VT, the son of my former brother in law also was fascinated by rocks from an early age. I remember one time when he was 9 years old he picked up a flattish, round, green rock and carried it all the way to his dad's truck, even though it was in rough terrain, including a 15-foot cliff we had to scale, and it weighed at least 10 pounds. He wouldn't let anyone else spell him in the carrying, either.

Whenever I visited their home he would take me to his bedroom where he'd haul out the rocks he had collected since my last visit.

He grew up to be a gemologist- and he is still fascinated by rocks.

(The spot where Tim found that green rock is an amazing place. It is in rough country, as I said, along the Washougal river in western Washington state. It is remote and uninhabited. At a certain place there's a several hundred feet long stretch along the river where it appears that dump trucks dropped these rocks- there are green ones, tan ones, blueish ones, lots of red and rust-colored ones- and most of them look like they were liquid when they were "dumped"; they appear to have firmed up smoothly from puddles. The whole area has had volcanic activity for ages and that is the only explanation I can come up with.)