My Lifelong Love Affair with Earth’s Hidden Stories
Some passions choose you before you understand what they are. Mine announced itself when I was barely old enough to tie my shoes, drawing me toward every interesting rock, pebble, and stone I encountered. What started as a childhood collection became a connection to Earth’s ancient stories that would survive heartbreak and flourish beyond anything I imagined.
The Beginning
While other kids collected baseball cards or action figures, I was drawn to the geological treasures scattered across playground gravel and hiking trails. My bedroom gradually transformed into an amateur museum. That smooth, rounded stone from the beach had been tumbled by waves for decades. The jagged piece of granite had once been molten rock deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Every specimen was a puzzle piece in the planet’s four-billion-year history.
What fascinated me most wasn’t their beauty, though many were stunning. It was their stories. Volcanic eruptions that reshaped continents. Ice ages that carved valleys. Ancient seas that left their signatures in limestone and sandstone.
The Mysterious Gift: My First Petrified Wood
One of my most vivid childhood memories involves my first piece of petrified wood. I’d seen examples at rock shows and in books, marveling at how ancient trees had been transformed into stone while preserving every detail of their original structure. To my young mind, petrified wood was the ultimate geological magic trick: life becoming mineral while remaining recognizably alive.
Word had gotten around at school about my rock obsession, which occasionally made me the target of gentle teasing. But one day, a classmate approached me before the first bell, handed me a small collection of rocks without saying much, then disappeared into the crowd.
When I examined them at home that afternoon, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Mixed among the ordinary specimens was genuine petrified wood. The preservation was remarkable. I could see the original grain patterns, the growth rings, tiny details that spoke of a tree that had lived millions of years ago.
That anonymous gift became one of the treasures of my collection.
The Orange Show Rock Extravaganza
Every year brought an event I anticipated more than Christmas: the annual rock and mineral show at the Orange Show Grounds in San Bernardino. For a young geology enthusiast, these shows were pure magic. Acres of displays featuring everything from common quartz crystals to rare meteorites worth more than my parents’ car.
The highlight was watching geodes being split open. Vendors with specialized saws would crack open these humble-looking spherical rocks to reveal the crystal cathedrals hidden inside. The moment of revelation never got old. An ordinary-looking rock transformed into a glittering jewel box of amethyst, quartz, or calcite crystals.
I’d walk the aisles with the intensity of a treasure hunter, my modest allowance burning a hole in my pocket. The vendors, many of them passionate collectors themselves, were always willing to share their knowledge with an eager young customer.
These shows became my real-world geology classroom. I learned to identify different crystal systems, understand the difference between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, and appreciate the diversity of Earth’s geological processes. I documented everything: where each specimen came from, how it formed, its approximate age. My bedroom was becoming a small-scale natural history museum, complete with handwritten labels and detailed notes.
Lola: The Wise Woman Who Changed Everything
Then I met Lola, a woman who would fundamentally change my understanding of geology and my confidence in my own intellectual curiosity. To my young eyes, she seemed ancient and infinitely wise, though she was probably only in her sixties. Her house was a wonderland of curiosities, but it was her extraordinary collection of rocks and minerals that stopped me in my tracks.
Every room in Lola’s house told geological stories. Geodes lined her windowsills, catching sunlight into tiny rainbows. Crystals of every imaginable color and formation occupied shelves, tables, and display cases. Raw specimens shared space with polished pieces, creating a museum that rivaled anything I’d seen at the rock shows.
But Lola herself was the real treasure. Unlike many adults who either ignored my interests or talked down to me, she recognized and respected my genuine passion. When I asked questions, and I asked thousands, she didn’t give me simplified, child-friendly answers. She spoke to me as a fellow enthusiast, using proper geological terminology and explaining complex concepts with the assumption that I could understand them.
One of my most cherished memories involves Lola teaching me to grow my own crystals using a mixture of bluing and ammonia. Watching crystals form over weeks felt like participating in geological processes myself, on an accelerated timeline. She helped me understand that geology wasn’t just about collecting pretty rocks. It was about understanding the dynamic processes that shape our planet.
What made Lola truly special was her respect for my intelligence and curiosity. She never suggested geology was too complicated for someone my age. She nurtured my fascination, lent me advanced books, and encouraged me to ask more complex questions. She taught me that passionate curiosity was something to be proud of, not embarrassed about.
The Heartbreak: When Bad Teaching Kills Passion
High school brought what remains one of the most disappointing experiences of my educational life. After years of self-directed learning and passionate exploration, I finally had the chance to take a formal geology class. I enrolled with tremendous excitement.
What I encountered was a textbook example of how poor teaching can extinguish even the strongest intellectual passion.
The teacher approached geology as a series of facts to be memorized rather than processes to be understood. His lectures were dry recitations of mineral names and rock classifications, delivered without enthusiasm or connection to the dynamic processes that actually create geological formations. Where I had learned to see geology as a grand story of planetary evolution, he presented it as disconnected trivia.
