more pet wood chunks -- enough to make me suspicious that I had found someone’s dump and since a couple of the rocks appeared to have been sawed it was a dump from a lapidary . . . . but curiously so far from civilization and in such an incongruous spot. Here I am 14 miles from any settlement of any size, 4 miles from any house, and with a vista of 100 miles of clear country to the S, W, and N, and an almost totally uninhabited mountain to the E. I marked the waypoint on the GPS with the intent to return and explore the base of the tree in detail in the future.
So I finally returned to it on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I knew the Lapidary dump theory was correct when I discovered a slab of Brazilian agate that had been lapped, and a bunch more pieces of agate and petrified wood. The agate is not like any I have collected locally, but the wood is similar to wood from sites that might be as close as 25 miles away.
5o far I’ve collected about 10 -12 lbs of rock from a 3 x 3 ft area, but since the cows have loafed under the tree for who knows how long and kicked things about, I’d guess that there easily could be material scattered over a much larger area. So I’m going to gather up a friend or two to share the fun with and return soon to explore someone’s cast offs.
I guess I’m participating in a rock hound’s recycling network and enjoying the process. So the moral to the story is . . . keep on exploring, looking at the ground, and you may be reward with treasure (or someone else’s trash but its all the same thing.
To illustrate: Here's a piece of lace like agate (not like anything in my region.
And another agate not like stuff I find in the nearby Rio Puerco.
Here's a piece of pet wood with the traces of the fossil insect damage - sort of unique
One of the clinchers was this slab of Brazilian agate that had been polished before being discarded.
And apache tears, bigger than usual and not from here (although they could be found within 20 miles of here.
In case you want to go the dump is under one of these junipers, but I'm not yet ready to disclose which one.
The rest of the pile remains to be explored.
Tom
I hike and explore a very remote area of the Manzano Mts in New Mexico, and several years ago, I picked up a piece of olivine (at that time just identifiable as a green rock), but it had flat surfaces on both sides and appeared as if it had been sawed. There was no logical explaination for the rock having been sawed and the locality was forgotten.
In January of this year, my wife and I took a long hike after we parked the truck at the mouth of large arroyo running out from the steepest foothills of the Manzanos. I returned to the truck somewhat ahead of her and sought shade under a juniper tree not more than 150 feet from the truck. Under that tree was a pretty piece of petrified wood, noteworthy because the geology of the area is totally metamorphics. Its alluvium from a major uplift of the Rio Grande fault (on this side of the river) and hence all Precambrian metamorphics. To find wood, agates you have to go much further from the uplift and or to the other side of the River.
These rocks just shouldn’t be here. Scratching around a bit more, I turned up a few pieces of milky agate with some druze, a few red agate/jasper pieces , and more pet wood chunks -- enough to make me suspicious that I had found someone’s dump and since a couple of the rocks appeared to have been sawed it was a dump from a lapidary . . . . but curiously so far from civilization and in such an incongruous spot. Here I am 14 miles from any settlement of any size, 4 miles from any house, and with a vista of 100 miles of clear country to the S, W, and N, and an almost totally uninhabited mountain to the E. I marked the waypoint on the GPS with the intent to return and explore the base of the tree in detail in the future.
So I finally returned to it on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I knew the Lapidary dump theory was correct when I discovered a slab of Brazilian agate that had been lapped, and a bunch more pieces of agate and petrified wood. The agate is not like any I have collected locally, but the wood is similar to wood from sites that might be as close as 25 miles away.
5o far I’ve collected about 10 -12 lbs of rock from a 3 x 3 ft area, but since the cows have loafed under the tree for who knows how long and kicked things about, I’d guess that there easily could be material scattered over a much larger area. So I’m going to gather up a friend or two to share the fun with and return soon to explore someone’s cast offs.
I guess I’m participating in a rock hound’s recycling network and enjoying the process. So the moral to the story is . . . keep on exploring, looking at the ground, and you may be reward with treasure (or someone else’s trash but its all the same thing.
To illustrate: Here's a piece of lace like agate (not like anything in my region.
And another agate not like stuff I find in the nearby Rio Puerco.
Here's a piece of pet wood with the traces of the fossil insect damage - sort of unique
One of the clinchers was this slab of Brazilian agate that had been polished before being discarded.
And apache tears, bigger than usual and not from here (although they could be found within 20 miles of here.
In case you want to go the dump is under one of these junipers, but I'm not yet ready to disclose which one.
The rest of the pile remains to be explored.
Tom