Strange Stones

08/13/2007

Joel Akin

 I began as a child. Most of us pick up stones either to stick in our pocket or to throw. Sometimes at people. Sometimes at ducks or squirrels. Sometimes at windows. Eventually we stop throwing away the stones and some of us remain interested in them. I know I have a lot of interests but I am a person who is interested in life and what it has to show me. I will present what to some might seem common stones or fossils and present to you mysteries. And if you can find the answer for me I will publish those answers on this site. Eventually I will grow because I hope you will show me your neat rocks and tell me why they are a mystery. And if you find mysteries then you are wise. And if you create mysteries sometimes you are a writer. So try to find legitimate mysteries for this site.

Now I begin with the simple conglomerate. Over the years I have seen these stones from the size of a marble all the way up to the size of a house but not as big as the casino hotels in Vegas.. Usually they are round. Some are aged and their tops are worn down. Yet overall I have found that most of these stones are not easy to explain. Why for example are some so perfectly round they could be a world? And why are worlds the same shape as these conglomerates?

Lets begin with a mystery. Imagine this stone is one of hundreds of stones that I have seen like it in Alberta. It is known for its rough, cement like texture. They are found in gravel pits usually but not all gravel pits have them. In fact I’ve only found one gravel pit where they were found but I will keep that place secret. It wasn’t open to the public. I required special permission to go there. It is found in a place that is not far from the river we call the Bow. The Bow River begins in the mountains. It is a wild river at times but around 1910 they put up a dam near a town called Bassano. There the river curved into a horseshoe bend and the river was dammed.

Now having a dammed river isn’t a curse. It is a good thing. Man was meant to curve rivers and that means to pronounce them made in the image of man. If you curve a river it means to put a bounce into it and that bounce is the set of its block. So to curve it meant to pronounce it. And to pronounce it meant to Bow. Now the old archers used to bow their arch in the string and so the bow came to represent the arch or the string. So when they discovered or found knowledge they pronounced it curved. And if the curve of the river was a Bow they called it the shoe. And so the day came when they found a curve which fit the description of a horse and a shoe and it was this which the Blacksmith said “We will find a good trace to put a dam there” and it was there where they arched the shoe over the foot. Some followed a trace or pattern but most had to bend the will of the horse before they could find the bend of the river. Finding a bend in a river is rare and if you find a sharp bend it is even more rare. Of course they had to build out with a levy but we’ll say the price of the levy didn’t tax the bank of the river and if it did the bank would have fallen like it did when the river flooded. I think it was about 1933 or possibly earlier.

Now the bend in a river is the way to discover how things can be created. For if a bend forms strange there are often strange things found. And so if they found strange things in the land they were told to ignore it. That is the way of discovery in the old days. Rarely it made headlines but most of the time people ignored discovery and left it to the editors of newspapers searching for a way to pronounce liberty on the free thinking people who read such news.

Of course back then they had the Brooks Bulletin and I don’t remember when they started the Bassano Times or Standard. It was a long time ago and I wasn’t born then. But I did enough studying of history of the region to know it held things of interest. And those things were the measure of time.

So lets deal with the round rock. It was round and it was common along the Bow. There are the Devils Marbles and some day I’ll find them for you and we can play a name game as to how they got that name. And I’ll show you other mysteries of the world and EID or Eastern Irrigation District. Remember these stones were obtained with permission and as of these days that may not be as easy to get. But if you have an antsy then ask before trespassing. It will save you grief and trial later on.

At one time I filled my yard with these things but eventually we moved to Calgary and I had to leave most behind. My brother obtained a few and I left the rest as part of the landscape.

Now I do know this will be a long article so I apologize for not having a lot of them left. Our first move was into a mobile home and that isn’t big enough to bring all your treasures. Often that is the way of life. Moving is the pits when it comes time to dispose of life. Someday it may happen but I hope there will be places to put treasure.

Now the Bow was created by a wen in time. A wen is a wandering creek and it began small. It grew into a rivulet and the rivulet welded together a composite of lakes and layers of material until over the centuries it wore down to the rock. Now it is a mystery which I haven’t figured out but I think the river we call Red Deer is muddy because it is younger then the Bow. If so it had more material for it widened further then the Bow and at times it is about thirty miles apart.

Now the conglomerate is built up of sand and mud. It is textured like cement and if  you were to use it like time does it would grow up into a fine home.

But not always. At the EID Library they may still have part of a conglomerate that ingested an ammonite. The ammonite formed part of the surface and it was yellowish in color. That is the stone was. The ammonite had an iridescent red color.

