Editor's note: This story was meant to be heard. We highly recommend listening through the audio player at the top of this post.
It’s summer, folks. There are a lot of people going swimming. There are a lot of people going out on their boats. Then, of course, there’s a lot of people walking on the shoreline with their heads down.
Did they lose their keys?
Are they checking out their new toenail polish?
No.
They're looking for Petoskey stones.
Formed some 350 million years ago (while Michigan was underwater and just south of the equator) they're fossils of colonial coral — Hexagonaria percarinata.
Then, just 2 million years ago, a glacier plucked the Petoskey stones from the bedrock and scattered them around Lake Michigan.
Now you'll find people wandering up and down the shoreline with their heads down, hoping to bring home some of the magic millions of years in the making.
