Honestly, I was labeling every dark, heavy rock in my creek as basalt for like a year. A guy at the rock show in Springfield last weekend took one look and said 'That's not basalt, that's hornfels.' Felt like a total newb.

3 comments

3 Comments

Oh man, that's such a universal experience. I swear we all get stuck on one identifier for a while, like calling every small brown bird a sparrow. It's that moment when you finally learn the real difference and your whole mental map just clicks into place.

murphy.linda15d ago

Used to lump all those little brown birds together too. Then I learned how to spot the streaky chest on a song sparrow versus the plain one on a chipping sparrow. Now I actually see them as different neighbors instead of just background birds.

the_avery23d ago

Read a whole article about that exact thing lol