Chris Writing Anything

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

In our lives, the ordinary might provide for the coolest items…ever. Today, in this brief post, I’ll tell you about my childhood treasure. Literally, while that trinket was an interesting find, if you’re from rural Brussels, Wisconsin, they’re common place.

My parents live in Brussels, and, for years, they’ve resided on a small dairy farm. Being that the days of family farming have been practically put to rest, the buildings are now mainly used for storage.

Anyways, now that I’ve kind of set the stage, I’ll expand upon the setting further, and I’ll talk about an early spring ritual, one performed in Wisconsin fields. Before crops are planted, one must, in order to prevent damage to costly machinery, pick the rocks on the soil’s surface.

Many people, especially those who’ve never experienced cold weather, might wonder how rocks can be at the field’s surface…every…single…year. It’s simple, when the ground freezes, it contracts the soil, and, after the ground thaws, it expands again, and that pushes stones and debris towards open air.

So, as a child, every spring, the most boring chore had to be performed. Dad drove the tractor, my sisters and I, we surveyed the land for big, solid pieces of sediment.

That’s when I made a discovery, and this realization sent me into la-la land. It was a chunk of very brittle limestone. So, being that some, not all, but some, seemed rather fragile, I realized they were old. What’s more, if you studied them, you’d see bizarre indentations…creatures and sea shells.

These fossils were quite abundant, and I always wondered about them. Did an Ice age glacier carry them from a lake in Canada? Did the nearby bay exist back when these specimens left their mark? Did the bay shrink? Or, and I believe this is the correct answer, was there once an entirely separate sea where I was standing?

I didn’t know the answer, But, by the fossils’ appearance, they were ancient, and they looked tropical. So, it always made me fantasize about the dangerous sea creatures that could have, very possibly, been swimming where I was standing. So I took a limestone chunk, one with a large, fan-like shell, and I stored it in my room.

I don’t know about you, but fossils, especially for a young boy, well, they were super cool. They also begged questions, and they spurred my imagination.

Have an Excellent Day!