Sep 02 2008
Picture Jasper
The cold weather snuck up on me a bit this year. We’ve been having gorgeous days here for the last couple of weeks, but this weekend the temperatures started to fall at night. Right now, it’s about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but I am refusing to turn on the heat since it should get up to 70 or 80 today as summer tries to make its last stand. That’s autumn weather in the desert mountains for you. The snow could arrive anytime now.
I decided to go ahead and post one of the photos I took of the African picture jasper a couple of days ago when I was photographing the ocean jasper. I love the markings on these pieces, and I think that whoever decided to name it “picture jasper” should get a naming award. Each stone of this type does seem to have its own story to tell through its markings. It reminds me a lot of ancient writings that have been found on cave walls. This particular one brings images of a burning desert to my mind.
7 Responses to “Picture Jasper”
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Hi… I found your blog at Bechai’s. This is a nice blog. I like the Picture Japer too… it has a very unique pattern and you are right it looks like you are looking on the wall inside a cave… and I believe no two picture jaspers are the same… and people who are looking at it have different interpretation… mine is - it’s the surrounding left after the vocano erupted.hahaha.
ruthi
Melissa - The high quality stuff is fairly rare. There’s a lot of lower quality picture jasper on the market, but it sure doesn’t have the markets that the nice stuff has.
Ruthi - Great to see you here.
I can surely see the picture you’re describing - now I will think of that stone as the volcanic wasteland.
Michelle - No AC in the schools there? I don’t mind the heat so much, but I HATE the humidity. I would still take too cold over too hot any day of the week.
There are other parts of the world where you can find picture jasper (or something that is called that by the people who dig in those areas), but it has a different look from locality to locality. The African picture jasper is the type I generally prefer because of the “desert” coloring and markings. In the United States though, a lot of people assume you’re talking about Oregon picture jasper. Oregon picture jasper is still a nice stone, but it looks a lot different from the African specimens.
thanks for dropping by my blog. i appreciate it. i added you to my blog links by the way. i hope you dont mind. take care.
Ruthi
Wow, Kalilea, I did not know you live in desert mountain, that’s too cool! I don’t know why, but since I’ve been exposed to desert, I’ve become a desert rat that I always dream about it
Right now, I could not wait for temperature to drop so that we can go hiking in the desert again, the only drawback is that the desert gets too cold at night, and sometimes too windy too. And I can just imagine how much colder it would be in the higher elevation. Oh, and what I like walking in the desert, I always stumble upon really nice stones, maybe just metamorphic, but for me, they are nice.
Like, I can totally relate to the African jasper in the picture as a burning desert. I really enjoyed my visit to Death Valley in Mosaic Canyon where the walls are marbles and rocks oh so unique.
Thanks, Ruthi! You have got me thinking about yard sales now, though, and I am not sure if that is a good thing - they can be pretty addictive.
I love living here, Betchai - I’ve moved around quite a lot over the years, but I’ve definitely found my home here. When they find out I live in the desert, people assume that it’s always hot. Actually, it’s rarely very hot here because of the elevation even though we do get a few weeks a year that are in the 90s. Because of that, I only have a single wall-unit air conditioner at home. On the other hand, it rarely gets super cold either. Even in winter, we’ll get a lot of snow, but the temp tends to stay above 0 degrees F. Those winds are something else, though! It’s not unusual to have windstorms with gusts of 120+ mph.