Alpine quartz gwindels

摘要

Beautiful, rare, and utterly distinctive-looking, gwindel quartz specimens have always been highly cherished. Gwindels form in Alpine-type clefts by complex processes which are still in some measure mysterious, and remain controversial. Truly fine, in some cases very large, gwindels have been found only in a narrow belt of localities in the central Swiss Alps; in the French part of the Mont Blanc massif; and since about 1990 in the Polar Urals of Russia. Indeed it is hard to "conclude" about gwindels-except to pass on the good news that top-quality specimens are not at all "concluded" things on the mineral market today. Many collectors-necessarily well-funded collectors, to be sure-during the past few years have been able to purchase superb, and in some cases enormous, gwindel specimens from Mont Blanc and the Polar Urals. Swiss specimens are very much rarer than these, although, for all the familiar "Alpine" reasons, we might always reasonably hope for new discoveries in Val Giuv or elsewhere. In addition, the uncovering of new clefts by the retreat of glaciers might be viewed as one of the few benefits of global warming. Perhaps the mysterious processes which produce gwindels will soon be explained to the satisfaction of all; as scientifically literate people we are obliged to hope so. In that event, however (I don't mind admitting), I'll miss, a little, the sense of mystery which seems immanent in a gwindel, leaping, like a little reflected point of playful light, in the direction of the observer. We observers all must reconcile to our own satisfactions that which is scientific and that which stubbornly will seem magical when we turn our most beautiful mineral specimens slowly in the light.