Page 10 - SparHawk Maine Tourmaline

Cream colored feldspar surrounding the mine
suggested that this
find was really important. Jan arrived at 4:20PM.
Here is what the area and scene looked like: hilly sloped land sur-
rounded by tall pine trees. From the parking area a mine road slopes steeply down into the pit with a pool of gray-green water at the bottom, a yellow Caterpillar excavator is parked beside the pool. The mine is bounded on two sides by 30-40' cliff walls. These walls were cut by var- ious prospectors over the last century and Jeff’s work of the last several years. The rock in this mine, for the most part, is a light cream color feldspar making it very bright in the sun. The mine is surprisingly small. Jeff keeps the mine area neat and tidy. If you were 200' away you’d never know there was a mine in the area.
At 4:25 the group walked down. At the bottom I held back for two minutes to set up a distant video camera. Everyone else had gone to the left and climbed up to the south wall and was standing around the opening in the cliff. I came up and looked in, over and between shoulders. Jeff had taken up position and was sitting on the sloping surface at the base of the cliff hosing down the pocket. Stephen had climbed up with his
best shots of the day. (Watch the video called River of Gems.) I brought my Nikon, my iPhone and an extra video camera, notebook and pen. We were ready.
We arrived at the mine ten minutes late... traffic. Jeff and a group of peo- ple were standing at the entrance to the mine which seemed odd. Jeff explained we were waiting for Jan, his wife, to ar- rive. Then we would all go down as a group. He had never done anything like this before. This
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