How we at Dark Star see it ...
Slabs of brittle rock float tenuously upon a vast and fiery ocean. Tides are driven by the energy of decay, uranium, thorium and potassium isotopes that shed energy to attain a more stable form. It’s those forces that are formative in the growth of crystals. It’s there within the mantle that the natural elements are mixed, an enormous cauldron from which great beauty can be drawn. Heat within this mixing pot is of a magnitude that’s beyond our comprehension. It is magma, plasma and primary elements that comprise the formative processes. Under these conditions the simple laws of physics are distorted. Atoms and molecules are stretched beyond their earthly limit, their true parameters are yet to be understood.
Deep beneath the crust physics is expressed in power on a scale of monumental proportion. Some things we understand just slightly, other yet to be understood principles remain obscured beneath a shroud. In short, we only see the end result, but crystals are a natural wonder with properties and qualities that are still a mystery to us.
Stretching back into the dusts of time, a billion years is but a marker that indicates a forgotten mountain range and drifting continents that have come together or separated as tectonic forces powered drift. The mountains pushed up by moving landmasses once towered over what we now call plains.
Upon the ancient rock there is etched a surface that we call the “Great Discontinuity”. Beneath the discontinuity is Precambrian rock and above it lies a mysterious geological gap that obscures half a billion years. Some time in that distant past the earth split into fissures and its formative fluids flowed up to form incredible crystals right where we have our claim – like Bear Lake 1, right above the Glamorgan Formation, from whence the calcite that filled our veins and dykes was leached. Each of our crystals is a natural artifact that’s entirely unique from any other. Nothing that we at Dark Star have has been reshaped or processed in a shop. You see and buy the specimens as we found them – extracted by a shovel and probing fingers in the dirt.
Amid the humming of a mosquito swarm, a leafy green filter cloaks extraction work. Effort, luck and intuition guide digging efforts and if the stars align, from beneath the forest floor we lift rare crystals into the glittering sunlight. These crystals fall into ordered families, seven groupings whose members have common symmetry and internal structure.
Amphibole, tremolite, pyroxene, titanite, apatite, monazite and feldspar are the signature crystals of Dark Star Mines. For us they appear in astounding examples of perfection. What we find on our claim are outstanding natural specimens with primary trace elements the like of which by their decay they power the living engine of our planet. Not only are our crystals beautiful, but many contain the elements that power the universe and they are of a rarity that makes them unique amongst the gifts that our earth provides.
Vein-dyke fissures extend from the once famous Bear Lake Property and populate our claim. It is a geologic treasure-trove whose likeness is replicated in few other places. We are situated right in the middle of one of the richest crystal fields in existence.
Like living beings our crystals grew within the fissures and were eons in the making. They were fed by the nutrient of surrounding country rock – namely gneiss and mica schist and from deep below, silica rich limestone and dolostone that gave rise to the calcite infilling of our dykes and veins. The complexity of silica chains grew within our fantastic specimens as cooling took different forms. Under the right conditions and fed by an abundance of silica tetrahedrons, Dark Star’s signature minerals took their shape, and the longer they remained in the melt, the greater their size and complexity became. Amphibole consists of a double structural chain, biotite, which was longer in the cooling process comes in sheets of interlocking tetrahedron chains and quartz takes those sheets and bonds them into a three dimensional lattice.
Sometimes we free a doubly terminated apatite, at other times it’s a matrix of amphibole and feldspar. And might I point out, the excitement and wonder of a beautiful discovery still stuns us every time. There are tunnels and voids beneath the cap rock, the whole region has been our hunting ground. The area’s fissures are lined with crystal matrix the likes of which few have ever seen. Across the world’s great mineral collections there are similar examples of what we have to offer, drawn from Bear Lake’s geology and touted as no longer accessible to the collector, but in our adjacent claim we now offer you an opportunity to explore and collect for yourselves (There is a modest fee for our supervision and guidance).
For us our crystals are individuals and in some special cases we even name them. Each one is an entity unto itself, similar to others, but in no way a copy of any other existing thing. Yes these crystals grew as they were fed, like living beings growing in proportion to conditions. Some prospered in ample space, others grew stunted by confinement. So now risen from the earth, a black primeval mass with ordered unit cells is similar in its extraction to a birth. The universe’s timeless furnace is a growing crystal’s womb. The progeny of those fires are relics of endless wonder. Is every child not that to its parents? Do crystals have a life that we are yet to understand? Some have said that it is the case.
Our placid surface leaves us with little experience of what takes place beneath or beyond our planet. For dreamers and scientists its just purely a matter of speculation. None-the-less Dark Star draws crystal phenomenon from this mysterious cauldron. We set them before you raw and natural as they come. A crystal is born when it is risen from a fissure and depending upon how you consider them, they are powers unto themselves. Science and spirituality can mix in this wonderful world of crystals. We at Dark Star are the people who ethically and transparently bring you wonder.