Post by Sabre52 on Jun 19, 2009 13:02:21 GMT -5
Howdy folks, Just another short tale of poppy jasper from the California Mother Lode.
My buddy/neighbor Tom is new to rockhounding but an avid opal and gold hunter and one fine day we were out digging in some of the old poppy pits which run along the crest of a ridge. We were finding a little stuff but, though very unusual poppy material, it was mostly kind of fractured. Mostly sort of a brown and white poppy grading into some snowflake looking purple spotted stuff. Here's a pic:
Anyway, Tom and I chatter like magpies while digging and the subject of the creek below the ridge came up and Tom asked if I'd found any poppy in the creek and I said yes I had but the brush between the crest and the creek was almost solid packed making hiking and hounding very difficult. It was also mainly manzanita which is tough stuff too. Well, Tom being a rather compact little guy says "Well why don't we do like the deer and just crawl around beneath the manzanita?"
Now, always being on the search for that untouched patch of poppy jasper, that sounded like a pretty good idea to me. So we got clippers and knee pads and I shucked my pistol because the dern things gets snagged all the time and we set off on a new kind of rockhunt, the belly crawl. I should say here that Tom is a little feller and I'm long and large so while he could comfortably cruise along under the brush, sometimes even standing, I was confined to low crawl and hands and knees while dragging my rock tools along behind me. At some point it also occurred to me that in a area thick with rattlesnakes, bear and wild hogs that number1: I might be meeting a rattler literally face to face and , number two: In the case of a bear or pig, Tom would win the race away from the critter and I'd probably wind up food.
Anyway, worst ever happened was laying on a nest of very angry red ants and the poppy jasper finds were unbelievable. It was literally everywhere on a couple of big hills and down the side of the ravine above the creek. These are a couple of the cool finds me and my buddies made there.
This first is kinda like Sierra Primrose Jasper except the poppies go to well over 1/4 inch in size and it was a vein that I found surfacing in one clearing in the brush and dug down to reveal three big hunks before it again thinned out to nothing . Lots of the Sierra poppy jaspers are like this and the veins often widen to form huge pods and then totally disappear.
This second discovery, my wife named Firefly Poppy Jasper and consists of white and pink centered poppies and little spots in multi colors against a black/purple hematite rich background. This pit I left open as it was shallow, and I came back the following year to find it full of huge thorny thistles that made digging really tough. The material from this pit also ran to outstanding brecciated pieces and this is maybe my favorite dig site ever because many of the hunks were huge.. Anyway, here are a couple more pics of Firefly Jasper. Thanks for lookin.....Mel
My buddy/neighbor Tom is new to rockhounding but an avid opal and gold hunter and one fine day we were out digging in some of the old poppy pits which run along the crest of a ridge. We were finding a little stuff but, though very unusual poppy material, it was mostly kind of fractured. Mostly sort of a brown and white poppy grading into some snowflake looking purple spotted stuff. Here's a pic:
Anyway, Tom and I chatter like magpies while digging and the subject of the creek below the ridge came up and Tom asked if I'd found any poppy in the creek and I said yes I had but the brush between the crest and the creek was almost solid packed making hiking and hounding very difficult. It was also mainly manzanita which is tough stuff too. Well, Tom being a rather compact little guy says "Well why don't we do like the deer and just crawl around beneath the manzanita?"
Now, always being on the search for that untouched patch of poppy jasper, that sounded like a pretty good idea to me. So we got clippers and knee pads and I shucked my pistol because the dern things gets snagged all the time and we set off on a new kind of rockhunt, the belly crawl. I should say here that Tom is a little feller and I'm long and large so while he could comfortably cruise along under the brush, sometimes even standing, I was confined to low crawl and hands and knees while dragging my rock tools along behind me. At some point it also occurred to me that in a area thick with rattlesnakes, bear and wild hogs that number1: I might be meeting a rattler literally face to face and , number two: In the case of a bear or pig, Tom would win the race away from the critter and I'd probably wind up food.
Anyway, worst ever happened was laying on a nest of very angry red ants and the poppy jasper finds were unbelievable. It was literally everywhere on a couple of big hills and down the side of the ravine above the creek. These are a couple of the cool finds me and my buddies made there.
This first is kinda like Sierra Primrose Jasper except the poppies go to well over 1/4 inch in size and it was a vein that I found surfacing in one clearing in the brush and dug down to reveal three big hunks before it again thinned out to nothing . Lots of the Sierra poppy jaspers are like this and the veins often widen to form huge pods and then totally disappear.
This second discovery, my wife named Firefly Poppy Jasper and consists of white and pink centered poppies and little spots in multi colors against a black/purple hematite rich background. This pit I left open as it was shallow, and I came back the following year to find it full of huge thorny thistles that made digging really tough. The material from this pit also ran to outstanding brecciated pieces and this is maybe my favorite dig site ever because many of the hunks were huge.. Anyway, here are a couple more pics of Firefly Jasper. Thanks for lookin.....Mel