I've returned from almost two weeks in the field, living almost entirely from a field pack and a duffel bag. Much was found, and that might require a separate blog entry with a lot of circumspection. Summary: I did find a lot, but nothing new. Some sites were a great surprise from prospecting. I traveled about 3500 km, and I do have even more sites and trips lined up for what I hope will be an exciting season. Many tales from the trails to be told, but many of those are campfire stories.
For now, as a placeholder, I wanted to talk about Penn Dixie (PD) -- a site I last visited in 2019 and will never visit again. This is in no way some kind of negative Yelp review at all, but an acknowledgment that it is time to pass the torch. I love Penn Dixie. It is a premiere spot for finding a lot fo Devonian riches. I used to go every year, sometimes more than once. Just about everyone who goes will come away with something to put a smile on their faces. The staff are fantastic and informative, the site is accessible (even for those with mobility issues), prospective diggers can rent tools, and they run a very good set of educational programming that even includes astronomy. Through their hard efforts, the PD folks have turned this former quarry and subsequent abandoned spot where people did doughnuts with their vehicles into a world-class site for people of all ages and abilities. They have secured state and municipal funding, while making partnerships with local businesses. It truly is a success in terms of its offerings and sustainability in its mission to provide an informative, educational experience as a must-go fossil park. I really wish we had something similar here in Ontario with all our vast fossil riches! That said, for me, I probably don’t need to ever return. The site is just not for someone like me, which isn’t anything negative about the site at all! — It is productive and wonderful and a great educational experience for the casual collector. For us seasoned veterans, though, we likely have hundreds or thousands of perfect specimens from there that it would be a waste of time for us to hunt there, and would just deprive more casual collectors from the joy and wonder of finding great fossils. When some of us Canucks come down, we come down with serious tools. We are human backhoes. We wreck and rule. Pry bars and rock saws galore. We leave the area drastically changed after a few days there. We cut out huge blocks with determination, and we go home with vast fossil “riches.” Well, from a commercial standpoint, not so much. Those Eldredgeops don’t command much of a high dollar value. When one factors in costs in gas, accommodations, prep, and shipping, it isn’t worth the effort — and that is just fine since PD should not be a site for commercial exploitation by its visitors. This site is for the science and wonder for everyone. When I first got into collecting, PD was an absolute dream. Eventually, though, I graduated in my collecting to pursue other things with a more focused agenda. This site was never meant for someone at my stage of collecting, and never marketed itself to be that way. For those of us in this more advanced stage, it is about more specialized collecting in difficult locations to find rarer things. Coming in and hoovering up everything with our excavation experience is no gain for us, and ruins it for more casual collectors. The site isn’t for us, period. I have one good fossil comrade who goes every year, but he isn’t there to collect. He is taken on board to be an expert to help others find the riches we prospered from in the early days. At PD, it isn’t about us, but the new folks to experience the magic we experienced when we were also new. Gone are the days when we need to go home with 100 specimens of the same trilobite — for what? Hoarding is ugly, and just deprives others. Those like us have other spots and different goals, so why come in with our experience and prevent others from getting a piece of the Devonian delight? I can’t speak for others in my fossil orbit, but I am happy to say that I had some great times at PD, time to pass it on for others to enjoy it without me taking all the goodies. I owe it to the new collectors and I owe it to the mission of PD. For those of you reading this blog entry and wondering if you should go, an emphatic yes if you are just getting into collecting or have little access to Devonian material. It is productive; your pack or bucket won't be empty. Perhaps you might have to make choices of what to bring home for the volume of fossil material available! To learn much more, go here: https://penndixie.org Until next time when I can update this blog properly with finds and such, I'm still in the "accumulation" stage of the year. I'm digging! Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
Archives
February 2024
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