All Rock is not Created Equal. . .
Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic. . . When I was a boy, really for most of my youth I had a passion to be either a geologist or a paleontologist (a person who studies fossils). I grew up near an old gravel pit. . . hog nose snakes, toads, frogs and tadpoles galore, cliff swallows, opossums, salamanders. . .baby birds, nests of blind hairless mice and precious small rabbits. . .That was my classroom. The sun. . .the wind. . .all of God's creation was my teacher. I loved studying there. I loved rocks. I was fascinated by them, by the stories they told. They were the ballast of my youth. I spent youthful ages of time hunting for fossils, brachiopods, crinoid stems, compound corals, anemones. . . geodes. . .I had my own little excavation in a nearby peat bog, where I spent many days digging and looking for ancient species of snails, their shells preserved in the boggy soil. I romanticized myself on some important paleontological dig. . .Digging away in the hot sun, alone in a ...