Meteorites: They Came from Outer SpaceMeteorite hunter and TV personality Geoffrey Notkin travels the world digging for space rocks

Sometimes dreams do come true: The author (above left) and Steve Arnold with a 230-lb Brenham pallasite recovered during the filming of Meteorite Men. The meteorite was buried about four feet underground and had to be excavated using a back hoe. Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites.

So, after seventeen months of work Meteorite Men is finally a reality.

When LMNO Productions Executive Producer Ruth Rivin first contacted Steve Arnold and me and asked if we’d ever thought about doing a television series about our meteorite hunting adventures I replied: “That’s all we’ve been thinking about for the past two years.” After appearing in episodes of The Best Places to Find Cash & Treasures for the Travel Channel, Wired Science for PBS, Naked Earth: Our Atmosphere for National Geographic and Cosmic Collisions for Discovery, Steve and I realized we really liked making adventure TV documentaries and wanted to do more.

Ruth is a very accomplished career producer and actually heard about us first through a Los Angeles Times article about Steve. She hadn’t seen any of our shows, so I sent her copies of some of our earlier work and the long journey from an idea on a piece of paper to a cable network adventure documentary began. In February, 2008 producer Elizabeth Meeker flew out to Tucson to meet with Steve and me during the annual gem show. We had one day to shoot enough material for a five-minute reel that would be sent out to networks in the hope of generating interest in an ongoing meteorite series. We started early and filmed first in our showroom at the InnSuites hotel, which actually required us to close down the room for a while, right in the middle of the world’s biggest gem and mineral show. After a quick lunch I drove the three of us out to a small but scenic canyon northwest of Tucson. Even though the terrain looks wild and rugged in the reel, I was concerned that the sounds of passing traffic might ruin the mood. But Elizabeth kept her back to passing motorists and while watching the short, you’d really think we were way out in the boonies.

That reel, combined no doubt with LMNO chief Eric Schotz’s enthusiasm, landed us some high level meetings. In July of 2008, Steve and I flew out to Washington, D.C. to meet with Ruth, Eric, and some serious movers and shakers the cable TV world. Science Channel, part of the Discovery network, ordered a one-hour pilot, and then the real work started.

Veteran TV producer Bob Melisso was brought on board as supervising producer and also directed the location shooting. I was thrilled to learn that Bob would hire the supremely talented Randall Love as the director of photography. Randy has worked for Lucas Films making Star Wars documentaries, for the BBC, Discovery, HBO, PBS, Disney and just about any other notable TV or movie company you can think of. He has a wonderful eye for detail, especially natural history subjects, and I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of filming Meteorite Men than Randy.

Location shooting for Meteorite Men took place in October of 2008. Here Steve and Geoff try to figure out why they are digging up so much scrap iron at the secret Alpha site. Producer Elizabeth Meeker is in the red jacket; Director of Photography Randall Love wears a white shirt and ball cap, while Director and Supervising Producer Bob Melisso focuses on the action. Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites.

Initial location shooting took place in the famous Brenham, Kansas strewnfield where Steve made his record breaking meteorite discovery back in 2005 and also at a second site, so secret that all members of the location crew were required to sign confidentiality agreements before filming began. We had five days for the primary locations, followed by an exciting day at ASU Tempe’s Center for Meteorite Studies, where we got to meet with meteorite academic luminaries Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa and Dr. Laurence Garvie. Small pieces were removed from a couple of our finds, and examined in the iBeam lab, which showed that their chemical composition matched representative Brenham specimens in the university’s collection (we knew they would, but it made for good TV and upped the hard science quotient).

Our film crew amassed about seventy-five hours of footage from the three locations, and that had to be edited down into 43 minutes of actual air time. Quite a feat for even the most talented of editosr. In March of 2009 I was in Los Angeles on business for a couple of days and had the opportunity to sit in on the audio mix of the show. What a treat for a musician and former audio engineer! Ruth and I, and our editing and sound team spent the evening in a very chic high-end mixing studio in Burbank, California, and I finally got to see the show for the first time.

Filming at ASU’s Center for Meteorite Studies with Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa (left), Steve Arnold (center) and the author, along with a few big space rocks we brought along for show-and-tell. Photograph by Qynne Arnold © Aerolite Meteorites.

The world premiere took place on May 10 on the Science Channel, and was also broadcast in high definition on Science Channel HD. We threw a small premiere party at the Aerolite Meteorites headquarters in Tucson. By a lovely coincidence my father, Sam Notkin, who so inspired me when I was a little boy by his interest in astronomy, was here for the screening. New York City rock ‘n’ roll musician Anne Husick flew in specially with her boyfriend Mike Reed, and Nancy and Dr. Larry Lebofsky, co-editors of Meteorite magazine joined us, along with a few other close friends. The Arnold family had their own get together in Arkansas and we compared notes the next day.

