Lone Pine Gem & Mineral Society Newsletter

July 2008

You Might Be A Rockhound 

Our You Might Be A Rockhound feature in the May newsletter set club member Gene Smith to ruminating about his own outdoor adventures. He sent us the following sixteen events from his own life and he concludes that he just might be a rockhound and he might have it bad. So, without further ado...

You might be a rockhound,

• If your wife asks you "How many more rocks do you think you will need?"
   
• If, after parking your vehicle, you walk a greater distance than you drove to collect specimens.
   
• If you find yourself sitting in your vehicle at your favorite collecting site waiting for the sun to come up so you can get an early start.
   
• If you find yourself using a flashlight to look for specimens and you're not underground.
   
• If your rockhound buddies take their own vehicle because you stay until dark.
   
• If your backpack full of tools weighs more than 20 pounds before you start collecting specimens.
   
• If you log 57 field trips to the same site.
   
• If you and your buddies use a military stretcher to carry one specimen back to the parking area.
   
• If you find yourself at the Coso red agate site while its snowing and again in 105 degree weather.
   
• If the price of gas doesn't matter because you're going on field trips no matter what!
   
• If you carry an 8 ft. ladder 1/2 mile to reach specimens on a cliff.
   
• If you find joy and pleasure driving to the middle of nowhere, leaving your vehicle to trek across open desert, rocky hillsides, and steep mountain canyons in the summer heat or the dead of winter while wearing a backpack full of tools, looking for specimens to carry home and throw in your yard.
   
• If you go on club field trips and don't find much, but you don't care because just being with other rockhounds is eventful and rewarding.
   
• If you go to the Quartzsite show and find it really difficult to leave.
   
• If your specimens line both sides of the your driveway, all walkways leading to your house, and your planters.
   
• If most of your friends are rockhounds.

Personally, I think Gene has a very serious case of rockhounditis. Do any of you think you can rival Gene? Let's hear your You Might Be A Rockhound stories.

A Local History Lesson

Roger De Hart has sent us an interesting article he came across about our own local area. Roger says, "What caught my eye was that it mentioned Inyo County (for the chamber of commerce), the Piute culture (for local pride), salt (for the mineral collector), waterfowl (for the birder), mining (for the geologist) and it was written in 1877 (for the historian)." The article was published as a letter to the editor of Popular Science Monthly in the June 1877 issue on page 286. D. Appleton & Co. hold the 1877 copyright.

SIR: A singular natural phenomenon has recently come under my observation. As I have never heard of it before, and as it appears almost incredible to all who have heard me speak of it, I thought it well to give it publicity through the columns of your monthly.

During the present month, while out on a scouting expedition, I spent three days in Deep Spring Valley, a lonely place in the White Mountains in Inyo County, California. During one day of my stay, the 5th of March, I found that the Indians were catching wild aquatic birds of all sorts in Deep Spring Lake by simply wading into the water and seizing them with the hands. The birds, at that time, had their plumage so heavily coated with a saline compound that they were totally unable to fly, and thus fell an easy prey to the savages. On inquiry, I was told that this salt formed on the birds' breasts and wings, so as to prevent flight, only during a very short season of the year, and then under a peculiar combination of circumstances. The season lasts from about the first of March to the middle of April, and the birds can only be caught from dawn until about nine o'clock in the day, when the previous night has been perfectly clear, with a gentle wind from the north. The birds are then found in the southern part of the lake, incrusted with the salt. On the first night that I spent there the sky was cloudy and the wind was from the north; on the third night the sky was clear and the wind was from the south, and no ducks were caught on the following morning; and from my own observation I can say that none were incrusted. But during the second night of my stay the conditions were exactly favorable, and the ducks were caught in abundance next day. In 1875 I visited the same locality in the month of December, and neither heard nor saw anything of this mode of catching water-fowl.

I weighed one duck immediately after it was caught, with all the incrustation intact, and again when the salts were cleaned off, and found that the latter weighted six pounds. The duck seemed to have been drowned by its burden; its eyes and bill were completely closed by a large lump of the salt.

Some small fresh streams enter the lake at the northern end; and on the favorable nights the Indians take the precaution to build fires and hang out cloths at the mouths of these streams, to prevent any of the ducks from entering the fresher water and thus having the salty incrustation dissolved or washed off. During these favorable nights, also, the Indians collect on the southeastern shore of the lake and perform a duck-dance, in which they artistically imitate the motions, habits, and calls, of different kinds of water-fowl. Throughout my entire sojourn on the shores of the lake, its shallow waters were rendered turbid by the wind; but they were equally turbid with a south as with a north wind.

As the lake of which I speak is the only one known to these Indians where ducks may be caught in this manner, it may be well to describe it more particularly. It lies in a desert valley, 6,200 feet above the sea. It is about one mile in length from north to south, and about three-quarters of a mile wide from east to west. Its average depth does not exceed three feet, although there are a few deeper holes in it. The land around is sandy, and covered with "sage-brush." During the past summer the Indians took from the bottom of the lake several tons of salt, which was sold to quartz-mills in this neighborhood as chloride of sodium, sufficiently pure to be used in the reduction of ores. It is said that the amount obtained in two days was fourteen tons; but this estimate may be taken in more senses than one, cum grano salis.

I send you a specimen of the salt, which I gathered myself from one of the ducks, and am very anxious that you would have it analyzed.

W. W. Wotherspoon,
Lieutenant Twelfth U.S. Infantry.
Camp Independence, Inyo Co., Cal.,
March 15, 1877

Lt. William Wallace Wotherspoon (1850-1921) went on to an illustrious career and rose to the rank of major general and became Chief of Staff of the United States Army in 1914. He retired that year and then became superintendent of public works for the state of New York. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

Editors note: Roger was flattered that I referred to him as a geologist in the June issue of the club newsletter, but he corrected my falsely held notion. He says his degree is in geography, his hobby is genealogy, and he is a part-time gynecologist. I believe everything Roger tells me.

Upcoming events

• Annual summer barbecue: July 13th at 2:00 pm. This is also our monthly meeting for July. Gather at 221 W. Bush St., Lone Pine.

Email Delivery Saves Money

We now have 26 members who are receiving the newsletter through email or are reading it online at lpgms.org. I figure this saves our club as much as $250 a year. I invite any one else who is a regular computer user to elect to receive your newsletter through email. Send me an email message at linda at lpgms.org, and I'll add you to our email newsletter list. Your club thanks you.

Contact numbers

• President: Francis Pedneau - 760-876-4319; franceem at qnet.com
• Vice President: Ray Ramirez - 760-872-0624
• Newsletter editor: Linda Jeffries - 760-876-1009; linda at lpgms.org