Land o' Goshen!: Finding Hidden Explosions and 'Sunlight on the Garden' in Southern Illinois ('Egypt')

A "pebble pup" pores over a pile of mostly purple fluorite for sale that was extracted from a mine in Hardin County

Weekend before last, we traveled with a group of ardent rock hounds, members of the Southern Illinois Earth Science Club, to Hardin County. We were on a quest to find ancient, cryptoexplosive breccia and associated treasure, hiding for untold centuries under Hicks Dome and elsewhere nearby, that miners would eventually discover: Fluorite...

and chunks of iron. We raked and picked through a section of the leaf-littered forest for the tailings of a long-abandoned iron mine. An old iron furnace nearby that dates back to Civil War days helped to fire up my imagination and make me wax poetic in this land called Egypt...

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden

Hardens and grows cold

We cannot cage the minute

Within its nets of gold,

When all is told

We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances

Advances towards its end;

The earth compels, upon it

Sonnets and birds descend;

And soon, my friend,

We shall have no time for dances.

  

The sky was good for flying

Defying the church bells

And every evil iron

Siren and what it tells:

The earth compels,

We are dying, Egypt, dying!...

(from the poem by Louis MacNeice, c.1937, 1938)

I found Mr. MacNeice's poem in my Norton Anthology of English Literature and was struck by the editors' comment that "in love with life's irreducible multiplicity, he [MacNeice] strives to embrace life's flux, despite an underlying sense of sadness and, sometimes, tragedy: 'All our games are funeral games.' " The editors note that he traveled to the United States at the beginning of World War II. I can't help but wonder if he ventured into Southern Illinois during his travels? The words of his poem certainly have an eerie sense of belonging here. 

The book club at our local library is at present reading Murder in Little Egypt by Darcy O'Brien. It's a true story of filicide, but I consider that it's also a story of community culpability. Mr. O'Brien's in-depth study of the history of this place called Egypt at the beginning of the book supplies the reader with building blocks for constructing a pyramid of plausibility: Tyrants/terrorists are, essentially, enabled by their communities. "When all is told, we cannot beg for pardon."

Green with Envy and Wavellite

Bowing to much pressure applied lovingly by the persistent Walk2Write, S.A.M. has finally decided to do another rock post. In a previous story about quartz crystals, I referenced the beautiful and mineral-rich area surrounding Hot Springs, Arkansas. Undoubtedly, quartz wins top prize for most pick-and-hammer toting rock hounds headed to this region. But many other treasures there await discovery, including wavellite, a beautiful mineral that is relatively unknown outside the realm of avid rock collectors.

The photos in this post were snatched off the Web. In other words, all the specimens I once had somehow vanished over the past 30 years, and these lovely pictures are a virtual reminder of the once tangible evidence of my labors. (Photos in this post courtesy of R. Weller/Cochise College.)

First, let’s get all the technical stuff out of the way. Wavellite is most commonly found in shades of green, but can also be yellow or black. Wavellite has a hardness of only about 4 on the Moh’s scale and chemically looks like this - Al3(PO4)2(OH)3·5H2O. The finely acicular, radiating crystals reminds most people of a starburst design. Sometimes, wavellite is mined for the extraction of phosphorous. Wavellite is a secondary mineral of aluminous low-grade metamorphic rocks, in phosphate and limonitic deposits. Okay, enough technical stuff.

My wavellite collecting trip occurred sometime back in the mid-1970’s. I remember my Dad and another collecting enthusiast, Richard Eldridge tromping up and down a heavily wooded area on a steep hillside. This site details a couple of the premier collecting areas – I think we must have been at the Avant location. Chunks of wavellite eroded from the outcrops near the top of the ridge, so we pretended to be mountain goats and dug in our heels while picking at the ground and uncovering our specimens. It must have been fall, because I remember a covering of brown, slippery leaves on the hillside. My first intent was to collect a few nice pieces and go back to the car for a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a bag of chips. I stuffed my pockets full and then started filling my canvas bag – the big and tall kind Navy guys and gals take overseas. I kept finding better and better specimens and just couldn’t take time out for my snack break. The bag eventually filled to the top with wavellite and felt like a lead weight tied to my shoulder. There was room for one more rock, so I took a couple steps and reached out, and…..snap! The shoulder strap broke, sending the bag tumbling down the slope with all the contents quickly dispersing into the cover of the leaves. I made an immediate grab for the bag, obviously way too late, but the motion upset my precarious perch. I overcompensated to keep from falling forward, fell on my backside, and started sliding down the hill, legs spread wide! A well-placed tree, just before a vertical drop, abruptly stopped my descent. My pride, among other things, had been hurt, and all that remained of my hard work were my pockets full of sharp rocks poking me in the legs.


Actually, I did go back up the hill and collect a few more specimens, but the memory of the painful slide persuaded me to keep my load light this time. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with collecting beautiful mineral specimens, and I hope to go back to the area again to acquire some tangible specimens for my collection. Something inside of me that day long ago couldn’t be satisfied, and it didn’t stop with just that day – from time to time, I still struggle with the same attitude of discontent. I readily recognize the struggle now and choose my steps more carefully!

SAM's Rock Garden

Hello! This is Secret Aging Man posting as a guest, for the first time on W2W's blog. My dear W2W insists I do something productive and join her blog as a periodic “guest blogger” and share wonderful tidbits of knowledge about rocks. Well, I’m not sure if anyone out there really cares much about pretty rocks and minerals or if joining in a cyber-conversation is really the kind of productivity I need. Given my recent layoff (first time in 29 years), perhaps remembering and recording some of my past hobby experiences will indeed provide a creative release and reduce the stress of living in these troubled times.

Maybe a little background information is appropriate to include here. I am 51, married for the past 29 years to Walk2Write, parent of two grown children and grandparent to one rockin' 2-year old boy (hereafter called "Pebble Pup"). My professional background as a geologist has see-sawed from environmental professional to oil exploration geologist. I used to joke that I could go out and find the oil deposits, then switch hats and charge for cleaning up the mess we made with all the oil contamination! Really – I’m kidding here. Please don’t take everything said too seriously. I am all for being a good steward of the environment, but there are always at least two sides to every story.

My love for rocks all started when I was about six years old and just couldn't stop picking up shiny stones from the family driveway and stuffing them into my pockets. The obsession got so bad and the pile in my bedroom floor so big, that my parents finally found a fellowship of rock-lovers (our regional rock club) to train their young son in proper rock collecting techniques and identification. We found out that the shine and color a lot of the driveway rock was because it contained the minerals fluorite, sphalerite, and galena. Seems our home in Southern Illinois was paved with limestone aggregate from the "spar" mines, located about 60 miles to the southeast, in Rosiclare. My first rock collecting site turned out to be a pretty good one, if only ten feet from the front door!

The photo shows what I have left of the once vast family mineral collection. About 95% to 98% of our collection was sold back in the early ‘90s to pay for a necessary home foundation “prop-up”. Seems my Mom’s house was situated directly over the underground workings of a Southern Illinois coal mine and the surface of the ground slowly sank, or subsided, in response to the sloughing of the old mine pillars. This is a common malady in areas where subsurface coal mining is prevalent and can be compared to “sinkholes”, for those not familiar with mining, but perhaps living in areas of cave topographic expressions. I will discuss fluorite at greater length, in my next post.