We just got back from our annual trip to Lincoln City, Oregon. We’ve been making this trip pretty much every year since our honeymoon in 1984. I wrote about what this annual vacation has meant to us in a previous blog.

This year’s trip was the first trip we’ve made to Lincoln City since Mom passed at the end of February, and she was often in my thoughts. Two or three times during the day I’d find myself thinking, “I should call Moz and tell her about this!” And then I’d remember I can’t do that anymore.

One of the things my husband and I do on our trips to Lincoln City is look for agates. It was my beloved Aunt Junie, who’d lived for years on the Oregon coast, who first introduced me to the joys of agate-hunting. She’d shown me how to face towards the sun and follow the rock beds, scanning for those pebbles that glow in the sunlight. Those of you who are agate-hunters know the thrill that comes when you see an agate glowing up at you from the beach – that moment when you see the blue or gold or red of an agate peeking out from behind its fellow pebbles and beckoning to you. It’s like being on a treasure hunt.

After years of agate-hunting my husband and I have come to know the most likely rock beds to find agates in – we look for strands of rocks that are about the size of a fifty-cent piece. There are rarely agates that are much bigger than that, and often my eyes just skim over the too-big ones.

But on our first full day in Lincoln City, my eyes caught a glimmer of tell-tale blue in a big old fist-sized rock at the edge of a rock bed. I almost walked right past it – but that blue glow made me stop. I heard myself asking, “Are you kidding me?!” I hefted up the rock – this was no “pebble” – and realized that, although it was encased in a layer of sandstone, inside the sandstone was the biggest chunk of agate I’d ever found on an ocean beach.

We were at the beginning of a six-mile walk when I found this agate, but there was no way I wasn’t going to bring it with me. So, periodically shifting its weight from my right hand to my left, I forged on. After a couple miles my husband took over the burden of The Rock for a bit. Then it was my turn again. Then his. At one point he asked, “What are we going to do with this thing?”

I thought about his question for a moment, and then I told him, “It feels like Moz and Aunt Junie were in cahoots on this one. Like they led me to this big ol’ agate – and knew I couldn’t walk past it without picking it up. I can imagine them chuckling about this one. I think we’ll get it polished and call it The Junie-Moz Memorial Agate.”