Sometimes, there just aren't enough rocks. It takes two hours for Roger Akino to unload the best pieces in his rock collection and line them along the chest-high fence that circles his home on the Akino family ranch in San Martin.
To the untrained eye, the rocks are just rocks. To Akino, he's identified them as petrified wood that has mineral exchanges leaving the impression of wood on what appears to be a rock. And while he can't identify all three tons of specimens in his collection hidden away in 100 five-gallon buckets - he knows each of his best pieces by name. Benitoite, smithosonite, turquoise, tanzanite, tourmaline, chrysocolla, obsidian, rubies, sapphires and emeralds.
Though, his best piece might just be a gnarly lump of poppy jasper, known by the red and yellow orbs set against a backdrop of black and white veins, that he says was petrified with the "wood memory" still visible. Akino believes it may be the only known poppy jasper collected from outside Morgan Hill's city limits.
Akino has dedicated more than 1,000 hours to the large potato-sized poppy jasper piece, a variety of chalcedony - scouring away at it with wire brushes and steel wool and doing his best to restore its beauty.
"I don't get tired of it. I'll spend my whole life doing this," Akino said.
Akino's fixation with his wood-mineral collection began with an estate sale in Gilroy 10 years ago.
"The old man was selling his property for like $1.5 million. He bought it for $3,000. People were going in there and buying rooms, buying antiques. It all had to go," Akino, 57, said.
He made friends with the caretaker who led him to hole beneath a mobile home at the back and he started to dig.
Akino told the tale of his collection as he sprayed water from a Febreeze bottle on each of the oblong pieces. He's had some of them cut to show the unique patterns within. The strips of gold are identifiable in some or the rubies in others. Under the afternoon sun, the rocks' shine can hurt your eyes.
Akino's veins branched from his forearms to his biceps as he lifted his 60-pound piece that is inundated with garnet stones the size of acorns. Wearing a teal cotton tank top, you can still see the physique that won the 1986 "Novice Mr. California" bodybuilding competition and went on to the "Mr. America" contest. Akino ran Rhino Gym on Fourth Street in Morgan Hill in the '70s and '80s but now he spends most of his time with his rocks.
The garnet piece and the 1,000s of others were the fruit of Akino and a friend's labor. The caretaker said they were planning to haul it to the dump, "so we took it all."
As his excitement by the find increased, Akino started to barter his electrician and plumbing skills for more rock, even fixing old gym equipment for other rockhounds. Now his modest wood-framed home set against the wide yellow fields of grass and foothills on the east side of San Martin is the home of "the largest collection of one-of-a-kind" wood-to-mineral pieces, Akino said.
"It's so unusual how we ended up with all this," Akino said. Nearly all of his collection is petrified wood - or mineral that's formed inside decaying wood - a find that is not indigenous to the Morgan Hill area, said Peter Anderson, an engineering geologist at Morgan Hill's Pacific Geotechnical Industry.
"Poppy jasper forms a different way. Most petrified wood is made from a quartz-like mineral and any geological bedrock formation in our area is a natural constituent," that wouldn't be petrified, Anderson said. "We don't have that around here and never had it around."
Akino is likewise convinced that the "wood memory" pieces aren't from Morgan Hill but from Arizona since much of the wood is acacia, which is native to the southwestern United States. Arizona is also the home of the Petrified National Forest.
Around town, Akino is often referred to as the "Rock Guy" but he says "King of the Woods" is a better fit.
"I know my poppy jasper's from Arizona - it has to be. I've challenged people, if you can prove me wrong ... I'll bet my entire collection on it," Akino said.
The original owner of Akino's collection traveled the world mining rocks and many that Akino pulled out of the ground - sometimes 10 feet deep into the hill - were wrapped in newspaper. The scope of first owner's catalogue and the care he took is a sign this was a collection not native to the hillside.
Akino is hoping to find a place to display his wood-mineral exhibit in town but it will be hard to rival Geno Acevedo's collection. He's the owner of El Toro Brew Pub, and his is the best poppy jasper eyecandy in the world, Acevedo claims. After a decade of periodically mining and scouring the hills of Morgan Hill, Acevedo found enough high-quality poppy jasper, cut it with his own lapidary saw and created a 45-foot-long bar inlaid with his polished collection.
Since a young man - a rockpuppy - Acevedo was always around poppy jasper. His family owned and operated Acevedo Jewelers for 30 years selling poppy jasper jewelry, and now on the site of the El Toro Brewery on Hill Avenue is the only known rock shop in town.
Jasper comes from the Greek word "jaspis" meaning spotted stone and has long been known to contain magical powers. And according to some, it increases vitality and energy.
A bit of the poppy jasper vigor was stolen a few years ago. Acevedo sits up a little higher in his bar stool as he describes the poppy jasper thievery.
A huge slab in Silvieria Park, thousands of pounds, was daily being drilled into and chunks were being taken away, Acevedo recalls. The mine was partitioned off by a fence for years, but still avid rockhounds snuck through and often trespassing citations at that site can be found in the police blotter.
"Then one day the whole thing was gone. A hundred-thousand dollars worth of rock - gone," Acevedo said. He heard later the man was selling poppy jasper on eBay.
The incident was rare, he said, and most miners take just a few pieces at a time out of respect.
Acevedo moved his finger over a particularly vibrant piece of poppy jasper under the glass of the bar. "I know where each piece came from," he said. "Some have these tiny dots, some are more hazy. This one looks like blood splatter ... each one came from a different part of the hill. To get from this one," he points, "to this one, would be two hours."
Jasper deposits can be found in regions spanning the globe in Egypt, Australia, Brazil, India, Canada, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Russia, Uruguay and the U.S. At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. a slice of poppy jasper is identified as natural to Morgan Hill, Calif.
Even though mining has faded since its heyday when the poppy jasper deposits weren't covered by homes and yards near El Toro Mountain, glimpses of the red and yellow poppies are everywhere. At the Community and Cultural Center a 60-pound piece donated by the Morgan Hill Historical Society is on display. The city's website uses a poppy jasper pattern as its background and in 2002 the semi-precious stone was named Morgan Hill's official rock, making the city one of a few in the country with its own stone.
Even at the local bookstore, a small basket of poppy jasper is sold for $9.99 a nugget.
"That's poppy jasper," said the teenager behind the counter at BookSmart. "You can only find it in Morgan Hill."
And the debate rolls on.
Lindsay Bryant Lindsay Bryant is a reporter for South Valley Newspapers.
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