Petra's Stone Collection

“The stone museum I want to see most: "In her village, the neighbours’ attitude to Petra’s hobby was quizzical. But she defied expectations that she should take a housewifely role, and was content in what others saw as her eccentricity. Most mornings would bring new ‘hunting’ adventures (as she liked to call them), with children in tow and sandwich picnics; often she returned from the high peaks with as many as 40 kilos of stones on her back. Only when a specimen was too unwieldy for her bag would Petra set it carefully on the mountainside, to be collected by sleigh at the first snowfall. ... Petra was modest about her expertise in natural history, which extended to other fields as well, from shells to forestry ... Her staunch independence was unflinching, and despite decades of correspondence with geologists, botanists and marine biologists, she insisted that it was the beauty, not the science, of her collections that was her primary motivation. ‘It was dreadful to be unable to write a song or a poem about all the beautiful things that I have witnessed, to be unable to give something back,’ she lamented. ‘I have seen such beautiful things – incredible beauty that I can’t put into words.’”