REPUBLIC, Ferry County — There's a certain fascination with climbing a crumbling hill of shale, taking a whack with a hammer and chisel and discovering a perfectly etched image of redwood needles that grew there 50 million years ago.

You might not be a Howard Carter who discovers King Tut's tomb. But you can come to Republic and find your own dandy bit of metasequoia.

That's the attraction that keeps people coming back to Stonerose Interpretive Center and its Eocene Fossil Site, here in this town that first found prosperity through gold mining in 1896.

I spent an instructive and interesting couple of hours this afternoon with Catherine Brown, Stonerose's director, who was happy to give me a few lessons on splitting shale, the product of volcanic deposits and mud that settled on the bottom of a freshwater lake that once covered these hills.

The fossil dig is up a hill behind this old town, which occupies a sort of gulch, like a gold town should. (The local weekly paper still quotes the price of gold on the front page, as a sort of tradition.)

Brown showed me that the trick is starting a split in one spot, between layers of the shale, and getting it to spread. It's a lot like splitting firewood.

We were soon lucky, and Brown's whacks at the muddy colored shale revealed part of a fossilized "rose" flower, like that for which the center is named. It's actually a flower of an ancient cocoa tree, which grew here when the climate was more suited to snorkeling than snowmobiling. The remaining image is carbon, like a multimillion-year-old tattoo that you just can't get rid of.

For $3 to $5, anyone can come and chip away here in hopes of finding special something for the mantel. Yep, you can take home up to three fossil pieces per day, as long as your find isn't something of scientific importance to the center. Then they keep it.

But even that can be a thrill to some folks, I learned from the Olympia couple who were thwacking at shale just down the hill from me.

"Last time we were here, I found something they didn't know — a little stalk with thorns, something they hadn't seen before!" said Kathleen Bauknight. "So they kept it for the scientists to study. It's just so much fun — That really hooked me, that you could find something nobody had ever seen before!"

For more info: www.stonerosefossil.org.

This just in

K Diamond K Ranch, Republic, Ferry County – Friday, Sept. 30 — I am pleased to report that Softie the cat has been rescued from her tree, thanks to a nice man in a cherry-picker truck from Ferry County Public Utility District. Softie is resting comfortably.

Tomorrow: Cider Festival in Marcus, Stevens County

Reader tips

If you really want to get off the beaten path, head south out of Republic on 21 and take Bridge Creek to the town of Inchelium. Truly way, way out of the way.
— Rick, Omak

Have a fresh peach milkshake at Minors in Yakima. And be sure to hit up the Barrel House at 22 North Front Street (formerly the Blue Banjo). And stop by my mom's house — she makes the worlds best sourdough pancakes, but you have to go to church with her to get 'em.
— McKenna, Yakima, Wash.

What is this? The eating tour? Go see things — eat only when you have to. If you don't go through Washtucna, Riparia, Othello and Zillah — you shouldn't call yourself a Washingtonian!
— J. Nelson, Seattle, Wash.

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