Sunburned and a little haggard after a long day of meteorite hunting in the Arizona desert.
Self portrait by the author.

During my childhood years in London Monty Python’s Flying Circus was the most controversial and talked-about show on television. My father wryly encouraged me to stay up until 9:25 pm and watch each new weekly BBC episode. It aired on a school night, which worried my mom and, anyway, she found the racy and provocative content entirely inappropriate for a young lad. My mom was a brilliant woman, and that was one of the few times I remember her being clearly in error. I remain a Python fan to this day and recently, as a most thoughtful gift, received the entire collected episodes in a DVD boxed set.

The other night, I once again found myself watching the “Vocational Guidance Counselor Sketch.” Michael Palin — my favorite Python — plays a delightfully timid chartered accountant who visits a career advisor, acted out in a typically snide and officious manner by the uniquely weird John Cleese. Mr. Palin’s sweet and mousy character complains, delicately, about how bored he is after twenty years as an accountant, and how he yearns to switch to a truly exciting new vocation, such as lion taming.

Palin’s lament reminded me of how often I hear the remark: “What an exciting life you lead,” from people I meet while pursuing my unusual profession. Yes, it is exciting, at times, and yes I am lucky to be able to follow my passion, but the realities of international adventuring can be quite taxing. So, I thought I might share with my readers a tongue-in-cheek overview of some less glamorous moments in the exciting life of a meteorite hunter.

Whilst in the pursuit of space rocks, I have suffered from sunburn, windburn, sun stroke, altitude sickness, exposure, exhaustion, food poisoning, concussion, dehydration, along with plenty of other everyday, run-of-the-mill maladies.

Not at my best. Catching my breath after a hot day of hunting in the deep south. Note the snake gators held together with duct tape, to protect my legs from dangerous reptiles. Photograph by Sonny Clary.

I have been accused of being “overenthusiastic” in the field, and even though I do my best to stay focused and act in a semi-sensible manner, the sheer number of days spent in remote areas has resulted in my exterior surface being scratched, cut, burned, or otherwise injured by barbed wire, regular wire, rusty vintage farm machinery, a portable gasoline stove, ATVs and 4WD trucks, poison ivy, scorpion weed, other unidentified allergens, rocks, rock hammers, bamboo, corn stalks, every type of thorn, bramble and cactus, and shocked by electric fences. I also got knocked senseless by a heavy truck door blown shut by a micro burst, and had a finger crushed between two shockingly powerful rare earth magnets.

I have been bitten by mosquitoes, gnats, chiggers, black flies, robber flies, fire ants, various types of spiders and a cattle dog. I have experienced close encounters with rattlesnakes, many kinds of other snakes, alligators, tarantulas, scorpions, two angry bald eagles with very large talons, Lynx rufus (the Sonoran lynx) and more than one pack of hungry wily coyotes.

Arctic swamps. Hiking inside the Popigai Crater, Siberia in full anti-insect gear. The ground freezes solid in winter, and during the brief Arctic summer, the air is alive with oversized, and very hungry, mosquitoes. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

During the execution of my duties I was very nearly arrested and incarcerated by three armed and jackbooted Chilean police officers (it got as far as the hands on the guns part), after getting into an altercation with a crooked bar owner. I have been accosted by uniformed Russian soldiers and police, and the Mexican Army, and twice had my passport confiscated. While meteorite hunting or transporting meteorites, I have been stopped and searched by police, customs and/or security officers in numerous different countries, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol, accused of being a terrorist by an Illinois Sheriff, and barked at by a Park Ranger who thought I was using a metal detector on the site of a national monument (I wasn’t; it’s illegal).

Items stolen from me during regular operations include: the Aerolite Meteorites company checkbook, pens and field notebooks, maps, sunglasses, a Nikon camera, a suitcase, an Acculab digital scale, important business records, the charger for my cell phone (!?) and a recently worn (and likely smelly) “I Dig Space Rocks” t-shirt. Really, who would want such a thing?

Jungle survival training with Rob Reisner and Sonny Clary (actually, we were hunting for meteorites in the American deep south). Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

While traveling in strange parts of the world, and when there was literally no alternative, I have been required to subsist on Cliff Bars, reindeer burgers, porridge with flies in it, steamed abalone which had the consistency of truck tires, and some type of large, slimy and hideous freshwater eel plucked from a frigid lake far north of the Arctic Circle. While this dietary supplement list may not sound too appalling to some, please consider that under normal circumstances I am a strict vegetarian!

I survived a drinking competition involving vodka, wine, “And now the Georgian brandy!” with the field support staff of the Siberian Geological Survey (a tougher bunch of guys I never met) and then foolishly accepted a challenge which resulted in me leaping into a Siberian river at 2 am and swimming a few hundred yards. I received a standing ovation and round of applause from our comrades, so I did it a second time.

The author and Steve Arnold rescuing equipment after our truck got stranded deep in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, while traveling to the Imilac meteorite strewnfield.

I have lived through one substantial earthquake, two hurricanes, a stranded truck in the heart of the Atacama Desert, a dead ATV in the middle of a winter blizzard in the snow belt of upstate New York (we had to tow the ATV home behind another quad), an encounter with desert pirates in Nevada, a gurgling uncapped oil well at the bottom of an excavation hole in Kansas, an impromptu margarita party at the edge of Area 51, and an unexploded air-to-air guided missile which somehow came to rest atop a large rock outcrop in the Arizona desert.

While hunting, or on the way to suspected hunting zones, I have traveled by foot, horse, mountain bike, scooter, dirt bike, ATV, regular cars, vans and buses, 4WD vehicles including Steve Arnold’s canary yellow hummer, a wooden raft hand made from pine trees, life rafts, a hydrofoil, an Mi-8 cargo helicopter, and every type of airplane from a Cessna to a Jumbo Jet.

While searching for meteorites with metal detectors, I have accidentally found or helped excavate Frontier-era wagon wheels, two coyote traps, Civil War bullets and belt buckles, a 30-gallon steel drum inside of a 55-gallon drum, artillery shrapnel, bullets, shotgun shells, ball bearings, hot rocks, unidentifiable pieces of machinery, 19th-Century forged iron tools, a chain big enough to hold down a battleship, beer cans, cans of beans, rusted buckets, and part of several old cars.

With my pal Rusty Johnson on board a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, en route to a hunting site.
Photograph by Katya Rossovskaya.

So, I know you’re asking yourself something along the lines of: “Then why do you keep doing it?” Simply: there really is nothing more exciting that digging space rocks.

Except maybe working as a lion tamer.

WATCH THE SKIES!