Lessons in Jade

The story goes that a man went to his lawyer and said he wanted to sue a chinaman. It seems the man had paid the chinaman to teach him how to recognize jade and the first day he went to his store he was handed a piece of jade and told to sit there with it.
After an hour he put the jade down and left. The next day he returned and was handed another piece of jade. Again he left after a while. This went on for quite some time. One day, after arriving at the store, the chinaman handed him a rock that wasn't jade and so the man demanded his money back. The lawyer told him to forget the lawsuit as the chinaman had earned his fees.

In our travels we have been so blessed to meet so many people and have met with so much kindness. Our lapidary teacher, Jerrold, had told us of a man named Warren, who carved jade and had hunted it in Wyoming for many years. We were finally able to meet him at the lapidary shop and after talking about jade hunting in Wyoming, were invited to his house to see his tools, collections, and carvings.
As soon as we entered the door we were met by his charming wife Suzie,an artist in her own right, whose medium was wood, tapestry, and sculpture. Warren proudly showed us his jade set that he called ,"Endangered Species", which was a set of four jade carvings of Texas animals that had neared the brink of extinction. They both told us stories of Jade hunting near Jeffery City and proudly held the first pieces of jade they had discovered.

Warren showed us his other carvings and handed us pieces of Wyoming Nephrite Jade, all ones that they had found or that he had aquired,  again all from Wyoming. He told us that there really wasn't any Chinese jade, all the old jade carving were nephrite jade from Turkestan,(from a area called the White and Black Jade rivers), and that jadeite was really a substitute when the nephrite had run out.
He also told us that a lot of the highest quality jade left Wyoming for China where it was carved and worked into much that we see today. Of that the most prized was the green imperial Wyoming jade and the black Edwards jade, both rarely seen ,(although many dealers sell any black Wyoming jade as Edwards jade).
Of course we had forgotten our maps and so we asked if we could return the following week to go over places to prospect and also to learn some of his jade carving and polishing techniques. He kindly agreed and said that if nothing else he would teach us how to cut out cores and how to make homemade saws and drills.

The next week we arrived at their house with maps in hand, and Warren and Suzi sat down and entertained us with stories of jade prospecting and jade hunters. Of course Suzi told us of her rattlesnake encounter and it was obvious that horny toads had made an impression as Warren had several carved from different minerals, both jade and turquoise.
He had me pull up a chair as he called up google earth and the zoomed in and showed me where they had collected every single piece of jade thay had shown us.. Here was an eighty six year old man that had a mind as sharp as the day they found the stone. The time went to quickly and he handed us boxes of small jade slicks, telling us to pick them up and feel the jade.
Suzie then said , "Warren isn't it time to release some of them?:, and he insisted that we help ourselves to the slicks, so that we could hold jade and learn its rind, feel, and color. We both picked out some of the pieces to add to our collection, Pieces that we will not work but will simply treasure as we remember the stories they had shared. Thank you Warren and Suzie! Clear skies.