Since I had a short night last night at work, I  got up this morning about 9 am, loaded up the truck with Missy and we set out for the secret spot again. It was going to be a beautiful fall day, 75 degrees and sunny most of the day, clouds to roll in by evening for rainfall from a system in the Texas panhandle, but we have been so dry so long, I wasn`t going to hold my breath…and  I was actually going to look for druse to finish out my front foundation wall, but once we got there, I decided to drive down to the lower location and see if anything had changed.

On the way down, we passed thru a thick haze of smoke that smelled alot like someone being super dumb and burning leaves…I say super dumb, cause we are five inches short on rainfall this fall season, and its super dry and was super windy this morning, translating into super dumb for someone to be burning leaves today. I felt sorry for any fire department that had to be out battling a brush fire in these conditions…I was out with my department earlier this week and let me tell ya, it was hot out there…I backfired the line while two guys ahead of me created a wide line with the leaf blowers, and when I backfired back up the hill, it didn`t take long for the flames to get going high, hot, and fast….the wooded areas around Steelville are no different than the woods around Sullivan, steep hills and deep gullies….hot fires and tired feet after a long battle with brush fires…I wasn`t able to detect the source of the fire so I kept driving and hoped no one was called out to one….

Arrived at the lower location and it looked the same…..

so I grabbed my bag and rock hammer and rake, and decided to walk around a bit and see if I could find anything I had missed before.  New angles and sunlight can make all the difference in the world…and sure enough, within a few minutes, I had the bag half full of poker chips and druse combos….I walked up toward the top of the slope and found a few larger chunks of chips and decided to take at least one of them home with me, so carried the bag down to the bottom and set my rake down, then returned to pick up the chunk and take it to the truck.

I walked back up to a pocket I had found way back in the late spring this year, and had filled four bags and removed five basketball sized chunks covered with poker chip crystals from….when Virgil brought his club members up to visit, I had taken one of their young members over to the pocket and showed him what he could potentially find there…he and his uncle worked it for a bit before they left…it was pretty hot that day and they may have just decided it wasn`t worth the effort due to the heat that day…I sat down and spotted some honey brown poker chips sitting near the pocket opening and decided to dig in and see if there were more there…soon enough I had my answer…there was either another pocket opening up behind the original one, or the pocket I had handed off had never been exposed to its true potential….

I walked down and picked up another bag at the truck and got my hand rake as well…and walked back up and began raking around and was finding single crystals right and left…within a few moments, I found a few clusters and then a few druse plates with poker chips on them and the color changed from honey brown to white…I started raking more to my left and pretty soon had opened yet another pocket and was able to see some larger plates of druse hanging upside down….I apologize for not taking my camera up there guys, but there was some overhang above me and I decided I might have to move quickly and its a little tough to do with a camera around your neck.

After a few overhead collapses, nothing major, I wore out and decided I had done well, two bags filled out of this pocket alone and four medium sized chunks to take home as well as the prior bag too. Missy and I loaded up and headed home. Saw a little bit of fall color up on the hill, was brown in the valleys…

As we got closer to Steelville, we could see the haze and smoke had increased, four hours later, and soon after I met a brush truck and pumper headed toward the haze, but they werent running lights or siren, so I naturally thought perhaps they had been there already to assist them on a fire and were returning home now….but soon after, as I was driving through Cuba, I met a brush task force of seven brush trucks and they were running code through town headed toward Steelville…I picked up my cell and called my department, and was told that Steelville was battling a one hundred acre brush fire and had called for a brush and pumper task force…our brush truck was already there on the second alarm…soon after I met the pumper task force on I-44 east of Cuba and headed that way, also running code…seven pumpers…now I`m sitting at home as I write this wondering if they have the fire under control or if they will be calling for more help later tonight….I might wind up back down there if they do…