Finding Geology - From the May/June 2024 issue of Gold Prospectors Magazine

By: Elley Ringo

Most of you know that I write about geology. gold prospecting. gems or minerals. But what a lot of you don't know is how all of that began. So. Today's article is going to be a a little bit different- I'm going to open on how a new door and let you in my crazy adventure began.

5-year-old Elley »

I was not the cool kid, and far from it. I was the ride your horse to school, jump off the front porch to see how many trash cans I could clear before breaking my nose, chase my horse down in the field, yell at a random bear for eating the dog food, roller-skate into a wall, leading the school play, type of kid. I was very theatrical… my mom says “Elley is not meant for small audiences and never has been.”

As a young child I was one of those kids that would make mud pies, hide something in them and dig it back out… I had a small fascination with how the ground hardened after mixing dirt with water. Not that that was any reason why I became a geologist — I just loved to get my hands dirty. As a kid, I loved my horses and cats, I loved singing, I loved being in plays, I loved going to the beach and still do. I loved the sand and the waves and the tide pools.

Teenge Elley & Dad looking for agates »

One day I was introduced to the small see-through mineral that you could find on the beach. I had no idea that one day, that one small mineral was going to change my life. The beaches in Oregon are particular places where large gravel bars wash up on shore along with the driftwood and seashells. You can find large piles of very small, very polished rocks. I don’t remember who exactly it was that showed me and my dad the small see-through minerals that you could find on the beach, but once I saw them, I was hooked. No, we weren’t looking for glass, somebody had told us that what we were looking for was called an agate. I was told it had a very distinct texture and bands to it. As a kid, I had no idea what any of this was, but I was fascinated by the little rock, especially that you could hold it up to the sunlight and see most of the way through it. My little brain couldn’t wrap around exactly what made that rock; if I had been told that they were microcrystalline quartz I would have smiled and probably just walked away lol. I only knew I loved collecting them.

My original agate collection »

At the time I don’t know the difference between a rock and a mineral… So, I called everything a rock. My dad used to tell my mom, “Elley found them all, she rushes in front of me grinning and picking them up before I got a chance.”

I was close to the ground so it was very easy for me to see them. I had a great time on the weekends trying to find as many as I could. I would beg my dad on the weekends to take me down to the beach if he wasn’t working. I would always try to invite a friend so I wasn’t alone. But I realized time after time, I would leave my friend alone chasing the waves, while I was sitting in a rock pile with my dad, using a piece of driftwood to comb through the little rocks on the beach to try to find the clear ones. Eventually my friend stopped going with me because I would just leave them and look for rocks.

Daisey »

Caesar »

Rajah »

My dad and I would spend hours on the beach collecting these agates. After asking my dad if he can remember some stories about me and him on the beach, he told me that on one of our first trips to a beach called Cape Blanco, north of Port Orford, Oregon. We went with a group of people from our church. My dad and I got out ahead of the group, and I was finding agate after agate and slipping them in my pockets. Most of them were pretty small. But then I found the biggest agate I had ever found. It was a lavender color. It filled up half of my pocket and I was so excited. We walked down the beach quite a bit farther. As we started to walk back, one of the ladies from the church exclaimed that she had found a huge agate. I put my hands in my pocket, and I told my dad that my agate was gone, it must have fallen out. As we walked up to the lady that had claimed she found the agate on the beach, I told her that it was mine, and had fallen out of my pocket. I had described the agate to her, color and bands, but she refused to give it back. My dad said that she was a selfish old woman and kept it for herself. And even though I only had the small ones left, I still left the trip happy because I had found some. I was that kid (and still that adult), that had their pockets full of rocks — to the point of having my pants almost on the ground.

Riding with Mom »

I still to this day have my original agate collection as pictured. Beach agates are far different from desert agates or most of the other ones that I find. After they’ve been rolled in the ocean for quite some time, I believe they’re more spectacular.

Even though I grew up as a kid living close to the beach and spent my time out in the woods in the dirt, I never quite put it into perspective that you could go to college for rocks…or even that I wanted to go to college.

My family owned a ranch, and a small, independent exotic animal rescue. I grew up around lions, tigers, leopards, camels, kangaroos, bears, servals, raccoons, wolves, lemurs, horses, and almost anything else you can think of. I have raised 55 tiger cubs, a few leopards and lion cubs too. No wonder I’m a cat person, right?!? I have swum with tigers and even had the tip of my finger bit off by my own tiger. Tigers are one of the most precious of animals you could ever have…Mine have passed and I miss them every day.

