PHOTO GALLERY 3:
More Jaspers and Agates

This is the stone that got me hooked on collecting picture jaspers: Biggs Picture Jasper, from Oregon, containing a landscape where (to my eye, anyway) a rainstorm sweeps across the mesa.

The full dimensions of this slab are 15 cm tall (about 6 inches) by 12.5 cm wide. And it's entirely natural; no human has done anything to the jasper except haul it out of the mine in Biggs, Oregon (off of the Columbia River Gorge) and cut it into slabs.

I'm especially drawn to landscapes that seem "out of this world," as in this green-sky Succor Creek Landscape Jasper from Oregon.

I found way too many straight lines in this landscape. "Who or what," sez I to myself, "lives on this planet?" (Owyhee Gem Jasper, Oregon.)

At right is Blue Biggs Jasper (Oregon), the same variety that sported a "skull" on the main Photo Gallery page. The sky is a fairly dull mud-brown here, though; no "magnetic field."

Here we have Owyhee Sunset Picture Jasper, also from Oregon.

Right: Glorious Marra Mamba Jasper from Australia, aka Tiger-Eye Jasper.

This is called Mimbres (Apache) Rhyolite, but it's the same material as Apache Sage Jasper, pictured in the main Photo Gallery. It's mined in New Mexico.

Ick! What is that? It's all blobby! Or, it may be something an alien race uses as currency. (Royal Imperial Jasper, Mexico.)

Continuing with the "white blobby theme," we have something that puts me in mind of modern art rather than a pile of poached eggs. (Mookaite Jasper, Australia.)

How about a black blob instead? The person who sold this to me called it "Mystery Wormhole Agate," but I believe it's an atypical configuration of Polka Dot Agate, from Oregon. (I like the wormhole idea, though. Or it could be a smoke signal...)

Left: Bruneau Jasper, from Idaho. It comes in a variety of shades.


Right: More Bruneau Jasper. (Some of my rocks are downright yummie-looking. Chocolate-y... Talk to you in a bit. A bite. OW!)

Amethyst Sage Chalcedony, from Nevada.

Such a soothing colour, blue.

If only the force field weren't failing...

On the right is a supremely sinuous specimen of Polychrome Jasper, from Madagascar.

Also from Madagascar, but this is called Misty Mountain Jasper. It's another example of a multiply-named material.

I'm fixating on that red giant sun. Our very own Sol will turn into one of these in a few billion years. (Other specimens of Misty Mountain/Polychrome Jasper can be found farther down on this page.)

Just when you were feeling all not-comfy... Is this a chalk outline? Long underwear? It reminds me of the totems erected to scare intruders off/demarcate the borders of the land of the apes, encountered by the astronauts after they landed on the Planet of the Apes in the 1968 version of the movie. (Hickoryite, from Mexico.)

Owyhee Sunset Picture Jasper, Oregon. Not a thing is going through my head except, "Isn't this beautiful." Phew.

The same material, but here something distinctly odd is going on the distance. Could it be a sighting of the ultra-rare Planetary Hourglass? Or perhaps a "Beam Me Up, Cloudy" in progress?

There is a material known as Fantasy Jasper (aka Sci-Fi Jasper or Exotica Jasper), but I don't find it particularly interesting. It's pleasing enough, though, so here's some. This specimen was mined in Mexico, but another variety can be found in Utah.

To the right is some Imperial Jasper from Mexico. I have a lot of this material because there's such a variety of patterns to be discovered in it.


It's a new undersea species! It's an interstellar tennis racket! (Morrisonite Jasper, Oregon.)




More in the jasper subgenre I call "The Eyes."

Porcelain Swirl Jasper, from Mexico, on both left and right.



On the left is more proof, if such be needed, that miners can also be SF fans. This jasper from Oregon is named after a certain urban superhero whose powers derived from a bite by a radioactive arachnid.

Right: I designed the website header using this lovely piece of agate as the background image. One of my readers says this agate is Misty Mountain/Polychrome Jasper, as it's dug at the same site in Madagascar; the "orby" bits are found inside the rock nodules, while the "landscapes" are in the rinds of the nodules. (My reader found this out by buying a whole barrel of the stuff.)


Is the rock on the left rising or falling? Um... (Noreena Jasper, Australia.)


Right: Discovered in 2008 was Nevada Paint Jasper, from... guess where?



To borrow the title of James Tiptree, Jr.'s second novel, published in 1985: Brightness falls from the air. (The material is Paiute Agate, from Oregon.)


Right: What a scary beastie. From the depths of an ocean, perchance? (It's Botswana Agate.)



Continuing the "jaws" theme, we have another ocean denizen about to gobble something. The material is Misty Mountain Jasper, from Madagascar.


With all the gaping maws in the vicinity, is it any wonder this puir wee beastie is looking petrified? (Ocean Jasper, Madagascar.)

Not only is this material, Marra Mamba Jasper, from Australia, but the picture evokes the place... the Outback, that is. As an Aboriginal might see it during Dreamtime, perhaps.

A photo of an unspoiled Earth from space? Nope; it's a specimen of Azurite and Malachite, taken from the huge open-pit copper workings in Arizona called the Ray Mine.

As a long-time consumer of SF, I see a pattern in this specimen of Polka-Dot Agate that non-genre readers may not, and it's a disturbing vision. A woman's head, hair piled up Betty Grable-style, faces the sunset. Her head is growing atop a stalk rooted in the ground.

This puts me in mind of a frozen meteor shower. It's a variety of agate with needle-like inclusions that goes by various names, including sagenite agate and rutilated quartz. I believe it's from the western US, possibly Arizona or Oregon.

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