I’ve always loved hunting down hidden treasures out in nature!
After all, there are few experiences more satisfying than wandering out into the wilderness and miraculously stumbling on a perfect crop of wild strawberries or an old, ruined structure slowly being reclaimed by nature.
The bounty of the natural world is truly impressive, especially if you already know the best ways to harness it. Maybe you have a knack for foraging for food, or maybe your talents lie in unearthing fossils or pieces of amber; no matter what your skill set is, you’re bound to find a use for it!
For one young woman living in Indiana, her particular talent seems to be for spotting and collecting geodes — round rock formations that look dull on the outside but are secretly hiding beautiful, colorful crystals on the inside.
Scroll through the gallery below to check out one of her most incredible finds, and what she discovered inside!
Geodes are naturally occurring rock formations, but many of them are so beautiful they look like they could only have been made by a professional jeweler!
According to DesertUSA, geodes form when a bubble is trapped deep under the earth or in a volcano.
Over time, the minerals in trapped water will start to turn into crystals, which grow into empty pockets at the middle of the bubble, while a hard shell of stone forms around the exterior.
Occasionally, these bubbles are spit up by the volcano or by the earth, and can often be found in deserts or areas with a lot of volcanic materials.
On the outside, geodes generally appear as sturdy, beige, rather unattractive rocks.
One of their key identifying features is that they are generally roughly spherical in shape, and often have a distinctive pockmarked surface.
Inside, it's a very different matter; the minerals borne inside by water can create exquisite crystal formations that commonly include quartz but may also feature chalcedony or amethyst.
Recently, a young woman who stumbled on a geode while hiking jumped on to the popular image-sharing site Imgur to describe how she found her prize, and what she plans to do about it!
The young woman, who calls the geode a "big dude," says she discovered the rock formation at a favorite hiking spot in India.
The only hitch? That was back in 2012, and she's been waiting four years to try to figure out how to open it.
According to the post, she was waiting for "someone with a diamond plated saw to cut it open for me."
When four long years passed without finding someone with the means to cut open the geode, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
As she put it to the internet, "I finally gave up and decided to use my muscles to crack it open myself today!"
That's exactly what she set about doing, albeit with a few mishaps along the way.
She used a screwdriver as a chisel to start hammering into the surface of the geode, but is quick to note that she doesn't recommend doing the same, and that anyone trying this out should wear protective clothes and goggles.
She paid for the mistakes by getting a rock chip in her arm and bending the screwdriver, but did manage to score a line all around the circumference of the geode, giving it a weak point for a more even break later on.
Her next step? To lay the scored geode out in the grass and apply pressure — lots of it.
For this part of the task, she used a heavy hatchet to hit the geode along the line and break it in half.
If you had a proper stone chisel and mallet, you might have more success in getting an even split, but she says her split is good enough, and she's happy with the results.
Up close, you can see that her large geode was definitely a very cool find worthy of the four-year wait.
It's so packed with crystal that it's almost more like a nodule, or a completely solid crystal surrounded by rough stone, but still qualifies as a geode because there is a cavity in the center.
The mineral looks like it could be quartz, possibly with chalcedony mixed in for some of the layers. No matter what gem it is, it sure is beautiful!
If you love this cool experiment with home geology, don't forget to SHARE with friends who love all things sparkly!
