[meteorite-list] Some thoughts on Larry Atkin's Recent Holbrook Find

From: mexicodoug at aim.com <mexicodoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:38:35 -0500
Message-ID: <8C91D9C287B969A-12F4-C392_at_FWM-R05.sysops.aol.com>

Hello from the field, after being blasted out of Holbrook yesterday
morning.

I can say that two days ago in the Holbrook strewn field, I was camping
in the middle of it, which is basically an erroded shrub, dry lake mud
flat. It was drizzling all day long, making a wicked cold burn, but
other than that and all the mud cakes on my sneakers, it was a fine day
for hunting.

I was caught rather far away from my truck after spiraling around my
well-worked strewn field base and a nice juicy rainstorm came rolling
down the plains. I kept hunting until thoroughly soaked, cold and then
remembering that I was parked in a mud flat. It was pretty comical to
run all the way back jumping from errosion cone to errosion cone in
this alluvial mess where it looks like mostly dried sagebrush type
vegetation, and the mud on the sneakers became ruddy sliding disks the
sizes of tennis rackets inviting a slip landing on the rump.

The camp and vehicle was in the middle of a lake now, but luck was with
me I got some new tires. I did make it out, and now am reflecting on
the comments in this message by John - which are all very reasonable.

One pleasant side effect was plenty of time to hurridly contemplate a
run clear across the strewn field during the rain. First the water
puddled in the low spots, but as in any dry lake type plain, it then
started flowing. Holbrook is like a sandy beach with dunes and weak
root systems in scattered bush holding together for its life. This
flowing when wet in the silt and clay continually shifts the sands and
the clays, which one can see evidence of cracking. The cracks
themselves in drying areas can be a couple of cm's thick easily where
all kinds of grapeshot meteorites and a myriad of stones can fall and
get recycled to the surface. Even a big rock can easily get silt
covered, and depending where it is, hide until its predestined lucky
finder walks up to it.

As to the big hole, I stumbled across it a day earlier. I had parked
about 125 meters from it without having the slightest idea of its
whereabouts, nor actually caring too much since I was out to make
history, not record it. Also in the vicinity were a duo of cool
hunters - Ruben (who looked like a bad ninja on a quadrimoto) and Earl
(who looked like Ghost Rider). I found three tiny specks of fragments
left in what I thought to be and the fellow hunters confrmed to be that
unique Holbrook space rock rich uric color, so unless someone is
playing a joke, I can personally confirm that the big hole had
meteorite residue in it. It was on the corner of an errosion cone,
near an active arroyo and where lots of water flowed during rains - so
it is easy to imagine what happened in this case. As John mentioned
and I also did above...it was a lot like the dunes at the high tide
line of a Florida or Venetian beach.... Larry Luck hit the jackpot,
but after spending some time there and getting all muddy again, it was
time to move on. There is more to be found, but Holbrook for me was
not as beautiful as other strewn fields, suffering a bit from the
"taming of the west" as a strewn field of garbage in places. I did see
the main mass of all the little Holbrooks on several ocassions. It was
a very old and big desert hare. I found a fresh dime and a nickel
which excited meteorite hunters no doubt had lost, plus a very old
marble that maybe Nininger lost early on. And there was a coyote's
tail and the tailfeather of a blue bird, most probably a common jay.

Best wishes, Doug


-----Original Message-----
From: h3chondrite at cox.net
To: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de; Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Some thoughts on Larry Atkin's Recent
Holbrook Find

Bernd, Larry, Maria and List,
Here's some more "food for thought" concerning the Holbrook strewnfield.

One of my best friends, Dave Andrews, lives in Holbrook and has hunted
the
strewnfield hundreds of times. He was Larry and Maria when Larry made
his
find of a lifetime. Dave and I talked on the phone while the three of
them
were still out in the field, and Dave told me it was found in an area
that
many of us had been over dozens of times.

How could that be?

Over the years, Dave has noted that wind and water erosion probably
come
into play. After a good wind or rain storm, artifacts ( indian pottery
shards) and meteorites become exposed. They seem to "appear" in places
where they weren't just days before. In actuality, they were there all
along but were hidden below a thin layer of sand. Anyone who has ever
hunter there has noticed that there are small "hillocks" of sand
mounded up
around the bases of some of the indigenous shrubs. My guess is that
once
these shrubs die and are blown away by the winds (which can last for
days
and reach speeds of 50 MPH and more) the sand moves on without the
shrubs
there to hold it in place.

Several years ago, Dave, John Blennert and I were hunting in
Holbrook. While walking along with Dave, he bent over and picked up a
small complete stone of about 2 grams. It was perched atop a small
column
of soil very much like a golf ball sitting on a tee. The soil (mostly
sand) around it had blown away leaving the small stone nearly half an
inch
above the surrounding soil.

Best,

John Gwilliam
At 01:09 PM 2/12/2007, bernd.pauli at paulinet.de wrote:
>Hello Larry, Maria, and List,
>
>First of all, of course, sincere congratulations!
>
>"They came to the Southwest and did an amazing job, finding
> meteorites at Holbrook, Franconia and Gold Basin."
>
>.. which should remind us all of Bob Haag's famous words:
>
>"The key is to get out there and look for them."
>"Usually some pieces were missed in the initial search."
>
>But: "I had been within 50 feet of Larry's find many, many
> times and driven by it many more."
>
>.. which shows how difficult it can be, even for experienced
>meteorite hunters like Ruben Garcia.
>
>.. which should not discourage anyone willing to search the
"strewnfield"
>again and again, even though Foote (no, not Gary ;-) remarked in his
pre-
>liminary note on the Holbrook shower in 1912:
>
>"the field is now pretty well cleaned up."
>
>Hmm! If he had known what he didn't know then, ... he was wrong!
>
>Here is one of the "die-hard" observations from Foote's notes:
>
>"One piece larger than an orange fell into a tree in a yard at Aztec
>cutting the limb
> off slick and clean and falling to the ground, and when picked up
was
> almost red-hot."
>
>"Von Achen, who saw them fall, reported that they were too hot to pick
> up. Two accounts state that they became lighter in color after
cooling."
>
>According to Foote's notes, the ellipsoidal strewnfield extended
>west->east but one question
>has not yet been answered satisfactorily: Were the stones
>"indiscriminately spread over the
>ground", or were they found sorted according to size (and weight)? How
do
>Larry's "find of
>a lifetime" and Maria's finds fit into this puzzle?
>
>Happy to own an 8.3-gram individual (label no. 331) purchased
>from the Zeitschels in 1987 and a 0.45-gram thin platelet,
>
>Bernd
>
>P.S.: Please, don't forget to include the Branch
> family in your thoughts and your prayers !
>
>______________________________________________
>Meteorite-list mailing list
>Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list

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Received on Tue 13 Feb 2007 10:38:35 AM PST