Sometimes there are small chalk like stones at the center. That seems to indicate there were things in the beginning that rounded out the name first. Like burrs or tumbleweed which blows in the wind.

Yet if they began with something soft another begins with a center that is hard. So lets say they began in the earth and were raised up like cave pearls. If you study cave pearls some do look like what could be round and semi round stones but most are white or hard and covered with a milky like substance. Usually calcium which is soft. Those are like stalactites which form from the ceiling and they don’t form just in caves but underneath places where leaching takes place.

Now the most important fact of this is that there are cave pearls and there are conglomerates. They have that name because not all are round.

This stone I call potato. It is one of the few which appears to be forming two separate round stones but whatever the process of separation or joining was changed by circumstance. So lets say the above is similar to the joining of cement and this is one piece which proves that it might be possible to join two conglomerates. The center appears to have a faint ring around it.

There are mysteries out there waiting to be found. But I would like to state the stones I found were mystical in one sense. And that is they carried joy to me in the finding. I make up what I can’t discover. I know they have a history. One day I might understand fully. I do know there was a story we circulated among the public about these stones.

 In 1989 I found one in the turnaround area at the Brooks Aqueduct. It was our first year and we were meeting in a small trailer. Jim Jenn’s was our supervisor and we had this debate over the round stones that were cropping up. He believed that the stones were tumbling along the length of the Brooks Aqueduct.

Construction of the Brooks Aqueduct. Circa about 1914. EID PHOTO

Inside the flume was the bowl and it was his belief they were starting out as irregular stones which as they were bowled down the flume by water were eventually transformed. And it just so happened that they took out a section of the flume around 1979 and it happened to be where we picked them up.

Now it was a good theory and it explained why they were found in the parking lot and also underneath the area which was prone to leakage. Some stones, like the small ones we discovered then, would be from the aqueduct bowling flume. It made sense but I couldn’t accept it. I did research and I decided I would dig deeper. So I did. And I found one source for that gravel. And I searched for years for other sources but without success. I may have seen stones similar but there was something about the Eastern Irrigation District Glacial Till which produced as close to perfect conglomerates as any I’ve ever heard of or seen.

So what did happen to bring those mystery stones to the  surface? That is if they were cave pearls of the deep?

I’ve thought of that also and it is strange that the county they are discovered in is called Newell. Think New Well. A well in the EID? How about some little knowledge for the sake of this  story.

It seems that when I moved to the EID I had to go into history. I did and I learned a lot. I went into history as deep as was possible and I searched the Brooks Bulletin microfiche newspapers back to their beginning. I learned of how things were before the railroad came to town. And I learned how the railroad changed the land. But I also found that it was owned by native people. There were mysterious ruins which long ago vanished. And there were tipi rings everywhere. I found a few myself which were not recorded.

Yet these things were part of history. Yet of Newell it was the county. It was there where I discovered a claim for ammonite. That was when it was legal to search with a license. And with permission to places where I went. I learned more then most about the land and I learned it was there in mystery. It was there as a mystery to which I learned that man was there for a long time. And I learned that man wasn’t the only one. For there were things which spoke of ocean and spoke of shells and spoke of ammonite.

And it was ammonite which somehow had become a conglomerate. So whatever the mystery was the ammonite was involved in the story. For on rare occasion while digging up land they find ammonite. Only I just happened to be there when they brought it in to the EID library. It was there and weighed in at 300 pounds originally though I am remembering by guess. It could have been half that so forgive me for not having clarity on that point.

Now I do joke about Newell. It was said of Brooks it also had hell for a basement and there were early rumors of gas underneath the town. That might be true and it is also said of Medicine Hat and maybe a few other places.

Whatever caused the land to shift so rapidly created an underworld. And that underworld was based on life of mystery.

So I will say that Brooks was named after Noel Brooks. Noel, as I learned, is a term related to the word Newel. Newel is a starting post on a staircase. And as it is a spindle it is also known as a record for record players spun in place and so did the place we call Newell.

It was there I spun records and it was there I searched for truth. And it was there I found knowledge which is part of this mystery.

So is it possible that somewhere down below is another newel or Newell? If so are we a staircase to hell? That is the County? Is it a place where time turned upside down in some catastrophe? I think it is possible but only if we can ever figure out how to grow ammonite. For that age had them and we do not. They were based on a stem to a brain like creature. A creature which looked like it might have a brain. A weird thought but who knows.

Until then enjoy the search. Life is a mystery. And life is filled with joyful experiences for those who love life.