The Quarry

The mystical magical quarry that I probably only visited a handful of times.  I'm not sure there was even a reason to visit it .  Yet we did.  I don't remember walking to it.  It was always a ride in the pickup.

At first glance it just looked just  like a prairie pasture.  The more I would look at it thought I would start to see the jumble of rocks, carelessly strewn about in piles.  The rejects?  It was not a natural looking pile of stones. I could see   half formed rectangular prisms.  Fence posts incomplete and discarded?  In other places there would be slabs of rock slung against earthy walls.  The earthy walls would reveal a strata of rock, creamy buff with dark streaks.  The layers of the ocean revealed.  The rock was never naturally on top of the earth.  It was always buried in the prairie loam.

The quarry dipped down to form a small valley or a large ditch.  I don't think anyone would have recognized it as a quarry even.  I knew because that was what we called it.  There wasn't just rock revealed in the grass though, there was also rusty tin cans, bottles of blue, green, and clear glass.  I remember something a baby blue that might have been a baby carriage.  The quarry was repurposed as a "dump" after all rock excavation had ceased.

When I tired of looking for my dinosaur bones I would start to look through the trash to see  what treasures I could find.  Never anything to take home.  The rocks were more of a treasure than trash.

Now I think what treasures or artifact could be found in that midden?  The quarry was started by my great grandfather Henry Bentrup Sr, and he mined it to build the farm house, barn, and fence posts.  My mom says we did not dump our trash in that spot so it must have come from my great grandfather's era.

The last time I visited the quarry was with my husband before we married.  He found a bigger dinosaur bone than I ever found.  It was a slab of rock with a fish diving through it.  My mom brought it out to Oregon for us.  It sat by our pond on Sterling Creek for 30 years.  I did not take it because it was Pat's treasure not mine.  I don't know if he took it or not.  I know he discarded everything else I gave him.  

The only treasure I have from the quarry is a limestone trough my great-grandfather hollowed out to pour milk in for the barn cats.  My dad did the same thing after milking the cows.  It sits on my patio by my apartment, in the city in Oregon.  I have it filled with my treasures for the shores of the Pacific ocean.  From one ocean to another I have my treasures.