J is for Jasper

Jasper, a name that means spotted or speckled stone, certainly lives up to its namesake, particularly in the variety of those specks and spots.    Each forms its own tiny ancient landscape created millions of years ago.  Each with its own stories about those that discovered it.

I have quite a few varieties that I have photographed in my archives, each with a name that usually designates a little bit about the place it is from, and the prospectors that discovered it.   The mixture of quartz, silicon dioxide, and other trace minerals create a great variety in their appearance, symbolic of the geographic region it is from.

Royal Sahara Jasper # RO-8944

Royal Sahara Jasper ® is one of the first types I become enamoured with, with its swirls and tiny worlds within.   It is a from a very specific location in the Sahara Desert and has it’s own unique look and set of properties that represent its geographic region.   It is harder to find interesting pieces now, suggesting the supply is more limited.

As the story goes, Janet and George Sechler, it’s original discoverers, stumbled upon it while prospecting in the Sahara Desert back in April/May 2006.   George found one little piece and that started their hunt digging and zig-zagging around the Sahara in a Jeep with a GPS.   They were finding ancient whale bones and other dinosaur fossils in the middle of the Sahara, but this one unique looking rock captured their complete attention.

They basically found a small ancient creek bed quite far from the nearest road that required escavating by hand.   So off they went, hired Sudanese laborers, and started digging this stuff up in 120-140 deg F heat over a period of months.   That scene from the original Indiana Jones, workers digging at night as thermals disrupt the air at dusk seems to come to mind.  I wonder if George had a Indy hat?    I think of that scene every time I look at my photographs of this stone.

Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark

In 2007, a “Sahali” sandstorm buried the site under 10 feet of sand, and there they left it, to be discovered perhaps by someone else, some other day.

Another jasper, Ocean Jasper, looks completely different, yet geographically related in that it is from the intertidal shores of Madagascar.    It has its own stories I’m sure, but I have yet to learn them.

Ocean Jasper #RO-9171

Jumping continents to China, Cherry Creek Jasper has another very unique look… begging one to ponder its creation over time of this stonescape, the lives, species, and events that were happening during its creation.

Cherry Creek Jasper macro abstract, from my Stonescapes series

For more photographs of Jaspers, and other abstract rock art photographs – please visit my Stonescapes gallery.