Rock Geeks

[Jitter]

Róisín is totally a Discworldian witch! This is now real life canon!

[SkyWhalePod]

Róisín is totally a Discworldian witch! This is now real life canon!

[Róisín]

Not I, though I wouldn’t really mind! And Celtic Pagan rather than witch. I do know some actual witches, and work with some of them at the general Pagan community’s seasonal rituals at the quarters and cross-quarters, as some of them will be working with us at the  Druidic Peace Ritual next Saturday. Australian Pagans are a fairly eclectic bunch, and support one another’s work. Also about half of our local witches are blokes, including the senior witch in these parts, who is a Cornish-Australian.

My grandmother, who was also Celtic Pagan, was more like one of Pratchett’s witches, being the village herbalist and midwife as well as a farmer. I learned a lot of useful things from her.

[deadrose]

We should talk grandmothers, some time, Róisin, my paternal grandmother was the village braucha (folkhealer/wisewoman). I never got to know her too well, but according to my Dad, I inherited her "talents".

I'm another Washington-stater, currently living on the wet side of the state. I have mostly lived on an island that's pretty much a pile of glacier crap in Puget Sound. I was born on the other side of the Cascades though, in a little valley tucked between the Cascades and the Columbia river, right near  the channeled scablands. Dad was a bit of a rockhound, and I picked some of it up from him - I always have interesting stones lying around the house, or in my pockets. If I had my way, my entire house would probably be a Cabinet of Curiosities.

(I lurk around here most of the time, and only occasionally pop my head up to post as time allows)

[Róisín]

Would love to, deadrose, and it is good to see you about even if you generally lurk these days. My gran’s original farm was in the West of Ireland, and when she moved out here after World War 2 so as to look after my dad she sold the farm back home and bought one in Gippsland and went straight on as she had been doing, while raising us kids and nursing my dad through his slow dying (he had been a POW). It somehow worked. And she and my dad were both rock nuts, as was my uncle.

[deadrose]

Mine was in North Dakota, in one of the Germans-from-Russia communities there. As you can guess, they took a roundabout path from Germany to the US. Though my grandparents were both born here, German was their native language, and my dad's. But since he came to school age right about the time WWII was getting started, speaking German suddenly became A Bad Thing and so he learned English in childhood.

The other side of my family appears to be all Ulster Protestants, the Scots-Irish who settled the Southern States & Appalachians. I haven't been able to find too much more about them than the name of the male who came over around 1700, I can get pretty decent records on this side of the water though.

But anyway, this is supposed to be a geologically-oriented thread. So you've been in Washington state, have you - what parts did you get to visit? Did you get to go hunt Ellensburg Blue agate? Or were you on the Seattle side of the mountains?

[Róisín]

Only just saw this. I was more on the Seattle side, and doing my usual thing of visiting old friends, while observing and learning from plants, rocks and the land. Never had the chance to look for blue agate, but I saw some and was reminded, oddly, of some of the potch opal from Mintabie, for which I have prospected. I don’t travel as much these years,  because I have a disabled husband to care for and am getting a bit decrepit myself, but it is still interesting to hear about places I have known.

[deadrose]

Well, if you make it out to the Seattle side again, let me know and we can actually meet in person! We can even go rockhounding the easy way (drive to the rock shop down the road).

[Róisín]

Thank you. It is unlikely that I will, but nothing is impossible.

[Mirasol]

Hey there, do fossils count for this thread? I´ve found some at a stone quarry recently. (the area is popular for its schist, and fossils are in a lot of them. It´s a lot lighter than all the schist I´ve seen before. I only knew the almost black kind before going to this quarry.)




(from two angles as I´m not sure which one is better visible)
This is the best one I found, apparently it´s a starfish.

But then I found a whole huge plate of little starfishes (that my tools unfortunately damaged quite a bit, but on the bright side, they glitter now)




Here´s one from a little closer.

And some regular cool rocks (schist and some kind of quarz maybe?) I found there, to stay a bit more in line with the topic of this thread:
Those branch-patterns have been formed by a chemical, manganese as I´ve been told.





For some reason the post has deformed some of the pictures??? I don´t know why this happened??? I might try reuploading them once I´m back from vacation...

EDIT: I´ve switched out the pictures that were odd now

[dmeck7755]

Mirasol,
That is so cool.  Initially I thought it a spider. 

[Jitter]

Wow Mirasol, those are great! I also thought it’s something like a daddy longlegs spider

[Buteo]

Or a really tiny sea star.

[Keep Looking]

Those are incredibly cool rocks - fossils are great! The big museum in my city recently has had a dinosaur exhibition (as museums do) that me and a friend went and visited on Wednesday, where there were several interesting fossils.