As a child, I walked with my head in the clouds and my eyes on the ground. I was a born scavenger.
There was definite joy in finding dropped coins that others missed or pocketing unique and shiny metal contraptions that fed my daydreams (shortly after Star Wars came out, I excitedly mistook a hex shank socket driver for a light saber). But my true love has always been rocks.
My dad ordered a rock tumbler, polishing grit and several bags of assorted stones back when those were specialty items. The loud roar that made the garage unbearable to my mother for a week made me weak at the knees.
To transform rough hewn, dust colored chunks of earth into polished bits of art that had heft and felt smooth to the touch was nothing short of a miracle.
That love was furthered when my father and his cousin took me and my three siblings to a tourmaline mine in eastern San Diego County. After a brief tour of the entrance to the mine, we were set free to look for treasures among the tailings.
We eagerly dug out silvery sheets of mica that flaked beneath our fingernails; lepidolite so purple it would have suited Prince's wardrobe; and the ultimate treasure, small chunks of bicolored watermelon tourmaline, a semi-precious stone that looked fit for royal jewelry.
Decades later, I have continued the family tradition.
My wife got hooked early in our marriage, when a honeymoon to India landed us on an alley in Mumbai with a cart containing an assortment of recently mined rocks and minerals. As we pored over gorgeous samples befitting a natural history museum, she agreed that it was worth leaving behind clothes to fill our carry-on bags with a solid 20 pounds of subterranean treasures.
Those specimens still rest in a place of honor over our mantlepiece.
In the decades since my father shared his love of stones with me, I've tumbled rocks with my own kids.
A few summers back, I took them for a "dirtbag dad" overnight getaway where we splurged on burritos for dinner, spent the night in a Motel 6 along the Escondido coast, and then departed on an early morning drive into the mountains to sift through fresh tailings from that same tourmaline mine of my childhood.
They were just as excited as I was by our latest discoveries. Each new gem, crystal or mineral was a subject for fascination, a sort of family treasure we admired collectively for the wonder it drew from us.
Which brings us to last week, on a long drive. A hand-lettered sign over a desolate stretch of two-lane highway read, "Rocks/mineral/fossils." We detoured into a dirt lot and entered a tin-roofed shack where my son and I walked past chunks of stone covered in dust.
A glint from a discarded pile caught my eye - a 20 pound book of muscovite mica, silvery-yellow sheets reflecting the summer sunshine.
The owner accepted a $20 bill, and my family and I reveled in our latest score.
This is trainspotting for science nerds, and I feel lucky to have a family that experiences such highs collectively.