Geology, my great passion :)

I have many interests, but when it comes to geology, i am almost like a priest, in the sense that i want as many as possible to become interested in that, just as a priest want as many as possible to become interested in their religion.. lol

Since this is partly about me and partly about my hobby, i can just as well start by representing my self with my real name and a photo of me.
My real name is Petter Eliseussen, but it was not room for my whole name when i created the steemit account, so i had to come up with a nick name, Rezpatex. ;)

How did my interest for geology start?
It started quiet silly, but i am glad it did. :)

When i was 7 years old, i found a stone with a lot of quartz crystals near my home.
And i had never seen it before and thought i had become rich, so i ran strait down to a local gold smith full of hope.
To my great disappointment it turned out that it was not diamonds, not even something with great value.
But i think the gold smith saw my great disappointment, so he decided to give me some money for it anyway(much more then it was worth)..

Some few years later, our teacher in nature and science showed the class a lot of different crystals with a great variety of colors and crystal shapes.
From that moment my interest for this really started to grow.

(Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/508343876666676814/)

And from i was 12 to 17-18 years old i was a completely nerd about this and everything in my world was about geology and to learn as much as possible about it.
When i was not reading about it, i was out in the field and tried to find new crystals for my collection.

At the age of 16, the city i live in paid me to have a course for different nature / science teachers from different schools in our area to teach them about geology.
This happen because before that i asked one school if i could borrow a class room a couple of times per week, to have a geology course in the evening for friends and people in the area that wanted to learn about it.(that i did for free)

I came from a very poor family, so i could never afford to go to school and educate my self to a real geologist, but it have given me a lot.

because of my interest for geology and the knowledge i have got from it, i often see the landscape around us in a very different way then most people do.
So when my family was on vacation and we drive around in our car, my sister and brother often was very bored when we was driving.
But i was always looking out of the window and trying to analyse the landscape i saw, and trying to understand it.
That way, what was boring for them, was often a great adventure for me. :)

To day i have many other interests(mainly within science and nature) but geology is still my main interest.

And whenever someone ask if i can show them something, i never say no if i have the time to do it.
Last year we had a visitor from Brazil that also was interested in crystals, so i showed her around in different places we could find different crystals, and i love to see the smile on their faces when they find their first crystals there.
Here is a photo of her from some of the Baryte crystal she found on one of those tours:

And since i mention Baryte, i can just as well show a picture of a little post i made for facebook some time ago:

(The crystals in the picture on the left bottom of the post is from the same place i showed our Brazilian friend)

But geology is about much more then crystals too.
Here is a photo of something i found a couple of years ago, that might be a petrified dinosaur claw:

I have not been able to analyse it seriously yet, but in about a year from now, a friend of me that is a real geologist with the possibility to use professional equipment will come back from a foreign mission, and then i will ask him to take a closer look at it.
If it turns out to be a real dinosaur claw, i will give it to the Geological Museum in Oslo. :)

I think that having a hobby is a very valuable thing for most people, it gives you both something you love to do, and often it also give you a lot of extra knowledge.
So whenever i see young people develop a interest for something, no matter what it is, i do whatever i can to encourage them to keep the interest for this to grow.

I have seen so many young people without interest in anything ending up on a very wrong path.
I have also seen people that most people have given up, suddenly develop a interest for something that have given them something to aim at, and that kind of give them a meaning in life.
And that is why we always should encourage and try to be supportive towards young people who start to develop a interest for something, like for example a hobby. :)

I hope you have a nice day, and that you all will find something you find interesting! :)