He seemed to actively discourage questions or deeper inquiry. When I raised my hand to ask about formation processes or to share observations from my own collecting, he would dismissively redirect the class back to whatever standardized curriculum he was following. The wonder Lola had nurtured was treated as a distraction from “real learning.”
For someone who had spent years developing genuine expertise and passion, being subjected to this mechanical, lifeless approach was heartbreaking. My enthusiasm began to wither under the constant assault of uninspired teaching. For the first time, I began to question whether my passion was misplaced.
In a moment of frustration I still regret, I threw away my entire rock collection. Years of careful collecting, documentation, and treasured specimens, including that mysterious gift of petrified wood, went into garbage bags and out to the curb.
The Resurrection: Rediscovering Wonder in 2010
The year 2010 marked an unexpected resurrection of my geological passion. I can’t pinpoint exactly what triggered it. Perhaps a chance encounter with a mineral display, or a documentary that reminded me of the wonder I’d once felt. Whatever the catalyst, I found myself drawn back to the world of rocks and minerals with an intensity that surprised me.
This time, I had the financial means to pursue higher-quality specimens and the intellectual maturity to appreciate the science in ways my childhood mind couldn’t fully grasp.
It started with geodes. As I split them open to reveal their hidden beauty, I felt the same wonder that had captivated me decades earlier at the Orange Show rock shows. But my adult understanding of chemistry, physics, and geological time allowed me to appreciate these formations on multiple levels simultaneously: as beautiful objects, as examples of crystallization processes, and as windows into millions of years of Earth’s history.
Building a Collection Worthy of Deep Time
My renewed passion demanded more than casual collecting. I began acquiring museum-quality specimens that would have seemed impossible during my childhood.
The foundation became an expanding array of geodes. Some revealed gardens of needle-sharp quartz crystals. Others opened to display chambers lined with amethyst. A few contained calcite formations so delicate they seemed impossible for natural processes.
My crystal collection grew to showcase the diversity possible within Earth’s mineral kingdom. Fluorite in colors that seemed too vivid for nature: electric blues, deep purples, brilliant greens that glowed under ultraviolet light. Quartz varieties demonstrating how a single mineral could express itself in countless forms: clear rock crystal, smoky quartz dark as storm clouds, rose quartz pink as sunset.
The true monarchs of my collection became five cathedral geodes. Standing three to four feet tall, each one contained crystalline formations that defied description: crystal palaces with chambers within chambers, amethyst formations that seemed to glow with inner light.
I also acquired an amethyst table, furniture that doubles as geological art. Deep purple crystals embedded in its polished surface catch and scatter light throughout the day. A daily reminder of the beauty hidden within ordinary-looking rocks.
Surrounding these centerpieces, I assembled hundreds of smaller treasures, each golf-ball-sized rock representing different chapters in Earth’s story. Specimens from every continent, every geological era, every major rock type.
Cathedral of Stone
To house the collection properly, I created what became more than a display case. An illuminated glass sanctuary that transforms geological specimens into luminous art.
Each shelf tells different stories of planetary evolution. Upper levels showcase smaller geodes and crystal specimens positioned to catch the built-in lighting. The cathedral geodes sit on custom stands that allow visitors to walk around them like sculptures in a museum. Under proper lighting, these giants reveal secrets invisible in ordinary illumination: subtle color gradations that speak of changing chemical conditions, crystal faces that capture light at specific angles, formations within formations that create infinite visual depth.
The amethyst table anchors the display. Surrounded by carefully arranged specimens from around the world, it became the focal point where all the collection’s stories converge.
Lessons Carved in Stone
This journey through passion, heartbreak, and rediscovery taught me truths that extend beyond geology.
Authentic intellectual loves are nearly indestructible. They may go underground for years, but they remain alive, waiting for the right moment to resurface.
Lola’s influence proved more powerful than I’d realized. Her gift wasn’t just geological knowledge. It was permission to be curious without apology. That foundation proved stronger than any single teacher’s destructive power.
Returning to childhood passions with adult understanding creates a kind of depth impossible at any other stage of life. I was still the same boy who had marveled at that first piece of petrified wood. Just with better tools and deeper comprehension.
The devastating experience with that high school teacher no longer defines my relationship with Earth science. It serves as a reminder of how precious good teaching is, and how important it is to nurture curiosity wherever we find it.
My collection continues to grow, and my appreciation for geological processes continues to deepen. Every earthquake report, volcanic eruption, or new geological discovery connects to the understanding I’ve built through decades of study. From that first mysterious gift of petrified wood to the cathedral geodes that now anchor my collection, this journey has been about more than rocks and minerals. It’s been about the persistence of wonder, the importance of mentors who believe in young minds, and the satisfaction of lifelong learning.
Some passions choose us before we understand what they are. They may lie dormant through seasons of doubt, but they never truly die. They wait, patient as stone, for the moment when we’re ready to listen again.
For more about my early years, including the geology obsession and much more, read My Life in Crazytown, my memoir covering birth to age 19.