Walking in the Desert
It was one of those days that made you happy to be alive. Only a week earlier, I had severely complained about the lack of new meteorites in our travels. Just about every weekend, we cruise the deserts with our punctured sneakers and pin-cushioned blue jeans throughout the areas that one would think are filled with meteorites. But never has a new one appeared in view.
Not that we are all that envious, it is just to the point of incredulity. We seem to have defied the odds by not finding anything.
It was another typical day to go to the desert. Cold nights but agreeable days and an opportunity to breathe some air that was not quite as contaminated as home. Off we went on a long drive and after it became a little late, I spotted some hills with long vertebral sedimentary outcrops (a.k.a., sleeping dinosaurs) and we stopped and hurried through the prickly washes amid sandstone rocks and fragments that depicted every figure you could read into them.
It wasn't a serious day. My hunting partner started catching up to me as I sat in the unprotected Sun upon some shark-skinned rocks among the sharp lechuguilla which at a distance looked like grass it was so dense. I joked and shouted back, "Can't come here, this is my mountain. Go to that one, it's yours because it's smaller, and a better fit."
So she did and we laughed with an occasional hawk, thirsty and in the middle of nowhere in particular and shouting needlessly as the breezes whistled around us. The only traces of the civilized mess we left behind were some rail tracks about 3 kilometers away but plainly seen in the distance.
My mountain (of course it was a mountain, and hers was a hill, this is a guy-thing), became very boring in the cool but wicked radiance of the Sun, so I marched over a ridge and through a wash and found welcomed company on the next hill over. "You have to pay rent if you wanna stay on my little hill, 'cuz it's all I got, and a girl has to earn a livin', ya know." "Huh??!!" "That was too much for this desert troll. The great outdoors has a fine way of bringing out the animal in one. One spank and I ran. The chase was on. It was an unfair match, so at the bottom of her hill I stopped and sat on a warming, weathered flat rock in the refreshing breeze and waited for a dose of my own madness.
Circumstances of the Find
It was a long wait, so I glanced around. On top of another flat topped fragmented piece of ocre-colored sandstone, there was a small, but odd object that caught my attention.
As I picked it up, I realized against all expectations that it was as heavy as a piece of iron. The surprise was so great that I almost dropped it! Not to mention, "WHOP!!!", as I felt the painful sting of human contact from behind.
The two of us spent over an hour scouring the desert pavement, peeking among the rocks and avoiding the spines looking for anything else like it. NOTHING. She told me, "Well, you really, finally found a meteorite where no one has found one before, after all this, so it seems the complaining was actually of some use." I did everything to say, "no, you don't understand, meteorites aren't usually sitting on top of rocks waiting for you like this. It could be anything - and a meteorite is what it might be if you can eliminate everything else first. But probably it is a piece of junk that sometime in the last 500 years ended up here." She said, "don't be foolish. It IS a meteorite. What else could it be out here in the middle of nothing." Resigned not to argue, our attention now focused on the object in my hand. No magnet around(really a day not for meteorite hunting, but this proves one can never turn off that gene once acquired). It looked just like a pygmy ear.
Naw, that was unthinkable. I put it away, recorded the approximate coordinates, and we went to find a bigger mountain to get some more exercise before the day was through.
Now, I look at the piece. It is paramagnetic as iron and has a similar density, and weighs about 67 grams. It almost seems smoothly sculpted like a large lima bean or a small human ear, rounded on one side and slightly concave on the other, with smoothly curved edges without much exception. and was coated by a rusty red colored powder with a lightly mottled texture of rust and black below, and possibly some tiny whitish specs near or part of the rust red color. Approximately 25% of the surface is darker red to grayish black, suggested of some magnetite in the "skin". The convex side maximum leading edge would seem to be opposite the greatest concavity on the other side, and this point, by placing a finger perpendicular to the plane of the lima bean, also seems to be the center of balance of the piece. The area of the find was extremely dry, ~1400 meters above sea level elevation. If I could only stop being such a skeptic. So let me post it to the list and ask for any thoughts...
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