I Want a Burl

Rockhounds are motivated by a lot of things. One is the thrill of discovery of something unique and delightful that has been in the ground millions of years, just waiting for you to pick it up. Here’s one of the very few rocks that I can remember personally finding as a kid in the desert north of Moab, Utah. I think it’s a petrified deer antler. What do you think?

I know that thrill of discovery was one of the things that got my dad out into the Utah deserts again and again for his entire life. (My dad was unstoppable. See The Creature in the Desert.)

It’s tough to get that experience these days. People just like my dad have searched and scoured every corner of the American West for over two centuries and found most of the rocks worth finding. (President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to bring back specimens, including rocks and minerals, from the West in 1804.)

One of the problems with rocks is that you can’t tell what you’ll find in most rocks until you start working with them. That sometimes turns into that “thrill of discovery. Thundereggs, for example, are always round, gray, and dull until you cut one open.

The town of Nyssa, Oregon – right in the middle of the best thunderegg hunting in the west – has hosted the “Thunderegg Days and Festival” in years past. You could buy a thunderegg and have it cut open while you wait. You’ll have to contact them to find out if they are planning on doing it again.

My friend Ken had a thrill of discovery recently when I sent what we now believe is a petrified wood burl to him. A “wood burl” is defined in Wikipedia as “a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner. It is commonly found in the form of a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch”.

It was hard to tell what the agate in the piece would look like because it was covered with a coating. But Ken has been working on it and discovered that it was a pretty wild piece of rock. Yellow Cat is always a “cast” and this rock is too. That means that only the outside is a faithful replacement of the original piece of wood. He’s still working on it. Perhaps we’ll get another pic when he gets it finished. (Hint, hint.)

I think this rock is one of the best I have sent to Ken. It’s great enough to have you singing

“I want a burl, just like the burl, that you just sent to Ken!”

To which I would have to sing in reply.

“That was the only burl in the pile. And Ken has the only one.”