Earth - the element to consider for Sepia Saturday

 A earthy home as the suggested meme for this week. But I've shared some sod houses before on Sepia Saturday. So today I wish to look at the rocks of the earth, which have been the source of livelihood for the area in the Rocky Mountains where I now life.

Another earth material, clay, provided me with the medium with which to make pottery.

The history of mines around Silverton Colorado is told very well in this post in Legends of America "Silverton, Colorado - High in the San Juans."

Abandoned-mine-Silverton Colorado

Shenandoah-Dives-mine-Silverton-CO-ca1935

Old Hundred Gold Mine Silverton CO

Silverton-Colorado-the-remains-of-the-Yankee-Girl-silver-mine

abandoned-mining-buildings-at-silverton-colorado

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Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

- Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder