Chisel

In August 2001, the apples in the orchard in the upper-right corner of this picture were not yet ripe. But as we drove around the valleys in this region of Washington state near the town of Wenatchee, we saw clear evidence that harvest-time was approaching: people were pulling fruit boxes off the backs of trucks and piling them high at the edges of the orchards. I heard of one geology student who swiped a couple of those boxes for mailing rock samples; the rest of all used five-gallon plastic paint buckets, which we took to the post office  in Leavenworth, Washington, where the clerks were used to people shipping rocks in five-gallon buckets, at library rate.

On the last day of fieldwork that summer, we climbed this ridge near the mouth of Swakane Canyon, to examine an outcrop about a thousand feet above the valley. My adviser and two fellow students reached the outcrop long before I did; they determined that the garnets there were as advertised, whacked out a couple of samples, and then lolled in the shade of an overhang while I continued to climb. One of the other students, Carlos Zuluaga, stopped teasing me long enough to snap some pictures; for this shot, I took his suggestion and posed with the chisel in my mouth.

The outcrop was related to my thesis project, so they showed me the samples they'd collected and asked me  which one I wanted to carry back down the hill and onto the airplane, since we'd already mailed off our rock buckets. Then they teased me some more because I had trouble making up my mind. So far as I know, the rock I chose, labeled 01NC215, is still stored in the basement of Bevill Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama, but it didn't make it into my thesis.