Petoskey Hunt

Up until the time I was 18, I lived in the same room in the same house in the same small town in Michigan. This is by no means a complaint. Croswell was and is a great place to grow up, with one of the great advantages being it is 5 miles from one of the Great Lakes.

Like every other state, Michigan has a state tree (white pine), state bird (robin), and a state stone (Petoskey). All of my life I unconsciously thought that the state stone was hard to find and could only be found in the town of Petoskey. Why else would you name the town that? I also assumed that because Petoskey is located on Lake Michigan that if you were to find the stone any where else it would have to be on the opposite side of the state. Why would I even think to look in Lake Huron?

Fortunately, Hilary shattered my mental limitations concerning the petoskey stone. One of her few goals for this trip to the states was to go petoskey stone hunting. For those of you that are wondering what in the world is so special about a petoskey stone, please let me enlighten you. The petoskey stone is both a rock and fossil, and it is made of fossilized rugose coral.

The day had arrived. I brought with me petosky stone that a friend had given me to show everyone an example of what they were looking for. We arrived at a beach we had been to countless times as children. My 5-year-old nephew was the first to reach the shore. He stops, picks a stone off the ground and declares with great excitement, “Muma, I found one!” Naturally, we were all in disbelief. How in the world could he have found one so fast?! After examining the stone, it was confirmed. He had indeed found a petosky stone. This of course generated much excitement as the rest of us began to look.

My Petosky Find

After a while, we all started dipping in to our perseverance tanks. And just that moment before I was about to take a break, my eye caught something, My had went in the water for the hundredth time, but this time it came back up holding exactly what we had been looking for.

I have to add a special note here: it was hard for anyone to walk away from this task disappointed. I picked up so many other stones just out of pure desire to examine their beauty at a closer level. Although the process seems hard, time combined with pressure can result in beautiful works of art.  

Casey's First Find