Shortly after I moved into the Stumpstone house, I took my son over to the nearby city park. The area is heavy in mastodon bones. When they were widening a major road near us, an almost complete skeleton was found. The bones now reside in a local museum.
A river passes through the park. Fly fishermen like to cast in it. They catch and release and their efforts to preserve the area have actually strengthened the ecosystem. A boy not much old than my son at the time found a mastodon jawbone along the river bank. I lured my son to the park under the auspices of us finding our own piece of history.
We took our shoes off to wade through the shallow water. Almost instantly he found a perfect brachiopod. Crescent-shaped. Ridged. No bigger than a penny. I attributed his keen eye for spotting it because he was closer to the ground than I was. Also, he didn't have to be keeping watch on a six-year-old child. Regardless, it was a beautiful find.
He asked if he could take it to school with him. I said yes, but he had to keep it safe. A couple of weeks later I asked him where the fossil was. He told me it was at school in the teacher's desk. I asked why it was there and he said it was the safest place he could think to keep it.
I think it's still there.
STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song. --Carl Perkins
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