Bonzai: Thoughts and Expressions

Family Vacation - Day 8

Although I didn’t freeze us out of the cabin last night, I still didn’t sleep real well. It might have been the absolute silence of the mountains. It might have been the plastic mattress cover that made me dream I was wearing diapers. It might have been heartburn from those wonderful calzones. I don’t know but I was up at about 7:00am and just got myself around for the day. Again, after breakfast, I went out exploring with Duncan and we found that there was a trailhead hidden between some bushes about 20 feet from our cabin! We decided to be adventurous and check it out.

This path went straight down the side of the mountain. One loss of footing and it was adios until you landed on the bottom. It did look like there were some solid foot and hand holds going down so I told Duncan I would help him down. We never slipped once and made it down to the bottom of the hill, which ended at a creek. The trail turned right from there and quickly went into some overgrown rhododendron bushes lining either side of the path. Now, at this point in the day, it is about 10:30am. The sun is bright, the clouds were light, and this pathway was reminiscent of twilight. I had no earthly idea where it went so I told Duncan we would check out a map and come back later. Having remembered that Black Bears were ‘native’ to this area, he was ready to back anyway. I put him in front of me on the hill so I could get him if he lost his hold. That kid shot up the side of that mountain, scaling what I learned later to be 210 feet of dirt and roots in about 7 minutes. I was out of breath trying to keep up with him but he was determined that he could outrun a bear if it was chasing him up a hill (something the Park Ranger told him).

We got back to the top and waiting for us in the cabin was Maria. We jumped into the Aztek and headed out for today’s adventure: Gem Mountain and the Linville Caverns. We started out with Gem Mountain since it was right there in Spruce Pine. We purchased a loaded bucket of precious and semi-precious rocks, in which we had to sift through the whole thing with screen pans in a water flume in order to find them. Duncan had a blast and loved every minute of it. He thought there was everything from gold to diamonds in this ‘special dirt’ and he was determined to find it and strike it rich. The reality of it was that Mommy and Daddy had to watch to make sure he wasn’t throwing out any of those ‘ugly’ stones, like Rubies, Peridot, and Topaz. By the end of our time there, we had reduced that five pound bucket to 5 little baggies of loot, which we took into the gemologist and learned what we had. I was shocked to learn that we had Emeralds, Rubies, Topaz, Tourmaline, Garnets, Amethyst, and a host of other gems in this rock heap! We picked a rather large chuck of Amethyst and had them schedule it to be cut and polished. It will be cool to see how that turns out.
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posted by Bonzai @ 9:04 PM