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Arts and Entertainment > Humanities > It Only Takes Once
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Sally Taylor
Scoring a terrific find on a hunt is always exhilarating. If this were not the case, only those with commercial interests would be crazy enough to spend hours, days, and years walking with their noses to the ground like we all do. But it is the case, and each new find brings a whole new charge of that funny electricity all of us crave so strongly.
The whole hunting craze, as a matter of fact, is wildly addictive. It only takes one
find, one accidental score, to turn an otherwise normal person into a hard core
rockhounding, treasure hunting addict. There is no cure for the addiction. It
changes lives forever and there is no turning back once you get hit with it.
No matter how long ago it was - my bet is you remember well the moment you
picked up that first find, held it in your hand, and realized what you had found.
Maybe you didn’t know that you had been struck with an addiction at the time,
but looking back - you know it now for what it was. I sure remember my first
strike.
Raised in Michigan, mountains were new to me when I moved to Colorado, but a
love of travel was not. I wanted to explore and see everything. Being a nature
lover and a natural born form of wildlife, the mountains were a real attraction for
days of hiking and drifting into and out of small mountain towns to see what there
was to see.
Cripple Creek was a much talked about town in that state. Of course, this meant
that it had been added to my list of “must sees”. One beautiful summer weekend
about 20 years ago, when the mountain passes were clear and the snow had
melted from most mountain tops, I set out with my dog and to see the town and
do some mountain hiking.
We were on the road to Cripple Creek which runs through the back side of Pike’s
Peak. It was beautiful out and we were getting cramped sitting in the car for so
long so I found a spot near an interesting looking ravine to pull over. We had
been climbing for about twenty minutes when I found a scenic spot to take a
break. Blitz, my canine companion in those years, was contenting himself
playing in a small stream while I sat in the shade of a tree taking in the beauty
and peace of the area. Several times my eye was drawn to something glinting
in the sun in the direction we were heading and I made a mental note to see
what it was on our way up, not thinking too hard on the matter.
Finally, I decided it was time to get up a bit higher and catch some of the great
scenery I knew was waiting to be seen from a small plateau five ore six hundred
feet above me. As I started up, I bent and picked up the glittering item that had
caught my eye. It was a cluster of four fairly nice sized quartz crystals, the
biggest about ˝ inch thick and around two inches long.
When I realized what I had picked up, my heart pounded so fast that my head
went light. For all the times I had seen pictures, or crystals for sale in rock shops
and gift stores, it had never occurred to me that real people, people like me,
could just go out and pick something like that up off of a hillside. I was in high
altitude and the excitement of this revelation came very close to knocking me
out. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find that my ecstatic scream could be heard
for miles on miles down the canyon.
As you can tell from the existence of RockhoundStation1.com - I am addicted.
Not long after my first strike, I moved to the mountains I loved to wander through
and my collecting interests broadened. The collection today includes agates,
obsidian, quartz crystals, fossils, gem crystals, Indian Artifacts, gold, old coins,
marbles and so on.., If it is out there, I will look for it.
Well, there you have it. The confession of a true addict, a rockhound.
©2005 Sally Taylor: Sal is an avid gem and treasure hunter, explorer, writer, and is the owner of http://www.rockhoundstation1.com
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