Lilly »

My mom told me that I was riding a horse before I could walk. I practically grew up on horseback. It was me and my mom who would take the horses down to the beach and run around. And yeah, I really did ride my horse to school some days. I thank my mom for making the sacrifice I’m sure it wasn’t easy. As a kid, on the weekends if I wasn’t at the beach, I would get up in the morning, make a sandwich, grab my canteen and head to the barn. I’d saddle my horse and ride around for most of the day. I would jump creeks and eat barriers, make forts for me and my horse… but I was always home for dinner, and I’m sure my mom was keeping a watchful eye out for me coming home.

My mom wasn’t much into finding rocks with me and when she did try to find an agate, she would think she had one and bring it to me and ask if it was an agate. I would say no… look at the ground, pick one up, smile and say here you go. My mom would ask “How can you just find them like that?” And then she

would laugh. My mom had more of an eye for little pieces of jasper or jade; she can’t find an agate to save her life. But she would come along with me and my dad to look for rocks just the same.

In fact, one day we were on the beach and me, my mom and dad were all kneeling down combing through a big gravel bar. Three to four people come walking up beside us and all of the sudden, we see their shadows over our rocks. We look up and say hello. They had very thick foreign accents. I think every time my mom and dad tell the story, their particular foreign accent gets thicker and thicker. The foreigners bent down toward us and asked us what we were looking for. We said we were looking for agates. The foreigners asked us “Are they worth anything like gemstones?” I shook my head and I said, “I don’t believe they’re particularly worth anything. They’re just beautiful.” I showed them one of the small agates from the bag that I was carrying. They snubbed their noses at us, turned to walk away, glanced back down at us and said, “Stupid Americans looking for worthless rocks.” We all laughed so hard that we could barely contain ourselves. The people walking by that were observing us had no idea the joy that we found looking for these tiny, beautiful minerals.

My mom taught me everything I know about animals. How to ride and train horses, how to give riding lessons and train in western pleasure. I was very big into play days and Gymkhana. I think everybody thought that I was going to take over the animal rescue someday, but I had other things in mind. I was one of those people who wanted to know what sand was made out of, who looked at a mountain and wondered why it was shaped that way and where it came from. I was one of those kids who stared at a road cut with all the lines through it wondering how those rocks got there. But that started to fade a bit… I started getting more involved in theater acting and trying to model. I was auditioning and traveling a bit, and I was only collecting rocks a bit. I felt like I was going down the road I wanted to be on.

Women's College Minining Team »

But with ups and downs in different parts of life, I was taken away from everything that I wanted just so that I could survive — that is a longer story that will be told in my book. It wasn’t until years and years later that I would find what I was looking for. I was working at a job that I absolutely hated at a bank, answering to a CEO who would vacuum herself out of her pure white house each day because she didn’t want footsteps to appear across the carpet. The same woman who would call me into her office and bitch at me for talking to my co-workers in the parking lot after work because she thought that we were talking about her, when really we were just talking about our weekend plans. So much jealousy. So, I decided to take a trip in 2008 after doing a little bit of research, to a place called the Royal Peacock opal mines in Nevada. I loved that place. I remember digging into the wall looking for opals and it started to rain. Everyone ran to their cars. I remember being soaking wet and filthy, holding what looked like little sparkling shards of glass in my hand, and thinking, “I could do this for the rest of my life. I could look for rocks.”

College Rockhound »

Looking for fossils »

When I got back, I googled how to find rocks for a living, and it came up with the word geology. Not that I hadn’t heard the word before, but I didn’t realize that you could be a geologist — somebody who studied the earth. You might think me pretty sheltered, but it wasn’t necessarily something that was taught to me. College was also never something that I really saw myself doing. There were a lot of people in my life who always told me that I wasn’t smart enough to go to school — even though I home schooled myself through high school. I thought long and hard about the decision to possibly take a leap of faith and quit my job and go to school. But that’s exactly what I did. I enrolled in the community college; I signed up for 21 credits for my first semester. A couple of people, one in particular, whom I don’t speak to anymore, told me that I

would never be able to handle that many credits, that with this being my first semester I was going to drown. Having signed up for 21 credits, I had to have quite the discussion with the college dean, reassuring him that even though I was a new student, I was also older than most of the people enrolled in my classes, and that I was a very driven individual and I was not going to fail. The dean signed off that I could take 21 credits.

Two semesters and one summer class later I transferred to the UNR, he University of Nevada, Reno, and a total of 2 1/2 years later I graduated with my degree in geology.

