Rock, Paper, Chisels


When I turned over a promising cleavlandite boulder at the Berry Quarry in Poland, Maine this Saturday, instead of finding a green tourmaline pencil as I had hoped, I found a black Papermate pen. A fresh one, so unscathed by its sojourn beneath that rock, that it must have found its way there only recently. I am not superstitious except when it comes to mineral collecting, so I assume that my finding this utensil was a sign that I might be destined to write about minerals, rather than find them. Starting with a rock and ending with a field trip report on paper, is what this column is about.

On September 9, four Boston Mineral Club field trippers and I were neatly packed into my car for the two-hour drive to Poland, Maine. We arrived at the Berry Quarry and were shown around by miner Steve Welsh. Since I had been there two years ago, he had blasted deeper in the tourmaline pocket area, moving waste material to the high ground he usually uses for dumps, and also blasted deeper into areas that have produced phosphates, at the other end of the quarry. We were restricted from only a small area he had recently drilled in preparation for a shot.

Bill scanned the quarry's loose material, finding graphic granite and vuggy albite. Jim worked a dump area reputed to contain quartz crystals without much luck. He, Paul and Susan then set upon a black stained vuggy portion of the quarry floor, said to contain phosphates, with a determination usually reserved for hard rock work. I whacked away at a vuggy area close to where I had found my only hydroxylherderites two years ago, in hopes of finding more. I have yet to process this material, but hopes run high. Blue apatite has been found here in the past, and this year small crystals in albite vugs were once again found. Lepidolite was scarce this year, aside from a boulder of it near the dumps. I still regard sulfides as strange for a pegmatite, but arsenopyrite and pyrite were found in vugs and frozen in albite.

From initial reports very little, if any, tourmaline was found in the quarry itself. Just before leaving, however I dug into an old dump pile in the woods, one covered with what looked like five years of overgrowth. I found a hand specimen of white quartz with a fan of green tourmaline, half the crystals shattered and gone. A curious find was a nearby pile of screen tailings containing a couple dozen shards of gemmy tourmaline, scattered over an old Volvo floor mat I had picked up to use as a kneeling surface. The old dumps clearly still contain decent material. We headed home after a pizza dinner (though I think Jim wanted to check out Mount Apatite's quarries, there still being an hour of daylight).

A disturbing find that could have ruined the trip, as well as Paul's arm, was a live blasting cap retrieved on the end of a piece of wire pulled up from the loose quarry floor material. This was recognized by Paul Young and given to Steve Welsh, who safely detonated it. Collectors everywhere are warned to treat these potential finds with great delicacy because of their explosion risk.

The Berry Quarry is not done producing material for collectors. As long as "friends of mineralogy" such as Steve Welsh are willing to share the thrill of collecting, we will have good hunting. If you wish to visit Steve's website about this quarry click here:
http://members.aol.com/Gemelbaite/BerryGemMine.html

Paul Gilmore

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