By Steve Chamberlain
Contributing Writer
I realized as I prepared to write this column that it is number 100. Somehow that seems impossible. Failing to think of a spectacular topic, I have written a series of small comments instead.
The deer control project in Fayetteville was apparently a spectacular success, with 89 deer becoming delicious protein for the local food pantries. I’m going to wait until the final report is issued to update the deer control clock; however, it is now clear that the program was justified. This is an enormous number of excess deer in a relatively small area.
Ironically, a friend who is helping to organizing a public event on deer ticks and Lyme disease nonetheless got a Lyme-positive tick bite earlier this week in her garden midway between Manlius and Fayetteville. Tick-borne disease is a growing problem and Lyme disease is serious if not treated early. Please dress appropriately when outdoors and do a tick check upon coming back inside. Two deer, whom I named Realgar and Orpiment after two toxic arsenic minerals, were regularly visiting or trying to visit the garden all winter and spring. They seem to be gone, hopefully permanently. They were coming south from Fayetteville, so maybe it’s possible.
The 43rd Rochester Mineralogical Symposium in mid-April was another very successful event. The opening lecture was a mineral-collecting travelog by Canadian facetter, collector and adventurer, Brad Wilson. As global warming proceeds, and the Arctic ice recedes more and more, land masses in northern Canada are being exposed for the first time in thousands of years. Wilson discussed collecting along the southern tip of Baffin Island. All kinds of interesting mineralization is now exposed in the summer, just waiting to be discovered by a fearless collector. Doing so involves trekking from island to island and beach to beach with a small boat and camping at the edge of the world. Weather and polar bears notwithstanding, Wilson has collected some amazing specimens. My favorite is a new locality for brilliant, bright-blue spinel. The initial find consisted of fractured, well formed crystals that would only cut very small stones. I’m hoping further work will produce bigger pieces of gem rough for larger stones. Very exciting stuff.
This spring seems to be like climbing a cinder-cone volcano — two steps forward, then one step back. Warm sunny days spur bulbs, perennials, shrubs and trees to do their thing; then a hard freeze happens at night. Only a few maladapted plants in my garden have been transformed into green jello by this process, e.g. Dracunculus, but as time proceeds, hard frosts become more and more disappointing to us gardeners. A few woody plants began to leaf, froze, and have started over. By and large the garden is progressing, but I dread finding more jello. The hellebores have been spectacular this spring and I now look to see whether the temperature is above or below freezing when I get up each morning by looking to see if the hellebore bloom stalks are upright, or bent over. This is as accurate as my indoor/outdoor thermometer and fun once you become convinced that it doesn’t damage them.
Our work on a new book on the zinc and talc mining in the Balmat Mining District in St. Lawrence County waxes vigorous apace (to quote Washington Irving). This was one of the largest zinc producing areas in the world in the twentieth century, but was largely unheralded among collectors because the ore was crushed underground and brought up, milled to a fine powder and separated by flotation. The only mineral specimens that were preserved had to be brought up in miners’ lunch boxes or by the company geologists. Some of them are really spectacular as we hope to demonstrate. In the three Balmat zinc mines, the ore was moved by underground railroad and only raised through the shaft where the flotation plant was. All of this was not secret, but it was certainly hidden from public view as treasures in the earth were extracted.