Mining

Part of our recent vacation involved visiting an amethyst mine north of Thunder Bay.  The visit consisted of a brief lecture about the geology of amethysts and the area followed by the opportunity to "mine" some amethyst stones for ourselves.  The lecture itself was educational but I must confess I was less enamored with amethyst after hearing how it is formed.  Even so, it is a pretty stone and our group was eager to do some mining.

There was a part of me that was assuming that amethyst mining would involve hard hats and shovels, maybe a pick axe if we were lucky.  I imagined us in a quarry or cave, chipping away at the side of a rock wall, looking for the distinctive purple vein of pure amethyst.  Instead, the rocks were brought to us.  Large loaders go into the mine and scoop up bucketfuls of dirt and stones.  They then dump their buckets out in a field where tourists can pick through the rubble.  There are also a few water hoses strung out throughout the field to help clean the stones enough to find the good ones.  The hoses turned what would have been a dusty experience into a decidedly muddy one.

When they release you onto the field, they give you a plastic pail and a metal rod.  They say the rod is for helping dig through the rock pile but it's not really substantial enough for that.  I think the main purpose of the rod is to try to maintain the illusion that you are mining and not merely picking up rocks from the ground.  After all, you don't need a tool for that.  When you're done mining, you can buy as many of the stones as you'd like - the place we were at charged three dollars a pound.  It took N. about a minute to fill his pail to overflowing.  As I watched him struggling to drag the pail towards me, I glanced at his brother, whose pail was also filling quickly.  In my head I was estimating weight and calculating cost.  The mining adventure had the potential to be the quickest and most expensive thing we did on vacation.  I talked to the boys about the cost involved and I encouraged them to be more discriminating in their choices.  To their credit, they dumped out most of what they had and started over at a slower pace.  I tried to balance their collections by limiting what I picked up.

We left the mine with a substantial haul of amethyst.  I'm not certain what we will do with it all.  The larger stones have found their way to the garden.  I put some smaller rocks in a tumbler.  The boys have given a few out to their friends.  The rest are sitting in a bag, their fate uncertain.  As I suspected, it was the most expensive single activity we did on vacation.  Still, we managed to control ourselves a little bit so the cost wasn't extreme.  And the rocks seem a more lasting and fitting memento of our trip than anything we could have picked up at a gift shop.