Simply put, any earth or mineral matter hardened in a mass defines the subject for this column. And, no, I'm not an amateur geologist or lapidariast. I'm just a guy who loves stones. Sure, as a child I skipped rocks over bodies of water and hurled a few at running lizards, but not until I went to Colorado in 1947 at age sixteen did a love for rocks begin and continue to this day.
A neighborhood schoolmate, recently from Oregon, had an interest in arrowheads and fossils, and regularly borrowed his father's truck so we could travel in a wide radius from Fort Collins – up to the Rockies or out onto the prairie, north to the Wyoming border and south to Greely. I learned the names of semi-precious stones and quickly recognized that where obsidian and flint flakes were spotted, arrowheads and scrapers might lie nearby. Also, my friend once pointed to a pile of small stones that looked as if they had been tumbled into a semi polish. From that display, he explained how dinosaurs had gizzards and required stones to grind up what they ate, and if the animal died, those stones often remained en masse.
Notwithstanding the education provided from my friend, neither he nor I were familiar with terms such as paleolithic or paleontology. For me, such words had to wait until after my US Army discharge in 1952.
On one occasion, we drove south of Fort Collins to a place called Goat Creek, where an older man lived in a small shack and tended a large herd of goats. We asked him if we could look for clam fossils, and he agreed without hesitation. The sides of the wide creek banks were littered with large clam fossils. I kept three extra large samples and proudly displayed them to my uncle that night – the uncle who had made it possible for me to leave California and join him and my aunt and three cousins in their move to Colorado.
Uncle Frank, a practical man of Iowa farm stock and a heavy duty equipment mechanic, didn't seem impressed with my find, asking, "What makes 'em special?"
"Well, they're millions of years old."
"So's any rock outside."
His stated position and the inflection attached let me know that trying to explain how my rock had life at one point need not apply. Looking backward, he would've easily shrugged off the importance of the Clovis spear points found in the nearby Lindenmeir section of land but a couple of miles from where we lived.
In that six of us inhabited two joined Quonset huts in a 'gypsy' construction camp of similar housing, each home with an estimated space of 600 square feet total (communal showers, toilets, and washing machines in nearby Quonset huts). I had an orange crate to hold everything beyond clothing. When leaving Fort Collins, one year after arrival, that wooden box held my fossils, a mix of rocks — obsidian, jasper, agate, and quartz — some wallpaper segments of old tabloids attached to an abandoned homestead, plus a flattened piece of lead found on the prairie that likely came from some buffalo gun during the latter part of the 19th Century. Not here does the full inventory of my Colorado treasures require presentation. Nope, just enough to show that parts of my brain had been sparked by a mix of adventures in and around Fort Collins, Colorado.
Sometimes when the learning process finds an interest focused in one area, the brain gets imprinted. I have no doubt that Amerindian History, fossil studies, and an amalgam of adventures attached to my curiosity over what makes people tick led to my subsequent major in anthropology. And, what makes ancient human history so fascinating in my mind — beyond language and art, even beyond the evolution of skeletal development — relates to the use of tools. For tens of thousands of years before any written word or the planting/harvesting of seeds, our human ancestors hunted and gathered the foodstuffs that kept our species surviving through varied climates and geographies with tools mainly fashioned from sticks, bone, and stones.
Could those early humanoids have developed some instincts that we yet carry in our DNA? Speaking for myself, back not too many years ago when I bow-hunted in strange areas, I likely failed to spot some game by my looking around for fossils, unusual rocks, and/or arrowheads. One time I spotted an obsidian hunting point likely used by the Chumash for seals. And, in the Templeton area, striding along a dry creek bed, I recognized a piece of flaked chert that soon nestled in my right hand certifying the rock useful for skinning deer. (I should gather such pieces and take them to the Morro Bay Museum of Natural History. (One of these days . . . )
My old biomass hasn't bow-hunted in years, and I don't get out and about as in days of yore. However, not yet housebound, I still look forward to visiting places where I can walk about and maybe spot a small geological object that catches my eye. I'll put it in my pocket for later, closer inspection. If you spot me, don't interrupt my ventures. After all, I have rocks in my head, and who can say how I might behave if deterred from my mission?
(Update on weight loss: Last December, I weighed 214 #, and resolved to get my avoirdupois down to 165 # by the end of 2012. By April of this year, I had shed 15 #. Currently I weigh 168 #. Two months ago, I realized that my initial goal had been determined by my young adult poundage when I stood five feet, eight inches. Now, I stand five feet seven and a ¼". Therefore, a weight of 160 # seems more desirable. Expect a final report by the January, 2013 issue.)
