rock me like...well, just rock me.
November 9, 2011 10:44 AM   Subscribe

I would like to send a rock to someone, hopefully a rock that I have in my region but that she doesn't have there. But I don't know very much about rocks or geology.

I would like to send a thank-you gift to someone who lives on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides. She is passionately interested in the natural world, and I think she would enjoy a "piece" of our region (the Colorado Rocky Mountains) a lot more than a box of chocolates or the like. But I can't figure out what we have, rock-wise, that would be interesting or new to her.

Cursory research seems to indicate that Lewis (and the Hebrides in general) is mostly made up of very, very old gneiss. Our Rocky Mountains have old rocks, too, that only became exposed much more recently. But "gneiss" seems to be a generic term for many kinds of rocks, and I can't tell if our red sandstone—the most distinctive thing I can think of—is a kind of gneiss, too.

Basically, if you know rocks, can you tell me if there is anything particularly interesting or unique in the Rocky Mountains that would delight someone who lived in another part of the world? Or maybe a small common fossil or something? The recipient is not a geologist or scientist, and I'm not trying to impress her or anything—just to send her something she would like and would take as a token of appreciation and respect.

[I don't know yet how I will get some, if you can just, like, pick up a broken-off bit and carry it away (didn't Ian McEwan get in trouble for taking a pebble from Chesil Beach?) or if I need to buy it from someone. Ideas on that would be great, too!]
posted by peachfuzz to Science & Nature (14 answers total)
 
It is a bit north of you, but a piece of shale from the Burgess Shale is unique to the Rockies; other fossil-bearing rocks might also fit your bill.
posted by TedW at 10:50 AM on November 9, 2011 [3 favorites]


Oh, goodness, call the US Geological Survey or someone at CU's geology department. I'll bet you they have public outreach/education people who could give you some fun suggestions.

(Yes, this might sound like more than you were thinking, but you're in an awesome area for geology, and university people answer this kind of stuff all the time. They're geeks. They geek out. This is what they do.)
posted by Madamina at 11:00 AM on November 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


I am confident that this guy could help you out, also.
posted by Danf at 11:05 AM on November 9, 2011


I was a geologist in a former life, and people love to bring me gifts from their travels — rocks they picked up and thought looked interesting. In general, I deeply appreciate the sentiment, but the rocks themselves are only very, very rarely interesting, and I usually wind up setting them free in the garden.

(In fact, the nicest gift of rocks I've ever been given was a handful of samples someone got from their acquaintance in Latin America who was a geologist. As best I can tell, the geologist went through her own collection of neat things and picked out a few to pass along to me, because I am quite certain several of these things are not from Latin America.)

So yes, the red sandstone is really beautiful and very characteristic, but... what does one do with a chunk of red sandstone? I'd recommend one of two avenues, here:

1. Send her something made from the red sandstone. (Also: not a gneiss.) Someone must be making bookends or something out of it. That way, you can share a bit of your natural environment with her without her eventually having to set your gift free in the garden, feeling all kinds of guilty about it. (Really, you can only set so many chunks of rock out as a decorative touch.)

2. Fossils are always a good bet! And you live in a nice setting for that, too. Can you get yourself to a gift shop at a place like this?

Basically, anything you are going to be able to find yourself is unlikely to be all that interesting. I say this as someone with a geology degree who used to do a fair amount of rockhounding. I still have a handful of lovely agates I've found over the years that I keep around, but most of the things I've found on my own have been... not so inspiring. Even the fossils I've found are pretty underwhelming and I wouldn't give them as a gift, not even the tiny prized trilobite. Something you buy that's been polished up a bit is going to be much lovelier, and will guarantee it stays in the house and not the garden outside.
posted by adiabat at 12:06 PM on November 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


Weirdly both Lewis and the Rockies have exposures of some of the most ancient rocks in the world - Precambrian metamorphic gneisses more than 3 billion years old - but the Colorado Rockies were raised relatively recently (~55-80 Millions years ago) so you have overlaying layers of much much younger rock. Where this existed on Lewis it was mostly stripped away. You could therefore send a lump of sandstone - there's a lot more of it in your part of the world.

It's the rock that makes Colorado 'orange' that you want. Most of your friend's rocky vistas are a shimmering, banded dark grey. It's a lovely idea - samples of each would look beautiful next to each other.
posted by freya_lamb at 12:07 PM on November 9, 2011


Just to note that the Burgess Shale is in a Canadian National Park, and it is illegal to remove anything from it without a research permit.
posted by Rumple at 12:10 PM on November 9, 2011


I think the coolest thing you could send would be a fossil of some kind, a sea creature whose fossil was found at high elevation. Trilobites are very common and shouldn't be too difficult to locate. Ammonites are another good choice.

I don't think you'd want to try to find something like that on your own, though. There are stores which sell this kind of thing. (For instance, is there a science museum near you? Likely there will be a store there which carries that kind of stuff.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:10 PM on November 9, 2011


Response by poster: yes, I'm totally down with buying something—I wasn't imagining striding forth into the mountains with a pickaxe or anything. I had some kind of brain block, though, and didn't realize that I could probably find what I'm looking for at a park or museum gift shop. I thought I'd have to mail-order something or locate some grizzled old guy in the mountains.

Thanks so much for the answers so far!
posted by peachfuzz at 12:14 PM on November 9, 2011


Another possibility is petrified wood. Maybe from here?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:29 PM on November 9, 2011


The geology at Red Rocks is quite unique, so perhaps a gift from the Amphitheatre gift shop to merge the natural and the Colorado region?
posted by lstanley at 1:09 PM on November 9, 2011


You do realize that there are stores where you can buy rocks, right? The guys running such shops tend to be very knowledgeable about the local rocks, and will happily talk your ear off about them. They have lots of fossils and such too, of course. Here is one in Denver, and I am sure there are more.
posted by rockindata at 6:16 PM on November 9, 2011


I agree that a chunk of rock doesn't do it.

Colorado to me says mining.

How about a bit of gold?

Or even fool's gold?

You could get something small like this to put in a cute glass bottle, or shop around and find a nice polished nugget on a necklace. I'm sure if you ask some local jewelers, they would know where to find something. Unfortunately, this one's from Alaska, but something like it would be way cool.

What about turquoise? There are many lovely turquoise items that you can find. Google Colorado turquoise mines.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:57 PM on November 9, 2011


Best answer: Not exactly a rock, but it would be very cool to make her one of these.
posted by bubukaba at 11:58 AM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: whoa. I had no idea those existed. They are amazing and they are exactly, perfectly the right thing. I will get on this STAT.

All the other answers were super-useful too! Thank you so much, everyone!
posted by peachfuzz at 2:46 PM on November 10, 2011


« Older What do I do about my neighbor's garage on my...   |   I Need My Korean Birth Certificate Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.