Look at me »

This was definitely one of the most difficult times in my life. As I started college, I was on and off with a horrible relationship, which ended with me getting severely abused, and being homeless for the second time in my life. If any of you have ever been inside of a two-door Jeep Wrangler, you know that it is not a comfortable place to be sleeping. But I managed just the same, eventually getting out of that situation and into an apartment. It takes a long time for somebody to admit to anyone that the person that they loved is/was beating them up. But it became very apparent while I was going to school wearing dark sunglasses and a hoodie that my friends noticed there was definitely something wrong with me, with my life. But, for victims of domestic abuse, you don’t really think that you’re being abused. You tell yourself that it’s your fault, that you deserve it, that you must’ve done something wrong to be here in this situation. It wasn’t until one of my friends told me after class after watching me leave that class for the third time in a row because of a bloody nose, that I needed to get away from the situation I was in. That if I needed help, they could help me. I was carrying all the stress of going to college as well as being physically and mentally abused. Needless to say, I was exhausted all the time. But with my escape came my freedom. Believe me, I had to talk to many qualified people for a long while before I could talk about my story…

Lookin for agates »

As I made my transfer to UNR, I made wonderful friends, one that to this day I call my very best friend and would do anything for. While I was at UNR, I made the absolute most of my time. I was away from the person that was abusing me, my divorce was final, and I started what I called truly living. I was involved in everything. I was part of the Mackay Rockhounds geology club, I was part of the SME club, I was part of the intercollegiate international mining games team. I had internships and co-ops, and for the first time in my life, I was a highly desired individual in my field of study. I was excellent at mineral identification and helping people understand geology. I tutored students, I was a teaching assistant for mineralogy, geology 101, and geology 202.

Mom & Dad »

I remember the first professor that told me I was going to be a great geologist, although he didn’t say it to my face. I was in Seds 202 and I was using a Jacobs staff to measure the strata. I stopped, jumped down the hill, over the wash and up the side of the opposite bank, I walked over to my prof and asked a question. I don’t remember what I asked, but as I jumped back down the bank while still in earshot, the prof said to the TA, “Now she wants to be a geologist and she is going to be great at it…” I turned back around and smiled at him. He nodded his head at me. He died a few years back and what I would give to be able to tell him I did it… I‘m a real geologist. I wish I could say thank you.

When I graduated from UNR, I graduated as the president of the Mackay Rockhounds club, the co-captain of the intercollegiate international mining games women’s team, a member at large of the SME club, the student body representative for the Keck Museum, and on the dean’s list.

This made me the first person in my family to graduate with a college degree.

Mom & Dad »

As soon as I graduated college, I had a job with a major mining company in Arizona. I was able to go into the industry ready to hone the skills that I’d learned in college. Even though I graduated with a geology degree with an emphasis on economic geology I didn’t really consider myself a geologist until I was able to use my skills in practicality. Learning geology skills, going through field camp is one thing, but really,and truly being able to be responsible for the geologic decisions that you make for a major company is when you can truly call yourself a geologist. I don’t feel that you can hold the title of geologist until you have had those responsibilities. I don’t think that if you get a geology degree and then just rockhound and tell people about what you learned in college makes you a geologist… it just makes you an advanced rockhound.

My dad reminded me that a few years back I came up to visit. My dad had purchased a sluice box from somebody, and he wanted to know how to use it. Me and my dad went out in the river — by the way, it was snowing all around us — we had our water boots on, and we waded out to the middle of the stream in an area where I thought we would be able to find gold. We were looking for gold for hours until we were so cold that we couldn’t feel our fingers. We took home our bucket of dirt and panned out what we classified and my dad found his first color in the pan. We didn’t find any nuggets, but it was great to spend time with my dad to show him how to look for gold. “We are so proud of you” — Dad Ringo

I came from small beginnings. From a loving family who let me collect rocks, and taught me all about animals. At the same time, I grew up with the love for something I knew nothing about, and had no one to tell me what it was. But I found my way to geology from being put in unideal circumstances…. I went and found out for myself.

During my time working as a professional geologist for a major mining company, I didn’t think that I would transition into an independent geologic consultant, geology content creator, YouTuber, geology writer, geology spokesperson, a full-time actress, being the lead on a geology/ gold TV show and owning my own business. I had no idea that my small beginnings of finding agates on the beach with my dad was going to turn into all of this.

Elley Ringo is an adventurous Economic Geologist who brings to life the untold stories of minerals, rocks, and abandoned mines. With a Bachelor's degree in Geology from the University of Nevada Reno and 12 years’ experience in mining and exploratory geologic field work, she dives deep into Earth’s wonders one expedition at a time. Connect with Elley via email ElleyKnowsRocksfans@gmail.com.

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