Peacock Rocks

I didn't know my Uncle Don well, but he fascinated me none-the-less.  He lived in Arizona, was a postman, saw ghosts while on duty during WWII~ but most of all, he collected things.  Like the rest of us he had a restless wandering soul, and went out to the deserts and brush lands during his time off.  He would drive and walk and take photographs, but most of all he would find things and bring them back to his yarden.  Bleached bones and fossils, shards of pottery and broken wagon wheels, rusted machinery from long-ago mines, cacti and rocks. Behind his house in Phoenix was his yarden, with a high wood fence and the treasures displayed all around it~ there was a rabbit hutch as well, which was interesting, and we had rabbit for dinner that night which was slightly disturbing but very, very tasty.

The night I speak of was on one of our cross-country trips, just Mother and I, and I must of been youngish- not a teenager yet, but I was the navigator- found the White Rock Hotel in Albuquerque where we stayed, got elevation/heat sick at the Grand Canyon causing no end of problems (and a rather rough introduction to Gatorade), remember a fellow at a rest stop advising to drink 'hot coffee in hot weather' because it will cool you down by equalizing the temperature of your body.  And we stopped at Uncle Don's and Aunt Helen's in Phoenix.  We didn't stay long- a night, maybe two- and I don't remember much except going to the grocery store with Aunt Helen (for some reason I was amazed that they had gumball machines in grocery stores in Arizona- ), eating rabbit for dinner (fried, like chicken.  It was amazing.) and the yard.  The treasures everywhere, the rocks, the bones, the fossils.  I was totally enchanted, and Uncle Don took a moment and explained to me about the rocks, the bright iron pyrite, the ore with strands of copper, what a gold nugget might look like....and the peacock rocks.  Peacock ore is found around copper deposits (oddly enough, it is also common in Cornwall, part of our family places) and is beautiful.  It has a metallic sheen to it, and is multicolored blue, green, purple, black, copper- sometimes it doesn't look quite real. And then, then he let me keep some- a pyrite nugget, a fossil of a fern, petrified wood, a flat smooth sandstone....and a bright bit of peacock that he let me choose for my own. Treasure.

That, of course, started me collecting- but not in the same way I collected other things.  I wasn't as interested in the science of the rocks so much (though we were drilled- no pun intended- in geology in school, especially concerning all-things-coal)- I was attracted to their colors, textures, weight.   I liked the smooth oval rocks of the ocean best- we already had quite a few of these- but I liked these desert rocks as well.  Later, the crystals of the mountains, rose quartz, geodes full of surprises.  Turquoise fashioned into beads, and amber which is not a rock at all.  In college I learned to carve stone, and loved the raspberry alabaster with its pink and white veins, it's translucency.  The summer I took sculpture we went to the outer banks on family vacation- I sat on the beach and polished my stone with the sand and the waves.  The sculpture wasn't much more than a smooth blob (I have no idea what happened to it) but the experience of sand and stone and water was magic.

I began collecting rocks again.  Not for their properties, but for their place.  One from the places that I lived at in the mountains. Pebbles from our island on the dashboard of the car- added to with stones from Johnstown, Alabama, Charleston, Texas, Boone....everywhere I went.  Now when people travel I ask them to bring me back a rock~ it is free and easy~ and I have them from all over. Black onyx from Ireland, a smooth flat stone from London that is the size of my cell phone.  A tan stone from Belize, the chunky large rocks brought back from Tennessee. Others.  Little bits and pieces of the world right here, right now.

Day after tomorrow I leave for New York- and I will take a rock from our home.  Perhaps one of those that Mr. Owens found for me, heart shaped or encasing a shark-tooth, something special- for it is said that if you carry a bit of your home with you, you will never be lost.  "Touchstone, take me home, turn me round, make me whole"