My old dog, Sandy, is almost thirteen. We walk together nearly every day on the trails at the base of the Sandia Mountains for which he is named. These days his walk can wobble. When a jackrabbit crosses his path, he speeds up to a teetering trot, still on the chase. In those moments, I think of his younger days when he could almost catch the racing rabbits, his strides long and fluid and so, so fast. But he doesn’t turn to me and lament the bygone days. He seems to love every minute of every walk we take. He doesn’t fret over his evermore frequent stumbles along the path. He just rights himself and goes on. And his joy makes me joyful. Such important lessons this wise, furry teacher has for me – take pleasure in every walk, savor every meal like it was the best I ever tasted, and lean into every sweet caress from someone who loves me.
Deb’s Parents
My father suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s a long, slow journey that he and our family have taken for years, with him progressively getting farther from us. My mother struggled hard against it, against the reality of losing the man she’d spent almost 60 years with, even though his body was still present. She was angry. All the time. Until she found out she was terminally ill. When that news hit her, she looked up at me from her hospital bed and said, “This won’t be so hard on Daddy, will it? He won’t really know.” And just like that, the anger that had consumed her for years, flowed away. She accepted what was, even embraced it, both his reality and hers. Weeks later, she died at peace.
I knew a couple, married long and loved each other deeply, but lived largely separate lives under the same roof. There was an unspoken, mutual agreement not to talk about the disappointments in their past, the barriers to closeness in their present. Until they found out she was terminally ill. Though it was a time of great physical pain for her and emotional pain for him, they opened their hearts to each other in a way they had not been willing to risk before. The last years of her life were a time of richness in their relationship. She died at peace, and some years later, he did too.
But do we have to wait to know our days are numbered before we accept what is? After all, our days are numbered. We just don’t know what that number is. I’m going to try to live my life more like Sandy. Not wait.
Most geologists I know have desks and shelves in their offices and homes littered with rocks and minerals. We’re perpetual kids who never give up our rock collections. One morning in the late ’80’s, I stood beside the desk of my officemate, Mike. He was telling me about his groundwater modeling project and I was updating him on the Superfund Remedial Investigation I was working on. While we talked, I idly picked up, looked at, and put down the various rocks lined up on his desk.
I lifted a quartz crystal at the end of his row of rocks. It was between three and four inches long, clear at one end, cloudy at the other. It wasn’t perfect, having a concoidal fracture where a crystal face should have been, but it was pretty. I weighed it in my hand, it fit neatly in my palm. My hand began to tingle. We continued to chat, and the sensation intensified as I held the crystal.
I interrupted our conversation to tell Mike what was happening. He smiled and said something about quartz having electrical impulses ala quartz crystal timing in watches.
Jasper
With a little research, I learned that the frequency at which a quartz crystal oscillates varies depending on its shape, size, and the crystal plane it’s cut on. There’s lots of information out there on how quartz crystals are used in modern timepieces. Briefly, quartz is accurately cut into a small tuning fork shape on a particular crystal plane so it oscillates at 32,678 hertz. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember when you had to wind your watch every day, those were mechanical watches. Quartz crystal timing is at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical timing.
In the case of the uncut chunk of quartz on Mike’s desk, the shape and size and crystal plane just happened to resonate with my frequency.
“Well,” he said, “you better keep it. It doesn’t make me tingle.”
Smoky Quartz
Quartz is not an unusual mineral, in fact it’s one of the most usual minerals around. It’s abundant in the Earth’s continental crust, second only to the family of feldspar minerals. Most everyone has some sense of what quartz looks like. There’s microcrystalline quartz – like chalcedony, agate, onyx, and jasper, to name a few. There’s macrocrystalline quartz – sometimes called rock crystal (clear), rose quartz (pink), amethyst (varying shades of purple), and smoky quartz (varying shades of brown and gray), to name a few more. I imagine almost everyone reading this has at least one piece of quartz, and that’s outside their watches.
One of mine makes my hand tingle. Thirty years and three moves later, I still have it, it still works, and it still feels like the coolest thing ever (Thanks, Mike!). Knowing the science doesn’t diminish my delight in the least.
What resonates with you?
Geologists study the earth and the processes that shape it. Writers study the human heart and the processes that shape it. The GeologistWriter builds a bridge between the two. Come across it with me!
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