Between snake shows this time of year (off-peak for Snake Removal but also Blue and Gold Banquet season – to a Cub Scout, I’m a rock star) we were talking with our friends Randy and Joan about Arkansas.

Julie and I have long been drawn to the unique geometric beauty and energy resonance of quartz crystals.  About 70% of the Earth’s crust is quartz in its myriad forms, and we’ve recently discovered life forms on the planet that are based on silicon (like quartz) not carbon.   In many traditions, Mother Earth is alive – and very conscious.  These beautiful stones really seem to clearly if subtly prove it.

Joan had been to Arkansas on a couple of occasions to visit one of the mines that is open to the public wishing to dig for these little gems.  I realized that the window of great weather for such a day on a mountaintop might not last (it’s getting warm fast) and a couple of days later we were on the road.  We traveled North of Hot Springs to one of the mines located there, and spent a whole day digging in the dirt.  And the mud.  And the clay.  Very fun indeed.  Julie was as happy as a lark digging away at her pile of tailings from the mine below.

The trick to finding these little treasures, many of which are quite small but still beautiful, is to be slow and patient, stopping to soak in the nature around you from time to time.  That was right down her alley.

The mine charged a flat fee per visitor to leave with whatever they could dig up and carry off.

So it was that we drove back to Dallas with a couple of boxes of rocks covered in red mud.  This begins the second discovery of each item, as you clean them off in preparation for a diluted acid bath to remove the iron oxide and reveal the clear or white crystalline structures beneath.   As of today, we’re past the first washing and into the second soaking as the pics below will show.

Turns out oxalic acid is hard to find in Dallas, but all the rock shops were closed as we left Arkansas.  I may resort to muriatic instead, but it’s more dangerous to work with so we’ll see.  I’ll post some after pics once the cleaning process is complete.

Randy took care of the dog, the cats and the horse for us, and we really had a blast learning to dig for buried treasure.  It is really amazing to realize that the crystal you’ve just dug out of the clay may well be seeing the sunlight for the first time in a couple hundred million years or so.