A few words of introduction

My memory still carries this picture: a little, maybe 7 years old girl, bent in half, looking for mosaic pieces of grey-brown flint in her grandparents` garden. She didn`t mind the pain in her back. She appreciated every single stone she found, studied it, admired its beauty.

A few years later together with a year younger friend, she was taken to a nearby quarry. Supervised by the friend`s father, with school backpacks full of stones, they cycled back home. There was another girl living in the neighbourhood, who shared our passion. She used to hide her specimens under one of conifers in her garden. On numerous occasions, we stole the most beautiful of her stones.

Every couple of months at the Silesian University, the Department of Earth Sciences in Sosnowiec, Poland, there is a Mineral Fair.  I still remember my first time there, the feeling of excitement and amazement at the variety and beauty of minerals. I bought two cheap specimens, which I still have in my collection. Every time I went there, year after year, I used to spend more and more, but never bought super-expensive minerals. The budget of a teenager was very limited.

I used to buy minerals every time there was an opportunity to do so. My collection got bigger and bigger. At the beginning it took only one shelf, right now it requires at least a few of them. Most of my specimens are small (I couldn`t afford bigger samples) and unpolished (I prefer not to "upgrade" nature). I`ve collected whatever I liked, I have never really narrowed down the interest area. Right now I would like to focus on self-collecting. Many of my specimens lack localities. Before I just didn`t realize it was important to know. I will never make this mistake again.

Now I am almost 33 years old and still collecting. However, I grew up and now I do not only care about the aesthetics of minerals, but I also study them. I try to learn more about their origin. I realize I still know very little though.

Also, just recently I`ve begun my adventure with field collecting. It is very exciting and I don`t really know why I didn`t do it before. My 19 years old sis has caught the bug so I`m not alone on my collecting trips. I kinda regret I`ve missed so many opportunities to self-collect in Poland where I grew up (the southern area known for its agates), Norway where I lived for 4 years, Tunisia where I spent 3 months of my life doing a training, New Jersey where I worked as a student for 5 months and many more places I visited. Right now I`ve settled down in Ireland, Co. Cork and this is the area that I am exploring with my sister, Klaudia. We are just taking our first steps in field collecting, learning to identify minerals, we are very inexperienced.

Welcome to my blog, feel free to comment,
Monika

 A piece of history: The first stone in my collection- a self-collected piece of flint (Poland)
Photo: Marina Gonzales Bardon