I have always loved rocks. I was around five years old when I started picking up rocks and taking them home. I still have some of those rocks. Through all the moves I’ve made over the years … Pico Rivera, CA to Hacienda Heights, CA to Santa Ana, CA to Walnut, CA to Dewey, AZ and finally here to Riverton, WY … those rocks have always come with me. There are a myriad other things that I’ve shed along the way, but not those earliest rocks.

As I write this, it is January 20. It is still only -4 degrees outside event though there are no clouds and it is 10:15 a.m. So I am not going out to the shed and looking for the box that has my childhood rocks in it. Thus there will currently be no pictures of them here. That may change in the future.

For our most recent, and hopefully last move, we had a professional moving company moves us. I divided up the rocks I wanted to keep into a number of boxes so they wouldn’t be too heavy and labeled them as something other than rocks. I also have a thing for wood. Weathered wood, drift wood, worm eaten wood. A lot of that came with us too. There wasn’t anything I could do to save myself some embarrassment with wood. Some of the wood pieces are quite large … six and seven feet long.

I suppose given how much I love rocks, it was inevitable that I would one day become a lapidary. I don’t do faceting, though. The equipment required for that is quite different than the equipment required for making cabochons. Sadly, we only have room for a certain amount of equipment.

Where I began my life in Southern California, there were not a lot of interesting rocks locally. But when we visited cousins in Rowland Heights, there were many more rocks. To see Rowland Heights today you’d never know that the main street had been dirt when I was a kid and there was only one traffic signal and it hung over the middle of the intersection with lights facing in all four direction. Later, when the suburban sprawl began to overtake the rural, our cousins moved to Chino, dairy country, and once again, there were rocks to find and keep.

I remember one trip we took back East to visit Mom and Dad’s relatives. I was around seven years old. We passed through New Mexico. I have one rock from that trip. That was all my parents would let me keep. It got to the point that they wouldn’t even let me pick them up because they had such a hard time getting me to let go of them.

Arizona has an amazing variety of rocks. Well so does Wyoming. But on average, the rocks in Arizona are more colorful. When we moved to Wyoming, I had to leave a lot of my collected rocks behind. It was sad. But I’ve got a really good collection going here.

(This rock is sort of a teal color with dark specks in it that reflect the light. I have no idea what it is, but based on the grainy texture, it might be some sort of granite.)

Whenever we take our dog, Maddie, for a walk along the Wind River here in Riverton, rocks go home with us. My husband, Bernd, also picks up rocks he likes. But I pick up way more than he does.

(Banded rocks always get my attention. As with the previous photo, this was collected along the Wind River.)

I’ve begun polishing some of the Wyoming rocks. When rocks are wet, the colors really come out and polishing is sort of like permanently wetting them.

(One thing I remember from the man who taught me what little I know about minerals is that when you see green like this it is usually epidote.)

I’ll write more about that when I write about making cabochons.

Please visit our Etsy shop to some of our wonderful creations. Also, we’ve added a Clearance section with some great bargains in it. You can find it at jewelrybysyzygy.etsy.com