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.