My wife Bonnie has been tagging along half-heartedly with me to Keweenaw Week for several years. She likes wearing my jewelry, but just never has found anything that got her really excited and proud. It always seemed like a lot of rock to look through, with most of it turning out to be nothing good. Those copper tailing piles are really big, and looking for the “good stuff” is a lot like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I hate her dragging non-jewelry grade stuff home and mixing it up in my barn with all my real treasures. (That barn is a whole other story. One that may never be told.)
Datolite is an elusive gemstone. We went to a mine that we’ve been to many times, hoping to find some good datolite. Of course for Bonnie this would be her first datolite, and she really had some low expectations. She’s spent hours digging holes that never gave up anything to take home. We have friends who seem to be able to just smell them and go right to them, and bring home a great story to brag about. Bonnie just wanted to find ONE. We chose to dig under some trees, figuring whatever was there hadn’t been seen in a long time. As the dig progressed Bonnie got dirtier and dirtier. That was the main thing I noticed. She made a pretty big hole, and pulled out a large chunk of rock that had two small (4-5mm) rounded white spots sticking out of one side. Now that’s the magic formula: rounded and white, so Bonnie put it in her bucket. It did register on the metal detector, so that was good too. But really, it didn’t look like much (those two small white spots are way too small for me to make jewelry with, that’s how I judge rocks).
Bonnie found one other datolite, not huge, but big enough to make jewelry from, so she was pleased with that. I got some cutting material, rock with copper running through it that should turn out pretty. We went home not too excited and I took a nap. Bonnie went to a faucet outside and began to scrub away some dirt from her rock with “twin towers” as she referred to them. The more she scrubbed, the more excited she became. A strip of white datolite began to show up on the bottom, other white rounded areas and some small copper points were poking out.
She continued to scrub off mud, finding more white nodules and got really excited. I wanted to see what the copper would really look like, so I gave it a quick acid bath. See for yourself. Bonnie’s “boring” datolite find, her very first, turned out to be a beauty that any rockhound would be ecstatic to find! This is part of the charm that keeps rockhounds coming back to the Keweenaw year after year. I expect she’ll be more excited about our rockhunts in the future. Copper and datolite nodules combined in one terrific stone clump. What could be better?
