Amethyst Qu
Seeker, traveler, birder, crystal collector, occasional photographer. Author of "The Moldavite Message."
Butterflies of Bolivia
Author's note: This isn't just a story about photographing butterflies in rural Bolivia, although it's certainly about that. It's a story about the unexpected gifts of beauty we meet in wild places. A shorter version of this story originally appeared on another platform.
Amethyst QuPublished 5 days ago in Earth
When Somebody Else’s Tree Falls on Your Property, Here’s What Happens
One fateful day in July, around one in the afternoon, the sudden roar of the wind turned me toward my office window. In the blink of an eye, a gust yanked brutally on a thirty-foot tree limb, spun it around, flung it down onto my fence and into my yard. Only a thread of bark broke its fall and stopped my new fence from being flung to the ground with it.
Amethyst QuPublished 22 days ago in Lifehack
Moldavite: Dangerous Stone That Blows Up Your Life?
Author's Note: This article is a reprint of a previously published Medium story. As the author of The Moldavite Message, I’ve had some pretty off-the-wall experiences with this mysterious green tektite. Is it a powerful stone? Yes. Can it help the metaphysical student blast away emotional and psychological blocks? Also yes.
Amethyst QuPublished 27 days ago in Motivation
Non-Random Encounters With Swallow-Tailed Kites
“Our most beautiful bird of prey... Hanging motionless in the air, swooping and gliding, rolling upside down and then zooming high in the air with scarcely a motion of its wings, the Swallow-tailed Kite is a joy to watch.”-- The Audubon Guide to North American Birds
Amethyst QuPublished about a month ago in Earth
Black Diamonds Off the Back of That Guy's White Ford F100
Call it 1993. One summer in the early 1990s, hubby and I were selling raw stones at the Harrison County, Mississippi gem and mineral show. A guy in a white Ford truck with Alabama plates pulled up. Nervous guy. Probably broke too, because he doesn't have $60 to pay the booth fee. Instead, he sort of slipped sideways into the show, and pretty soon he arrived at us.
Amethyst QuPublished 2 months ago in Earth
'We Weren't Always Extinct'
In 1993, I bought this landscape stone from an Arkansas woman selling crystals for$1/pound off a table by the side of the road. Oh, I bought some crystals too, but this chunk of extinct fossil seabed grabbed my attention. From the sound of it, her husband and their sons had collected it against her advice.
Amethyst QuPublished 2 months ago in Earth
That Time I Saw Jupiter's Moons Naked Eye
Jupiter's four largest moons are easy to see in my binoculars. They are familiar friends that I often look for when I spot Jupiter's golden light in the night sky. However, on October 24, 2012, in the wee hours of the night in Tokyo, I had an odd experience with Jupiter's moons that I still can't explain.
Amethyst QuPublished 2 months ago in FYI
Actually, Dude, Exactly No One Says the World Will End in Ice
Joshua and I had an ongoing argument about what was more authentic. He liked to bid on auctions or maybe he'd go to somebody's garage sale and buy up shoeboxes full of old postcards. To me, that wasn't the least bit real, that was buying it.
Amethyst QuPublished 2 months ago in Fiction
