A puddingstone forms when sand and silt collect around a grouping of smaller stones. Intense heat and pressure harden the softer material and it encompasses the smaller stones around it. The individual rocks now become a conglomerate. Puddingstones can be found all over the world and while they share a common name, they don't always share the same appearance or composition.
During the last Ice Age, glaciers from the north of what is now Canada carried puddingstones south to what is now northern Michigan, depositing them right smack on the back doorstep of the property I've already mentioned my parents bought in the 1970s.
My parents bought the property in conjunction with friends of theirs from the Kolbe Karavaners club. They had neighboring lots. They put in a joint septic tank on the property line so both could use it when they parked their trailers there. An electricity pole was put in so they could light the trailers at night with more than lanterns. I think my father and his friend had intended to build cabins there.
Shortly after the land was purchased, the families camped there together for the first time. The homeowners association provided a clubhouse as well as several beach access points along the Lake Huron shore which provided great hunting grounds for rocks. This was my parents' Shangri-La.
The family we were with knew of my parents' affinity for rock collecting. And while this family wasn't as enamored with the hobby, they nonetheless walked the shoreline with us picking up interesting stones along the way. I think it was their daughter who first found the puddingstone. She and I had been throwing driftwood out into the waves and bombarding the pieces with flat, gray stones, stones which had spent years trying to reach the shore only to be sent back at the hands of a couple of pre-teens.
I sent a flat piece of wood out into the surf. She was about to toss the first stone at it when she held it out to me. She asked what it was and I told her I didn't know. The base stone was beige, but there were pieces of more familiar-looking stones in it. The best way to describe is to say it looked like a ball of cookie dough with chips, cherries, and chunks rolled into it.
We showed it to our parents. In all the years of rock hunting my parents couldn't remember seeing one like it. We put it in the plastic campaign swag-bag my dad had many of from his politician brother to examine later. These were the dark days of information gathering. No smartphones, no wifi, no wiki. This investigation would constitute leg work.
We went into town that afternoon to pick up groceries for a hot dog-hamburger barbecue celebrating the joint purchase of properties. My dad saw a gift shop specializing in trinkets crafted from stones. He was already interested in buying a stone-cutting machine to make jewelry from the rock collection. He wanted to ask the owner if he or she did their own work. While we were in there, he described what his friend's daughter had found and that was when we learned it was a puddingstone.
A month or so later we were all back up at the property for Labor Day. The two dads were quite pleased with themselves. All the campgrounds were booked but there they were, sitting in their folding lawn chairs, drinking beer, smoking cigars while other guys had to drive around looking for a place to park an RV.
At some point, it was decided what we all needed was a walk along the beach. From our lot, to the corner on the east end of our dead-end street, it was about a hundred or so yards. The walk down the street we turned north on was a bit longer but it was downhill and the second beach access site from the entrance to the private community was right there at the bottom. I'm going to say there were no more than one hundred residents in the development at the time, and fewer than half of those lived there year-round. Running into someone was rare.
We hadn't gone far when the wife of our property-lot neighbors saw a puddingstone in the soft sand of the surf. She bent to pick it up thinking it was no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. It was, in fact, much bigger. She began scraping away at the sand until she revealed the surface the size of a softball. Her daughter and I brought over sticks. We kept poking the wet sand until we had sketched out an area the size of a shoebox. We dropped to our knees and dug out handfuls of wet, watery sand.
The stone dipped further into the muck. It was much bigger than a shoebox.
By now it was a quest. A revealing of the puddingstone grail. We had to see how big this stone was if nothing else. We dug for what seemed forever. My dad had gone back to the lot and gotten a folding shovel he'd brought home with him from his days in the navy. He dug and scraped until he got the tip below the sunken end. He and his buddy pushed on the short handle, forcing the buried end free while the moms stood off to the side and smoked. The daughter and I wedged thick branches under the gaps so the rock wouldn't slide back down into the soft earth.
At long last the puddingstone was freed. It was the size of a fire hydrant.
We decided we couldn't leave it there. It had to come back to the lots. It would be a marker out in front of the neighbor's lot. They were going to paint their address on it.
The neighbor-dad went back and got his car. He and my dad loaded the puddingstone into the trunk. The two dads rode back together leaving the rest of us to walk. By the time we got back to the lots, the stone sat in its new rightful place.
Right on the property line at the front of both lots. And there it sat until it disappeared.
Stumpstone Quote of the Day:
The memory of rocks does not last long. Those memories that survive are rooted in powerful emotion. But as time passes, so too do these memories fade into obscurity. Erosion is the world's greatest destroyer of memories. --from Genshin Impact (video game)
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