RE: goose is backIt wasn't those "14 diamond inclusion chrome diopsides" in the samples that instigated your buying spree, now was it, Goose? Just like the chrome diopside Chuck's son, Mark, found on the beaches at Misery Point before they drilled the Ekati discovery hole?
From Barren Lands:
"On Chuck's orders, they dug yet another hole. After a total of five hours, they stood amid a crazed semicircle of excavations. With Mark cursing about how they were going to die, the pilot pointed to the time; it was going to get dark if they stayed much longer.
They trudged up to a windblown bare spot across the lake, a spot that was in fact down-ice from the lake. It might contain minerals from the lake. They knelt in a tight circle, pulled out two hammers and took turns whacking away, shielding their eyes from flying pieces with their mitts. The hammers bounced off, sending painful vibrations up the handles to their freezing hand bones.
In an hour, no one was sure how they did it, they had three bags almost filled with unsieved material. By this time Mark, still in the flush of youth, was the only one going strong and taking hard, effective swings. They watched sidewise as he felled one particularly hard blow. Then Mark stopped and stared. He removed a mitt and reached into the hole. Between thumb and forefinger he picked up a bright green object attached to a bit of frozen clay.
"Hey, look at this." He held it up. "Pretty nice, huh?"
Chuck pulled off both mitts and leaned over. "Oh heh, look at that," he said, as if he were a parent admiring a child's drawing. "It's a chrome diopside."
Mark dropped it into his hand. It was bigger than a cooked pea, formed so perfectly it could be mounted on a pendant. Any chrome diopside that big meant they were practically on top of a pipe. Chuck turned the thing calmly over in his hand and dropped it into the last sample bag."