The author stares intently at the screen during the Meteorite Men world premiere, while location photographer Caroline Palmer gently reminds him not to take space rocks quite so seriously. Photograph by Stu Jenks, Fezziwig Photography © Stu Jenks.

May 10 was most definitely a day to remember.

To learn more about the show, please visit the official Meteorite Men website, and you are invited to follow the Meteorite Men on Twitter for the latest news. Additional Meteorite Men show times can be found on the Science Channel website. Also, please check out the August 2009 issue of Meteorite magazine which will feature an exclusive behind-the-scenes article about the making of Meteorite Men.

Oh, and one more thing. We want to make a lot more episodes, so please tell Science Channel they need to send us back out to find more rocks. Not sure that we can top a 230-pounder and a 273-pounder from Brenham, plus over a hundred pounds from the secret Alpha site — all in one episode — but we’re game to try if you’re willing to tune in.

UNTIL THEN . . . WATCH THE SKIES!

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!

Unlike many of my colleagues, I really enjoy doing media interviews, especially when I have the pleasure of working with a particularly thoughtful, bright and inventive journalist. A few weeks ago, I received a call from Eleanor Perry-Smith, a writer at Northwestern University in Illinois. She was working on a the premiere issue of a hip new science magazine named SciQ. With a tag line like “Feed Your Head” how could I possibly resist participating?

Feature article on meteorites in the premiere issue of SciQ magazine showing MeteoriteBlog author Geoffrey Notkin on the east rim of Meteor Crater, Arizona. Photograph © by Aerolite Meteorites; article layout and content © by SciQ Magazine

It turned out that Eleanor’s father is a fellow meteorite enthusiast and he and I once met at the Denver Gem and Mineral Show, which runs over a long weekend each September, and is an event that I particularly look forward to. Eleanor and I did a series of telephone interviews and covered the familiar topics: “Where do you hunt for meteorites?” and “How much are meteorites worth?” but she also asked a number of completely unique and original questions which were entirely new to me. How very refreshing it was! When we were finished, I mailed a CD-ROM of original photographs along to her, selected from years of adventuring and picture taking.

After the interview comes the waiting. I’m always excited to see a new feature on meteorites, but I’ve learned not to expect too much, since the final manuscript typically has to go through a series of editors, designers and production people. Mistakes are often made; sometimes quotes are even changed, and you can’t please everyone.

When the comp copies of SciQ arrived last week, the first thing that caught my eye was a choice adventure shot on the Contents page (your blogger waist deep in a freezing river in Europe, digging into muddy banks in search of buried treasure) alongside a subhead which reads:

ROCK STARS
Meet the Indiana Joneses in search of space
treasures in the meteorite-hunting world

Well that was sure a great start, but it just got better and better. Pages 36 and 37 present a gorgeous spread [see above] with a large color reproduction of that striking Meteor Crater east rim photo and a big, modern headline which shouts out: “ROCK THE COSMOS.” I assumed it just had to be a play on the Clash’s 1982 rock ‘n’ roll song “Rock the Casbah,” and when I later mentioned that to Eleanor she replied: “I knew you’d like the Clash reference.” Since they are my all-time top band, I couldn’t have been much happier. The article includes brief interviews with Anne Black, vice-president of the IMCA, and veteran meteorite dealer Edwin “E.T.” Thompson as well as an introduction to seminal American meteorite hunter and scientist Harvey Nininger, and highlights from some of my adventures (and misadventures) in Chile’s Atacama Desert and the Arctic Circle in northern Siberia.

SciQ magazine is a new publication delivering “engaging, culturally savvy science and technology,” reports project director Patti Wolter, and is the progeny of fourteen graduate students in the Magazine Publishing Project at the Medill School of Journalism. What a superb exercise in practical experience for this team of  students! SciQ is an exciting, engaging, well designed and well written new science magazine. If you’d seen it on a shelf at your local newsagent, you’d never guess for an instant that it was a student project — it more interesting and better designed than many of its big-budget competitors.

The entire publication is well worth a read, especially “Rock the Cosmos.” Unfortunately, the meteorite feature is not available online, so visit their website and order a copy for only $4.95. Hats off to everyone involved, especially Eleanor — my new favorite interviewer.

LEARN MORE ABOUT METEORITES

Please visit my company site, Aerolite Meteorites, for one of the web’s finest selections of meteorites for sale, meteorite jewelry, Libyan Desert Glass from Egypt. Latest additions include superb Sikhote-Alin iron meteorites from Russia, with remarkable sculptural features such as natural holes, flow lines and orientation.

And don’t forget to watch the skies!

