Chapter 7. Geodes

Campmeeting was not just meetings. One boy I met lived near the campground. On Monday, he showed me a soft-ball sized gray rock he had broken open. The inside was lined with white crystals. I was mesmerized.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“Down by the creek.”

“Where? Which creek? I haven’t seen any of these down at the creek.”

“I’ll show you this afternoon, if you want.”

“Really? Today?”

“Sure, you want to go now?”

We clambered down a faint path that took off down the steep hill just beyond the old bathhouse. At the bottom was a larger creek than the one that ran along the lower campground where I was used to building dams. We bushwhacked downstream a ways until we reached a place where the creek had eaten into a bank comprised of a dark gray rock that broke off in layers. After searching for ten or fifteen minutes I found a round, knobbly rock. I worked it out, then stepped down to the creek where I cracked it open with a larger rock. Sure enough. The inside was lined with white crystals. It had broken into too many pieces, so I went back to look for more. I collected six before we quit.

I could hardly wait to show Pastor McLean at the afternoon meeting. He showed interest. That warmed my heart. But then he blew me away. He told us what they were. These were geodes. He even explained how they formed.

When Noah’s flood covered the earth, it laid down layers of mud. The mud had hollow spaces in it. Over time, water with dissolved silica in it moved through the mud and filled up the hollow spaces. Then the water somehow escaped and left behind the crystals.

But I couldn’t see how water could be inside a solid rock and then leave. There wasn’t any hole the water could escape through. And how did the water get in there to start with? Where did the water find the chemicals that turned into white crystals inside the geodes? I didn’t have any better idea, but neither was I prepared to fully accept Pastor McLean’s explanation, even though I was sure it was scientific.

The most impressive thing about all this was that Pastor McLean knew about rocks! After that I brought my best geodes to show him. He was always properly impressed with our finds. Then I found a fossil, an entire leaf, perfectly preserved.

Pastor McLean explained how Noah’s flood had rapidly buried then intensely pressurized the mud with this leaf in it, preserving it for four thousand years until I dug it out of the shale bank. Pastor McLean even came with us once to check out our geode and fossil-hunting sites. It seemed that maybe this cool pastor liked me. It didn’t get any better than that–especially for a hyper-religious kid who was something of a social misfit.