my meteor

I’m getting to be an old fool. I’m not sure what arrived first the foolishness or the oldness. Lately they seem to have come together as a sort of unwanted conjunction, making me look for my keys while the truck is already started, grabbing my gloves to chop wood, then outside, realizing they are the oven mitts I use to check the roast.

Still, who am I to deny my feelings, after all reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Lisa and I wondered the creek bed far from the maddeningly crowds. Since the backroads are free of snow we travelled deeper and higher than other years. Once we got to the white water cascading from the melt that never ceases, we took off on foot.

I was happy to walk on rocks that are usually covered in water in warmer months. Looking at the scrapes and scratches. Digging in the sluice looking for gold that I know isn’t there, quartz but no black sand.

Then we came across a black rock that didn’t belong. It was the only black rock in the river bed. The only black rock I’ve seen in the area. It was out of place. The river would normally be over it.

I lifted it and it was heavy. This was a meteor I figured. Yet, it was pockmarked, not smooth, I held a magnet to it and it didn’t stick.

Regardless, I like to think it was catapulted from space, after a quick trip around the sun, hell bent, entering the atmosphere at ten times it’s size and burned down, in a magnificent streak of colour from red to green, until it hit with the force of ten tonnes of TNT, boiling the river, burying underground, letting a thousand years of high water wash over, until I came along and found it.

That’s most certainly not the way it happened, but it’s the way I like to look at it.

A powerful source, the river in December.

10 thoughts on “my meteor”

  1. mountaincoward

    I had a meteorite for a while but then my mother and the neighbour lost it! 😦 I’ve been really upset about it ever since. Basically, I was lying in bed and heard a sort of sssussssing sound and then a bang. My bed was by the window so I leapt up and saw something glowing in our neighbour’s garden on her flags. The next morning I went out and found the same as you just found but much smaller. I was really chuffed but then my mother said my neighbour should see it and, between them, they lost it!

    That’s a great specimen you’ve found! I’m sure that’s what it is – although I didn’t know about the various tests you can use to see if it is.

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    1. underswansea

      Wow that’s a great story! Too bad your meteor was lost. Still what an experience. I’m not convinced the rock I found was a meteor, it sure looked out of place though. Take care.

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    1. underswansea

      Hi Jim, I think my meteor is more just wishful thinking, however this rock was out of place. I walked the river up and down and never saw anything like it, even it’s texture was different from the surrounding stones. Also the area we were in is very remote, no construction where earth gets moved around. There is logging in the area but logging isn’t permitted beside rivers, so it would have had to migrate a long ways if it was turned up on the mountainside. It’s interesting.

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  3. Carol A. Hand

    I love your imagination, Bob, and your humor about aging. The black rock certainly does look out of place!

    I remember visiting with a Stockbridge-Munsee (Mohican) elder who shared a story about the “power rocks” she gave out to non-Native people who came seeking her wisdom. She told me she used to visit the southern shore of Lake Superior to replenish her supply when she was running out of them. People believed her when she told them that the the rounded red stones have a special power, so in a sense, I suppose they do. Their surface was smoothed and rounded over the centuries by the movement of waves along the shore.

    Now you too have a special power stone that traveled the universe and planted itself in just the right time and place for you and Lisa to see it before the snows come to cover it and before the waters washed it away. Mine easily fit in my purse before I gave it away to someone who needed to believe in its healing power. I don’t know if you tried to roll it back to your truck. That would be a much more serious sign of aging…

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    1. underswansea

      Thank you for your wonderful comment. I have been known to carry all kinds of rocks and stumps back to the vehicle. Now I’m older I leave them where they lay, however if times get tough I can always go back and collect them. 🙂

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    1. underswansea

      Thanks Julie! Not much snow so the roads are still open. The good thing about the oven mitts is they are so big I rarely loose them when I’m chopping wood. 🙂 Take care.

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  5. Rick Nowell

    Note that since 2011 there has been six meteor impacts in the East Kootenays.
    There was one one July 23rd 2020 that hit near Fairmont Hotsprings at (50.350N, 115.95 W). Our College of the Rockies Meteor Camera caught video of the fall and helped triangulate the impact site. Dr. Hildebrand thinks it was a carbonaceous type of around 100 kg, thus It would be lightweight and fragments would look like black coal. The strewn field adjacent to the Westside Rd. at (50.363N, 115.953W) is probably a good area for searching as meteorites here are projected to be golf ball to peach size. On the Northeast side of the valley around Rt. 93/95 they will be smaller like marbles.
    The previous meteorite impact was near Canal Flats back in 20Dec2014, hitting near Marconi Peak on the White River. Again, that was likely a carbonaceous type with black fragments.
    Previous, one by Riondel near Ainsworth Hotsprings. Another by Duck Lake near Creston. Etc.
    So, meteorites aren’t as rare as you’d think.
    Rick Nowell

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