It was back in 1998 that I made my first journey to the Tucson gem and mineral shows. I was living just outside of New York City at the time, and although I had already fallen in love with Arizona as a ten year-old boy, and had traveled extensively across my favorite state in the Union, I’d never actually been to Tucson — the seat of Pima County and a small, eclectic, eccentric, charming city in the Sonoran Desert.

The author at the 2008 Tucson gem show, admiring a large stone meteorite found in the Sahara Desert. Photograph by Lisa Marie, Sirocco Design.

A few months earlier, I returned from a hair-raising three-week meteorite hunting expedition across Chile’s stunningly barren and vast Atacama Desert, in the company of my friend, meteorite hunter Steve Arnold. Steve was living near Tulsa, Oklahoma at the time and we decided to rendezvous in Odessa, Texas, where we did a little hunting at the famous meteorite crater, and then head on to Tucson.

I had read, several times, that the Tucson gem show was the biggest of its kind in the world, and that among the diamonds, dinosaurs, jewelry, crafts, Moroccan rugs and African drums, we would find a number of meteorite dealers and collectors. But nothing could have prepared me for the size and vigor of the show — which is in no way “a” show, but rather more than forty separate shows which run concurrently during the first half of February each year.

After that, I never missed a show. February became the highlight of each year, partly because it’s my birthday month, and partly because I could leave chilly, snowy, dirty New York for a week or two and enjoy gentle winter sunshine in southern Arizona. And look at rocks, all day, every day. What could be better than that?

As the years went by, I became less and less enamored with life in the big city and eventually moved to Tucson permanently. I loved the gem show so much, I figured we might just as well live in the same town. Okay, it wasn’t only the gem show. I love the mountains; the desert; the wild coyotes, bobcats and hawks; cactus forests; and the vibrant Mexican culture and influence. I actually can now good eat good Mexican food, every day, for the rest of my life.

Collectively, the big events are known as the Tucson gem and mineral shows, or showcases. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show™ was the progenitor of the whole thing. It started back in 1955 and its benevolent parent is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society. That show continues to this day, is the largest and best-attended of all the different events, and is so vast it is held in the Tucson Convention Center. We call it “The Main Show” and it runs for a long weekend in mid-February. It is very popular with school groups, tourists and collectors.
However, most of the show venues are actually ordinary hotels — retro-fitted for the duration. Thousands of vendors from all over the planet rent rooms and suites, remove the furniture and replace it with display cases, lights, gems, fossils, gold nuggets, meteorites, and the assorted natural history wealth of the world. There are a very few wholesale events which require dealer identification for entry, but by far the majority of shows are free and open to the public, and visiting any of the participating show hotels is a colorful and exciting experience.

I am now an exhibitor at the gem show. What started as my fun and much-anticipated winter jaunt to Tucson, is now a complex and all-consuming business. My meteorite company, Aerolite Meteorites, shares Suite 230 at the InnSuites Hotel (475 North Granada, Tucson, AZ) with Anne Black — a charming French meteorite dealer, and one of the few women in our business. The InnSuites is my favorite of all the show hotels. In addition to a lush green lawn, shady orange trees, a nice pool and decent bar with a dealer-friendly happy hour, the InnSuites features a wide variety of vendors, rather than just one field. Our hotel is the best place for meteorite and fossils, but you can also find egg-sized gold nuggets, ghostly florescent minerals, seashells, and some of the best trilobites in the world.

This year we will open our doors on Saturday, January 31 (just a day before my birthday) and we will remain open all day, every day, until Saturday, February 14. It is a long haul, and very expensive for us. It costs thousands of dollars to rent a suite, pay our assistants, pony up the a show fee to our promoter, eat, drink, and be merry. But it’s what we do, and even though it can be a grind, at times, it’s an inspiring experience to be part of the biggest and best event of its kind in the history of our planet.

As a fun little bonus, last year I designed a special custom METEORITES neon sign for the showroom, and had it manufactured by a local neon artist. It was a big hit. I have always loved neon — one of American’s true original contributions to modern art.

We sell meteorites; impactites; meteorite books and museum catalogs; thin sections; meteorite jewelry, t-shirts, and collectibles; and anything else interesting that we can fit into our room packed, as it is, full of rare and amazing rocks from outer space. We make the most of it: socializing with friends, swapping adventure stories, cracking a bottle of wine in the evening and putting on some mellow jazz around sunset. If you’re in Tucson for the show, please stop by and say hello. It’s a great time, and we’d be delighted if you had the experience of holding a genuine meteorite in your hand for the first time.

Click here to learn all about Arizona’s Tucson gem and mineral show including a Tucson restaurant and dining guide, and a list of featured Tucson show dealers and vendors.

WATCH THE SKIES!