Mahogany Obsidian and Dave Lallas

I have on my desk a piece of mahogany obsidian.   I have wandered the deserts of southern Utah for most of my life yet I have never seen any.  I never gathered a piece. 

Obsidian is hard to find, and a larger piece or a good looking mahogany piece is even rarer to find. It is a black obsidian with mahogany colored streaks through it.

What makes this particular stone special to me is that it was given to me by Dave Lallas.  Dave was one of the fantastic geocachers and rockhounders of Utah. Most of us knew him as Clodbuster2.

Dave passed away last month in a car accident, on his way north. Part of me wonders about his passing. We held a geocaching event the following morning, and he loved to come to events.  He was always there with a smile. Was he on his way up to attend it with us?  Did we miss one more chance of spending some time with him?

I remember a few months ago as we headed out to the webcam cache at BYU.  He had not found that one yet, and the event was finished.  I said that I would capture it with my phone. He was tickled pink. Not just that he was getting the cache but that he was going out with someone. We laughed and joked, the event that should have been 30 minutes turned into something more like two hours, laughing and passing the time telling stories.

If caching is obsidian, than Dave was the mahogany color.  He took something that many people enjoyed and with his smile, laughter, and spirit added something special.  We would wonder about a puzzle cache, and out would come his three inch binder with all the puzzles in the area, or even the state.  So he could refer to, and see if we could help him solve it, or him help us.

Well this last fall we went to Delta for the Utag meeting. We spent a fair amount of time with him, he helped us with a few caches, and we placed some near where he lived and where he would be the one searching for them.  Well as we passed through his home town, we stopped and had a discussion with him for a few minutes.

Part of the discussion turned to the rocks he had about, and all the obsidian, quartz, ores, and other stones that were about his yard.  In the process I mentioned that I was looking for where I could find some obsidian.  He walked off and grabbed a few stones and gave me.  I brought them home and set them aside and never gave them much thought.

Well now I see them I think of him.  It saddens me that we have lost someone that friendly, caring, and fun to be around. I regret that i did not take him up on more caching adventures.  We always meant to get together and do some hiking, and looking for some great caches. The beauty in the stone, the color is now gone.

I know that there are others, but there will never be another Dave. Hopefully I will be able to be as good of a friend, tolerant, and generous as Dave.  Perhaps those of us that knew him can bring the "color to the obsidian" like he did for us.

I knew this was going to be my next entry in my blog, yet part of me did not want to make it. So since his death before Christmas this has been silent.  I knew that if I wrote about something else that I would not do this, but I wanted to.

Well Dave I hope that where you are you are happy, and you found the answers to those pesky puzzles that bothered you.  Thanks for being my example, thanks for being a friend, thanks for bringing the color into life.  I will keep the special obsidian sample to remind me of you, and to have fun. It is all a game, and I was happy to have played with you.