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August 15 -16, 2009 The pull of beautiful crystals from Chatham County was too strong.  We found ourselves digging for another weekend at this wonderful spot.  We knew that what we had come upon was very rare.  This place has already given us many days of joy between digging and cleaning our finds.  We wondered how much more this place has to offer.

After about an hour of digging I finally broke into a section of the vein that began to crystallize.  You can see where the crystal was sitting in the vein as its impression in the clay remained intact.

Sometimes the negative imprints fooled me into thinking there was another crystal there.

It can be tedious work but removing the dirt from both sides of the vein before extracting it can save you from a lot of crystal damage.

August 16, 2009  Yesterday only yielded a few crystal specimens even though we moved a lot of dirt.  Today we were weary from yesterdays work and didn't want to stay too long.  We promptly started back in where we left off, following veins that previously produced crystals.  We would find a small crystal here and there but the pockets just weren't being found.  After an hour or so of no luck I took a small break to look around.  I found the wild flower pictured above growing nearby and couldn't help but admire it for a moment. Little did I know that it was a harbinger to what was to come.

Feeling refreshed I started where I left off and continued following a vein that produced a few crystals in the past.  The vein was not very wide but it eventually gave way to a small pocket of  crystal packed clay.  This section of the dike was bordered by thin plates of quartz from which druzy quartz and sometimes larger crystals radiated toward the center.

After breaking into the vein a little deeper this crystal was found.  It was the first time I had seen such a dramatic phantom of specular hematite from this location.  It was as if someone poured bluish glitter in the crystal while it was growing.

Following the vein inward it grew wider.  The crystals began to pour out.  Each of the crystals from this particular pocket had the dark specular hematite phantoms.  Nothing we had found previously at this location looked like this.  This pocket was remarkably unique.

The pocket of crystals in this vein ran about 2 ft. along one section of the dike.  At its thickest point it was about 5 inches wide.  Most all of the crystals were very small.  At one time they were probably all stuck together as clusters but weathering had long ago broken them into separate crystals.   My largest crystal is about 2.5 inches but most of them did not get larger than an inch.

Here's one of the larger ones after a bath in Super Iron Out®.  Unfortunately the camera cannot capture how the specular hematite sparkles throughout the crystal as you turn it in your hand.  If you saw these crystals in person you might think they were manufactured.

Here is one with a few babies growing off the main crystal.

This is one of my favorite pieces from that pocket.

Another view of the crystal above.

This little crystal had a particularly thick and sparkly layer of specular hematite.  The "spectacular" pocket seemed a fitting name for this rare pocket found on August 16, 2009. The next six photographs are taken under artificial light.

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