My homie Da f0ssZ came down for a visit and we went sifting for shark teeth. This is not a new occurrence, he comes around every month or so to hang out. Usually we hunt, sometimes we just sit around and eat pizza while we watch sportsball. Way back in the 19s I was hunting at a spot I nicknamed the Big Ditch after a heavy rain. Such was my way back when the creeks used to be productive for shark tooth hunting. The increased water flow eroded fresh fossils out of the creek banks which were still replete with shark teeth, and I used to set my alarm to get out there and collect. Anyway, I cleaned house on the end of the creek close to home so I drove to the opposite end of the creek and parked at another friend's house and started walking into that side of the Big Ditch when I see another unrecognized vehicle parked next to the bank. A guy was walking towards it and immediately I knew this side of the creek had been plucked. I started talking to him and I asked if he found anything and he pulled out this massive sack of teeth. In my head it was as big as a garbage bag but it was probably more like a sandwich bag. You know how time distorts things. He says, "Yah I found these this morning" and immediately I responded, "You didn't find those here!" . He told me he hit another spot on the way and this was the second stop on his collecting journey. I showed him my finds and we continued talking and he says, "Hey are you that guy on the internet?" And I was like, Yah that's me. This was back near the beginning of the internet, before RU-vid was invented, before I had blackriverfossils.org, even before I started ditchweezil.net. This was back when I first started posting my finds a now defunct service called Geocities. I was SO hooked on fossil hunting that posting my finds gave me a way to immerse myself in the hobby when I wasn't collecting. Da F0ssZ was the first person I ever met who saw my stuff online. And he did it without google. I think we all used Yahoo back then. Anyway, time passed and I continued to see this dude at the Big Ditch and eventually we started planning to meet up and collect. Since then we've been all over the place to hunt teeth - digging Shark Tooth Hill in Bakersfield California, diving for megalodon teeth in Venice Beach Florida, quarry hopping at the PCS Quarry in Aurora North Carolina to the Eocene wonderland in the Harleyville South Carolina Quarries, and scouring the rivers and creeks of Summerville all in the quest for cles, which means shark teeth in our vernacular. And its been that way two decades and counting.
26 ноя 2023
