continued from page lined with ….

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lined with mounds of coal tailings left over from an old mining operation. Our technique was simple: dig out chunky rocks the size of a dinner plate that looked somewhat layered on the sides, chisel the edge, and split them open like an open-face sandwich to see what was hiding inside.

We got busy, balancing on the side of a mound. Within minutes, I looked down and spotted a perfect fern impression on a small piece of rock—just sitting there in the leaves. We didn’t even have to crack that one open. “Look!” I hollered, holding it up. Gene exhaled and whispered, “Thank God you found something.”

We dug for over two hours, finding a few interesting things, moving to another spot when the pickings got slim. We rested our tired arms here and there. With thirty minutes left, I uncovered a large layered rock. Gene chiseled the edge and cracked it clean open as I cradled it in my hands. Inside were perfect fern impressions. Ferns and ferns and ferns—pressed there in stone for millions of years, waiting patiently for the two of us to come along and see them and think about them. We both gasped.

“These little ferns grew here millions of years ago,” I said quietly. “And now here they are again. We know what they looked like.”

Ten-year-old me would have been absolutely beside herself. Sixty-year-old me smiled all the way home.