Anyone entering my home would quite easily see that I am a collector. The piano students who came to my house for their weekly lessons would tell me that I'm lucky because I get to live in a museum. They weren't really too far off the mark with that statement even though my "museum" is mostly confined to the numerous shelves and various cases all around my "Eclectics R Us" home. There is the collection of Renaissance objects such as swords, daggers and chainmaile. There is a collection of mountaineering books and tools of the rock and mountain climbing trade, Himalayan items a large proportion of this set. There is also a collection of bones and skulls and tusks of many a creature that either walks the planet, swims or flies around it – or has done so in millenia past. As a large segment of my environmental educational program, there are tools and weapons and a number of artifacts and clothing of indigenous cultures of the Arctic, among them a narwhal tusk the Inuits often use as harpoons. Many of these I collected myself during my numerous travels and expeditions to the Northern polar regions. And then... there is the collection of rocks. More correctly, there ARE collections of rocks. I have rocks anywhere you might look. There are rocks on shelves, in closets, in my pockets, in my car, in my purse, and also in my briefcase. There are even rocks in my dreams. When I say I gather, I really gather.

So, since Stonetrust's website is imbued with rocks, crystals and minerals, and associated material, I will focus this story on my varied collection of these wondrous objects of interest and intrigue. What types of rocks do I personally collect? My immediate response to that query is to say that I collect rocks that speak. But before you, the reader, start thinking that I need to increase the dosage of my medications, allow me to explain. Multilingual though I am in a conventional sense, I nevertheless converse with my rocks on an entirely different level. Each of the ones I own tells its own story, and I merely act as the interpreter for anyone interested in hearing it.

It is not only children who enjoy my story-telling about the many different rocks I live with. Adults learn a lot as well. Much of it is, of course, in the delivery, but because my objective is to teach and help my obsequious audience remember the lessons, I use the rocks as tangible tools to illustrate my points. More often than not, I place a particular stone in the person's hand, I have them "connect" with it and I then ask them to guess what it is or where it came from. One such rock is from the summit of Mt. Everest. The accompanying story is in part the history of how the rock came to me in the first place and in part it is geological if I choose to point out the tiny fragments of trilobites and ostracods embedded in its peloidal limestone matrix.

Two other rocks which sit side by side on my shelf create a different type of impression. They are not necessarily very interesting to look at scientifically speaking, but when I place one in each hand, I can feel like Atlas himself. One is from Spitsbergen, an island only 600 miles South of the North Pole and deep within the Arctic Circle, the other is from McMurdo, a town situated on the coast of Antarctica. By clutching these two rocks at the same time, I am literally holding both ends of the Earth!

Another aspect of my rock gathering is for those that fluoresce, phosphoresce, and/or tenebresce. In this case, it is not as much the rocks themselves as their vivid colors under ultraviolet light that speak loudest. These rocks scream! There are many of the typical and more common mineral specimens such as the willemites, the calcites, hardystonites, and esperites, some of which I hunted down and dug up myself in New Jersey. And there are those that found me at various shows. My particular inclinations toward all things polar have often led me to the tugtupites and sodalites of Greenland, to fluorite from Dal'negorsk in Siberia, or the calcite with manganophyllite from Langban, Sweden, which under SW UV mimics hot lava. This collection not only lights up but it ignites interest and inspires curiosity in the viewer's mind. Talk about an enlightening experience!

As the saying goes, one good turn deserves another. The same can be said for fluorite. I think it's a disease that is chronic and incurable because it is very difficult for me to pass a show table on which fluorite is displayed without stopping. These I collect for daylight color variation. They are as varied as were the pigments on Michelangelo's palette.

But... all of the aforementioned geological wonders notwithstanding, the rocks and gems and minerals and crystals that attract me above all others are those which remind me of the color spectrum I saw during my polar sojourns. Anything that exhibits any hue or tint variation of ice floes or the waves of the North Sea or glacier crevasses is something that I simply cannot resist. It is useless to fight this addiction. The only pesky inconvenience that holds me back from acquiring all of the pseudo-icebergs I manage to hunt down with my cunning and keen eye is the thickness of my wallet's insulation.

Naturally, aquamarine falls into this category, and yes, I do have a few fine specimens of beryl which I love dearly, but the one piece I practically want to sleep with is the single one I would pick up and run away with in the event of a fire. It is a vanadio-cuprian aragonite from the Laurium Mine in Sounion, Greece. This rock doesn't merely speak. It SINGS! However, it isn't just a beautiful melody I hear. This aragonite belts out the most magnificent operatic aria my ears have ever heard. It is the Pavarotti of my rocks! It is the Zeus of my specimens. It is the checkmate on the minerals chessboard on which all my other rocks forfeit their game. Not only is this aragonite just like a chunk of Arctic ice, but it is exactly the same shape as the block of frozen pastel teal blue in a photograph I took during my expedition to the North Pole which now hangs in a frame just beside it. With apologies to the proprietor, the question begs asking, "Is it real or is it Memorex?" This aragonite was obviously meant to be mine, but the one on my shelf - unlike the one in the Arctic - won't melt...

It is in many ways ironic, serendipitous, fortuitous or any combination thereof that this perfect godlike aragonite was my very first purchase from Stonetrust – not to mention the beginning of a worthwhile and treasured friendship which is afterall the most precious of all possessions.