Stirling Hill Mine

I'm not sure how Mark found out about the Stirling Hill Mine.  It was on top of a short hill, mostly basalt and granite, upthrust at a thirty or forty degree angle.  Brightly painted abandoned mining tools were scattered along the perimeter of the parking lot.  And a lot of statues of hunky, shirtless miners -- okay and a few that weren't quite so Boris Vallejo.

It was about 85F out, and there was very little shade.  

Thankfully, the tour started earlier than advertised, and we were whisked from one tour site to the next.   The old shower building had minerals and fossils of trilobites and crinoids among the displays of old mining lamps and clothing.   I'd say the iron candle holder that pinned into a miner's hat was the most intersting, although the bowling ball sized spheres of amethyst and the glowing rocks were cool.

Then it was off to the mine, or at least the top part of it.  The mine complex stretched down about two Empire State Building lengths into the earth, but when production stopped in the 1990's, they stopped pumping water out of it, and only the top galleriers were unflooded.  While our tour guide knew a lot about mines and mining practices, she didn't know much about the folklore and superstitions of the miners (so no stories about Tommyknockers).   

Probably the most interesting part of the mine were the glowing rocks and also the standing car that would lower miners down a slanted shaft.  It was kind of like a slanted bookshelf, and the miners could sit (or more likely stand) on the shelves while the car sped down.  The car operator was outside of the mine running the geared wheel that would raise or lower it; the miners used a series of bell signals to say which level they were going into.  

I didn't realize it at the time, but looking at photos of the car a few days later, I'm struck by how the elevator car in the mine Wednesday was similar to the rope/escalator of Tuesday morning's dream.   

At the end of the mine there was another re-purposed building.  This one was dedicated to glow-in-the-dark rocks.  It turned out that some gravel Mark had picked up in the parking lot was flourescing under the black lights -- as were the age spots on my arms and my fingernails.  

Eventually, we left and drove back to the waterpark, and then back to Suffern. 

That night, as Mark and his family played poker, I surfed around the MET web site and wrote down the names and galleries of various objects:  gallery 556, gilt boxwood penel with wyvern; gallery 553, orrery clock;  gallery 551, fire screen with dragons....