A Little Piece of Heaven

ON THE HUNT with the METEORITE MAN

TEXT BY KATHLEEN WALKER PHOTOGRAPHS BY J. PETER MORTIMER Once, I found a meteorite before the hunt had even begun. It took me five seconds. I lowered my magnet to the ground, heard the clink as the rock attached itself, pulled it up, and there it was: a little piece of heaven.

Of course, I was standing in what may be one of the better places on Earth for finding meteorites. I was in Robert Haag's backyard in Tucson. How could I fail? The Meteorite Man, that's what they call him in the press. That's what Haag calls himself. He has yet to see his 40th year on this planet and has no college degrees leav-ing a trail of letters after his name. But Haag has managed to amass an inventory of meteorites he describes as "the best private collection in the world." Housed in a huge walk-in vault in Tucson, the collection includes one of two privately owned moon rocks, a hunk of Mars, and a few million dollars worth of other bits of the best the universe has to offer. These are the rock fragments of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, including knock-off pieces of moons and planets. They survived a fiery ride through our atmosphere and then, it seems, sat waiting for Robert Haag to find them, buy them, wheel and deal for them. "It's a pleasant obsession," he laughs. "I can be an astronaut right here on Earth." He has the background for it. Born into a family that ran a rock shop on the old Benson Highway, Haag was first touched by stardust when he was 13 and saw the arrival of a fireball, a huge meteor. "We could even hear the sizzling and the crackling as it was coming through the atmosphere, and flaming. And I was like 'Wow,' I was so impressed." He was in his early 20s when he made his first finds near the famed Meteor Crater in northern Arizona. "To some people they were just rusty rocks, but other people, they're going, 'That's real neat. How much do you want for it?'" There is money in these rocks, big money. Meteorites can be worth their weight in gold, as Jim Kriegh of Tucson found out. A retired professor of civil engineering, Kriegh found a minor mother lode when out gold prospecting near Greaterville, Arizona. It didn't glitter, but it was a strange little rock, two inches long, one inch wide, with a scale on it as though it had been burned.

"That looks like a meteorite," Haag declared when he saw it, and he told Kriegh to send it over to the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory for a complete analysis.

"Three or four hundred dollars, I think he said," remembers Kriegh of Haag's estimate. "And the guy at the university said it may be worth more than that after it's classified."

And there is a beauty in these rocks. There are the rare pallasites with networks of nickel and iron surrounding cat eye yellow olivine crystals, or peridot, as we Earthlings know it. Cut and polished, they become the stained-glass windows of the universe. For those who prefer a more high tech look, other meteorites give up a geometric grid called the Widmanstatten pattern when cut and etched with acid.

All out there for the picking, in theory, and according to Haag, in practice. "Anybody can participate in it," he says. So, says I, let the hunt begin.

We left Haag's home in the late afternoon, a small cadre of hopeful amateurs led by Haag. We were armed with the "must-haves" on his meteorite hunting list: a metal detector and a few magnets on strings. There was no need for a four-wheel drive as our destination was the flatland between Madera and Box canyons in the Santa Rita Mountains

southeast of Tucson. Good roads all the way. Haag advises that meteorite hunters also take along a bit of knowledge, an idea of what meteorites can look like, and where they have been found. Of course, we had Haag as our source, a walking, ever talking, encyclopedia of meteorite facts.

"The key word to finding meteorites is iron," Haag says. There also is nickel in the space rocks, but you would need a chemical test to check for it. The metal detector can sniff out most of the iron-bearing rocks right in the field.

On this day, young brothers Dustin and Derek Jones are going to get their hunting lessons from the master. "Listen for the tone change," he tells them as he moves the detector slowly over the ground.

Both Haag and his detector are tuned to the subtle differences of sound when a source of metal is located on or beneath the surface. But the rest of us on the hunt respond with equal energy when the machine puts out a metallic alert that something down there is worth investigating. Children and adults gather as Haag holds up the first discovery of the day.

"A surveyor's marker," he laughs without a trace of disappointment in his face or voice. Derek, age 7, is a little more subdued when he confides, "I thought I had one." The marker is returned to the ground, and we return to the hunt.

Those of us using magnets, the poor man's detector, move down the road and into the fields, initially enchanted by the fine iron fur that covers the magnets we drag behind us. The magnet's purpose also is the detection of iron. The string allows you to see the slight pull some rocks may have when you hold them near the magnet. Of course, there are Earth rocks with that same pull. The trick is knowing the difference, and that difference may be in the look.

