Minnesota woman embraces the search for agates
By Renee Richardson
Gull Lake, Minn. (AP) - With the summer sun overhead, Sharon Smith will relax on an air mattress and float on the lake just inches above the bottom - for her quarry is near the shore.
Sometimes it will glisten in the sun.
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Other times there is no exterior hint at the beauty inside. The rough and pitted exterior covers intricate patterns, even lacy details, which are revealed after a diamond saw slices through rock. Each slice slightly different than the last.
Agates.
For a rock hound, few things may be as lovely as the treasures found underfoot. For Smith and friend and fellow rock hound, Kat Thomas, the drive for agates began at a young age. As children they were attracted to the hunt and the treasure.
As adults they found fellowship and friendship in an unexpected source - a rock club. Smith never knew such a group existed before she learned of the Cuyuna Rock & Mineral Club based in Crosby.
"Everybody had rocks and all kinds of rocks," Smith said. She learned there were agates all over the world and when she picked up 13 crates of agates and minerals from a former rock hound's family, it started a three-year odyssey of finding out just what the specimens were.
Smith said she met authors, experts in the field, and rock enthusiasts from Madagascar, Africa and Amsterdam. "These rocks have just brought so many people into my life."
And there were friends closer to home who were more than willing to spend an afternoon outside in search of agates. The Cuyuna Rock & Mineral Club has about 100 members with about 30 regularly attending the 2 p.m. meetings on the second Saturday of the month at the Cuyuna Range Community Center in Crosby.
Thomas, who now makes her home in Aitkin, was an Air Force brat. She picked up rocks as the family traveled and got a degree in gemology, which led to a career working with diamonds in California. Moving to Minnesota, she found unexpected treasure close to home from the Lake Superior agates to mining amethyst in Canada to the Cuyuna Range's own iron rich jaspers of red binghamite and yellow silkstone.
Thomas was so taken with the geology she went to Central Lakes College in Brainerd to study earth science. She said the binghamite is found in only one place in the world and that is on the Cuyuna Range where it was discarded with the unwanted material as the iron ore was mined. Thomas also found a deep interest in collecting fossils. She has small fish from Wyoming and plants from Pennsylvania captured in stone.
"I always tell people I lost my marbles and replaced them with rocks," Thomas said and smiled.
Prices for agates range from a few dollars to thousands, depending on size and quality. But with rocks, as with many other things, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
Agates in Mexico and Brazil are mined. Rain flower agates from China are washed smooth through the work of rivers. Lake Superior agates are found by hand. Members of the Cuyuna club adhere to a code of ethics in terms of hunting for agates and Smith and Thomas said they are careful about obtaining permission from property owners, be they farmers or gravel pit owners, for their searches.
For novice rock hounds the best time to hunt may be on the side of a lake or in roadside gravel on a sunny day after a rain.
At Smith's East Gull Lake home, agates are a dominant theme in displays, jars and containers, on shelves and in numerous bins in a rock work area in the garage. There are also examples of petrified wood, one of which revealed a deep black center once sliced and an exterior that looked as much rock as wood.
Smith took a hobby and turned it into a business where she sold agates and rocks on eBay and then from her own Web site. Smith's saw gnaws through the hard rock taking 10 minutes to cut through one inch to display the interior. She sliced East Brazilian agates for a fireplace surround that is backlit to reveal the detail and color in the individual thin rock slabs.
"Every time you cut something, it's a surprise," Smith said of slicing through the rocks to reveal the patterns within. "Who doesn't like a surprise? You never know what's inside."
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Information from: The Brainerd Daily Dispatch
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
