I grew up near Roseburg in Southern Oregon and began collecting agates, jaspers, and other natural oddities when I was about six. By age ten, when we moved into town, I had self collected and identified drusy quartz, calcite, pyrite, and laumontite from an old quarry and a prospect near our farm. I had also played with triboluminescense and thermoluminescense. After moving to town I continued to actively field collect with the help and encouragement of my mother and uncle. Vigorous road building and construction in the area provided numerous locations to explore. I was motivated to "save" as many specimens as I could from these transitory sites, and soon was trading zeolites to collectors in other parts of the country. During high school I built a mineral museum and qualitative analysis laboratory in an unused room in our large garage.

During college and graduate school my mineral collecting came to almost a complete stop, but I boxed up and saved my collection. After marrying and settling in Southern Califoria I eventually resumed collecting with one or two casual family trips a year. During the ensuing years I decided to give up agates and fossils and concentrate on crystallized minerals.

About twenty years ago with the family grown I resumed very active collecting and soon expanded my interests into the world of micro minerals. I currently am very interested in investigating and documenting the mineralogy of the many old mines that dot this region and in preserving specimens from them. I am fortunate to have access to a SEM to use in this effort. I have written articles on several local mines for regional publications and plan to continue this documentation.