Meteorites can look decidedly odd, true alien beings out there in the rock pile. They may have a dark burntlike coating, a "fusion crust," caused by the heat of the fall through the Earth's atmosphere at speeds that can exceed 26 miles per second. They may be pitted as though they were once pieces of clay, played with by giant hands. They may have strange markings indicating flow, or the peeling back of their skins during their wild ride to Earth. Or, they may not. For further distinction, check the weight. Meteorites will often feel and be heavier than an Earth rock of equal size.

Another piece of Haag advice is to go where they have been found before. Easy enough for someone who actually knows the way to Zagami, Nigeria, where Haag found his Mars rock, and to La Criolla, Argentina, where he found trouble.

It had to do with his purchase of a 37ton meteorite from the owner on whose land it sat. All aboveboard, according to Haag, and, considering the size, definitelyout in the open. But after it was bought and paid for, local authorities declared the meteorite a national treasure and Haag, for a short time, a persona non grata. The rock stayed. Haag left.

Just one of what he refers to as "Bob's Adventures," but not necessarily what everyone has in mind for their summer vacation.

Just how exotic does your destination have to be for a meteorite hunt? Try looking out your front window, your backdoor.

Says Haag, "There might be a treasure out there right under your nose, right in the backyard, right next to the mailbox."

Meteors have been raining down on Earth since time immemorial and without too much preference for the landing site. They've hit from Finland to Thailand, Italy to India. Rather travel this continent? There is Alberta, Canada, Zacatecas, Mexico. Prefer to see this America first? Your options are endless.

Meteorites have been found in New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, California, Indiana, Colorado, and Kentucky. A fireball over Weston, Connecticut, on December 14, 1807, sent faculty members of Yale College out of their halls and into the fields for their own piece of the action.

A fall in Peekskill, New York, in 1992, hit a car. It sold for a reported $69,000 - the meteorite, not the car. The car, a 1980 Chevy Malibu, is said to have sold for $10,000 because of its collision with fame.

In Arizona we might consider wearing hard hats. There was that eons-ago massive hit that created Meteor Crater. In 1912 it rained space rocks over Holbrook. In 1921 a 3,000-plus-pound meteorite was found near Navajo, another 1,500 pounder found five years later. In 1954 a rancher found one in Strawberry. In 1985 they were picking them up in a park in Tucson. And anyone can play.

It was two junior high school students who brought their finds to Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies in Tempe. According to Dr. Carleton Moore, the center's director, "One [was found] in Chandler in a backyard and one in El Mirage out in a field."

But keeping it in perspective, finds are rare. Moore states that of the 250 to 300 rocks brought to the center every year, only one or two are meteorites.

Still, our location for the hunt seems perfect. The flat, not so rocky land means we have a chance to see them if they are out there, and the dry climate cuts back on their deterioration. But even better, this could be the site of "the big one," the rest of the Tucson Meteorite and Haag's personal Moby Dick.

"We've been searching for years and never found it," he muses.

In the early 1850s, reports coming out of the old Presidio of Tucson told of two strange pieces of iron being used by local blacksmiths. One had the distinct shape of a ring and a weight of 1,400 pounds. The second piece, later to be called the Carleton, was equally impressive, weighing in at more than 600 pounds. Both ultimately ended up at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. The location of the iron pieces was said to be the mountains southeast of Tucson, the Santa Ritas. Haag wants to know where that meteor hit, where the rest of it is. It is what keeps a hunter going as well as a collector, the promise of the one that got away.

And there is another meteorite Haag would like to have, the one with the fossil in it. It would bring to Earth a sign of life beyond our planet.

"I absolutely believe," says Haag. "Why not?"

But we aren't going to find it today, not the fossil, not the rest of the Ring, not one gem from space. By the end of the afternoon, the only meteorite discovered is the one I found hours earlier in Haag's backyard. By all rights, it belongs to him, yet he gives it to me. "Your first meteorite," he says.

It may have something to do with that other necessity Haag claims you must take on any meteorite hunt: "a good attitude."

As the sun sets, the Jones boys decide magnets are far more fun than the metal detector. The adults give them theirs and call it a day, not a bad one at that.

Pulling away in his Jeep, Robert Haag, the Meteorite Man, waves wildly with so much grin and laughter you'd think he'd found the treasure of a lifetime on this hunt. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he always does.