Sacred Totems
I was born in “Just” Virginia, but West Virginia has always felt like a second home. Growing up, I visited twice a year to see family, and in 1996, when my sister enrolled at WVU in Morgantown, my connection to the state deepened. Though I was younger, I relished my own version of the “college […]
Somebody was wondering how to carve a heart cabochon with a cab machine, so I threw together this video. It focuses on the trickier parts of carving a heart opposed to a full on step by step how to. Could be an interesting view for anyone curious about how cab machines work.
August 2019 Journey Through Oregon: A Rockhounding Adventure Armed with a Falcon’s Rockhounding Oregon guide and a trusty Toyota Camry rental, I embarked on an exhilarating six-day exploration of Oregon’s southeastern desert. My mission: to uncover nature’s hidden treasures in the form of obsidian, agate, petrified wood, picture stone, jasper, and thunder eggs. With a […]
The Essence of Being a Writer Ever since the first time I could string words together into a coherent paragraph, I have been a writer. But what does it truly mean to be a writer? For me, it is not merely about putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It is about writing for […]
People can be like this, too. They appear strong, unshakable, resilient. The world sees their potential and tries to shape them into something more, something else. And perhaps, for a time, they endure—weathering the cutting, the reshaping. But some cracks are too deep, too invisible to the eye. The pressure becomes too much. They break. […]
What I love most about life is how it teaches me about life – through metaphors and symmetry. The slender trees survive strong winds because they bend, flowing with the current. They adapt, and so they endure. But the rigid, unyielding trees? They snap under pressure, unwilling to give way. Working with stone is the […]
This video shows the stages of carving a penguin out of a stone called howlite. From picking the rock and deciding what to make, drawing out the basic design, cutting the excess rock off with a saw, carving with a dremel and then the finishing touches. The video provides basic information about safety with rock […]
TThey call it rockhounding. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s like a bloodhound sniffing out the good stuff. Or hounding in the relentless pursuit—since most rockhounds are, admittedly, fanatics. But to me, the term feels a little silly. I prefer rock hunting. There are different kinds of rock hunting, but I’ll save that for another […]
Sacred Totems 