The lack of vehicle - 3 weeks now while ICBC sits on their asses twiddling their thumbs - means that my prospecting interests are confined a lot closer to home.
A lot closer. Specifically, walking the beach along Kootenay Lake looking for arrowheads.
I've never found an arrowhead, it's long been a delayed childhood ambition. I've found better - the hammer/maul, other artifacts, flints, but never for some reason, an arrowhead.
And so I begin again walking the beaches of the lake, eyes peeled, scanning the gravel...there sure is a lot of gravel...
Days go by. I'm acquiring the eye.
Finally, digging in the sand I come across this. Entirely by chance.
thin, flat, could be, turning it over and over, clearly broken, but when finally I spot the line of symmetry I have it. My first arrowhead, out of Kootenay Argillite. Walking back up the beach I spy a couple of other flints, out of place in the gravel, clearly napped/worked, discards perhaps or remains of other tools.
I'm not sure about the arrowhead, I was expecting something a bit more - well, complete, and obvious, but shining a light through it reveals the tiny pressure points where it was napped, the edges are serrated from multiple tiny flakes pushed off, it's an arrowhead, sure enough.
Not a bad find, but not perfect, there are better. And so in the morning before week I get up and comb the beach. It's a big beach. I find a few flakes and a sinker, which I discard (later research shows me an image of the same, I should have kept, I had a hunch and disregarded, not good...).
Then the next day, more flakes, and then:
Another broken arrowhead, top, and a few flints/flakes on the bottom.
I'm getting an eye for this, although they're still bloody hard to find, it reassures me that I'm not entirely incompetent and maybe soon I'll be finding complete ones...