365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Sunday, August 4, 2024
Diaspore
Day 296: From the time I was a very young kid, I enjoyed collecting rocks. My interest was piqued further when one day on my way to school, I picked up an egg-shaped lump and threw it against a handy boulder where it broke apart to reveal crystals and a radiating round white mass similar to the green ones shown here. At 8 or 9 years old, I was convinced I'd found a fossil mushroom and, to this day, I'm not sure what it really was, but it occupied a place of honour on my dresser alongside a geode, a 3-inch quartz crystal and a 1-inch diameter garnet as well as other less intriguing specimens. As an adult, I kept a mineral collection in various display cases, and I dabbled in cutting cabochons from agate and other semi-precious stones. During a dayhike, I happened to find this conglomerate lump in an unlikely location and rather than forget to pick it up on the way back, I tucked it into my pack and carted it around all day. On arriving home, I tried to identify the green mineral but was unable to determine much about it other than its hardness (near 7 on the Mohs scale). Years later, I asked a visiting geologist for his expert opinion. He was reluctant to commit without testing, so I allowed him to chip off a bit to take back to his lab. A few weeks later, the diagnosis came in: diaspore, an aluminum hydroxide oxide which occurs only very rarely in gemstone quality (obviously, this specimen is not gem grade). I was very grateful to finally have a label to put on it, and it remains one of the best finds of my rockhounding career.
Labels:
aluminum hydroxide oxide,
diaspore,
minerals,
rockhounding
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment