Like many U.S. states, Vermont is composed primarily of "rocks." If you would like some rocks--to build things out of, to grind into your food, or simply to appreciate as objets d'art--it will be easy for you to steal them from Vermont.
Fig 1.1 A rock in Vermont (orange). "Nature's Rockhound," lichen (green).
Rules for Rockhounding
- Don't get caught.
- Gold is for suckers.
- If you take a fossil it will haunt you until you die.1
- People will notice if you use dynamite.
- They can't prove you took it if you eat it.
- Don't get caught.
Fig 1.2 Late-nineteenth-century rockhounds returning from a successful hunt in southeastern Vermont.
Where do rocks come from?
Most of Vermont's rocks are strange hard dirt. It's hard to define how old dirt is, but this dirt became strange and hard between 300 million and one and half billion years ago, mostly on the later end. The most dirtlike (not very hard or strange2) rocks are about 450 million years old, and by all rights should have gotten much harder except they apparently got shoved out of the way? We call this shove the "Champlain Thrust Fault." If you find dirt that isn't hard, it probably only showed up about 20,000 years ago. Baby dirt.Some rocks are not made of dirt, but were instead spit up by the hateful soul of the world. Vermont does not have many of these, but I will tell you where they are. You will be able to find them and chip loose crystals of loathing, and also mica.
Where will rocks go?
The ocean.| Some U.S. states that are no good for rockhounding: | |
|---|---|
| State | Why no good? |
| Hawaii | Rocks too young |
| Montana | Residents covetous of rocks |
| Ontario | Not a U.S. state |
| Rhode Island | No rocks |
| Mississippi | No rocks |
| Oregon | No rocks |
1 Limestone, which is most often an aggregate of foraminifera--single-celled organisms with calcium carbonate shells--and the skeletal fragments of multicellular organisms, is full of ghosts
2 But most haunted.