Is your Buckeye State loyalty solid as an Ohio-shaped rock? ❘ Average Joe

Last week, my oldest friend tagged me in a Facebook photo showing off something he stumbled upon during a business trip to South Korea: a rock shaped like the state of Ohio.

Since kindergarten, Steve has had a front-row seat to my plentiful quirks — including my interest in searching for Ohio rocks. When we worked together as counselors at Camp Christopher, we introduced countless kids to this pursuit while leading creek hikes.

So it was a you-just-made-my-day moment to see his snapshot of an Ohio rock from halfway across the world.

I discovered this hobby when I was a young boy while a couple of my siblings were trying to teach me how to skip stones across the pool rippling at the base of Cedar Falls at Hocking Hills State Park. Frustrated with my inability to flick a flat rock in just such a way to leap across the water’s surface, I began studying the shapes of stones instead and found one that resembled my home state’s outline. I shoved it in my pocket, and an obsession was born.

Fast-forward to show-and-tell time in school, and there I am, proudly displaying my emerging collection. But I'm quickly overshadowed by someone who can’t wait to show off the Mattel Head to Head Football or Pot Belly Bear that they got for their birthday.

Undeterred, I forged ahead into a life of nerdy rock-hunting joy. (Somewhere along the way, I also mastered the snap of the wrist needed to properly skip a stone, but I’m careful not to do that with any Ohio rocks.)

Fast-forward again to my senior year of high school, and I’m on a service trip to Nazareth Farm in the hills of West Virginia. We’re digging out a very rocky area where concrete will be poured for a modest extension to a tiny house, and my shovel hits a rather big obstacle. When I finally work it free from the soil, I discover that it is the biggest and one of the best Ohio rocks I’ve ever seen – nearly big enough to mostly cover an 8-by-8-inch square.

What constitutes a good Ohio rock?

As you might suspect, I’ve pulled my wife and kids into the eternal hunt for Ohio rocks. They’ll be the first to tell you that I’m pretty fussy about what constitutes a really good one.

The rock should be relatively flat, but does not need to be smooth. The left side should have a long, straight edge before meeting a bottom ridge that loops down before winding a gradual path up toward a significantly shorter straight edge on the right side. The top edge starts out flat on the left side before scooping downward a bit to form the Lake Erie shore and then creeping back up toward the right top corner.

It doesn't need to be perfect; some rocks that I've seen horribly botch Cincinnati or clip Conneaut right out of the picture and I still find them acceptable. Lots of rocks that resemble a somewhat misshapen shield are acceptable.

I’ve often facetiously boasted that “statistically speaking, more rocks are shaped like Ohio than any other state.” Of course, I have absolutely no solid scientific data to back up that claim. (If nothing else, that exercise has given me a window on how a certain troubling mindset comes into being: Repeat junk data enough and you start to believe that it is true.)

I did come to that hypothesis, though, based on much observation. See, I spot plenty of other state shapes in the rocks that I gaze upon; it just so happens that no others seem to be nearly as prevalent as Ohio. Could be a product of my proud Buckeye State bias. But I’ve seriously searched for rocks in the shape of every state. I’ve even kept a mental guide of my most to least common state-shaped rock finds. There’s a code of rock-hunting ethics to this as well: No breaking, cutting or otherwise manipulating a rock shape to more closely resemble a state shape.

How every state stacks up in my search for US rocks

Aside from Ohio, distinctive state shapes that I’ve spotted most often in the creek beds and along beaches include Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and Maine.

There’s also a whole class of commonplace shapes that are up for debate because the eyes of two different beholders might see two different states.

Find a rock that resembles Indiana, for example, and you might have an argument on your hands from someone who looks at the same chunk and sees Rhode Island. Turn a Vermont rock upside down and you’ve got New Hampshire. But wait — that could also be Delaware! Flip a vaguely Alabama-shaped rock over horizontally and you’ve got a vaguely Mississippi-shaped rock. A decent Virginia rock might actually be able to pass itself off as Kentucky, and vice versa. Flip it upside down and you’ve darn near got North Carolina.

Some states are just mailing it in with their blandly rectangular shapes. Sure, each has its own contours when you get down to the fine cartography — but show me a North Dakota rock and you could just as easily call that South Dakota or Kansas. Find one with more clearly congruent sides and you can take your pick: Is it Colorado or Wyoming? Find a sloppily rectangular one, and it could be Oregon, Connecticut or Pennsylvania.

Then there are distinct shapes that take it up a notch in difficulty — Washington, Utah, Nebraska, Louisiana, Illinois and New Jersey. I applaud the effort it takes to find these; I’ve found some reasonable facsimiles in my searching. You’ve also got Missouri, Montana, Minnesota, California and Wisconsin in a class of generally tough — but not impossible — finds.

So, what are the worst states for state rocks? Obviously, Michigan needs to go right to the head of that class, with no apologies, because of that pesky Michigan shape (“Ooh! Here’s where I live on the hand!”) and that lonesome, unattached, underappreciated Upper Peninsula (“Silly rabbit! We don’t even live on the hand!”). I'm a stickler for contiguousness, so the general entire outline of the state needs to be represented in any state rock that I'm inspecting.

Also at the very bottom is Texas. That shape is just altogether unnatural. (Insert your own loving and thoughtful observation about Texas here.)

Low marks also go to states with distinctive skinny and winding sections that the geologic labor of time doesn’t readily cut out. This includes Alaska for its broad, top-heavy outline and long, strange tails of islands. Massachusetts is problematic because of Cape Cod’s hook. Panhandle wielders Florida, West Virginia and Oklahoma don’t hold up well as rock shapes because those handles too easily break off. Same goes for coarsely goofy Maryland and bottom-heavy Idaho. And while I’ve found some decent upstate New York-shaped rocks, I have yet to find one that includes Long Island as well. Sorry, New York, but I want all of you in a single state rock.

And what are we to do with the island chain of Hawaii? Grab a bunch of pebbles and arrange them just so — and there you have it? My rules dictate that if you have to assemble it, it’s not a state rock. So, aloha, Hawaii.

Average Joe archives: Go ahead, rummage through a vault of observations from one of Akron's ordinary, average guys

Rock hunters of Ohio, unite!

I know you’re out there, fellow Ohio rock finders. I’ve seen some of your posts exclaiming, “Whoa! What does this rock look like to you?” Duh. That’s Ohio. (Or kinda sorta Ohio.)

You don’t have to hide your hobby anymore.

If you’ve found and kept a cool rock shaped like Ohio, let’s see it. Just remember the honor system here; you cannot have altered its shape to make it even more closely resemble the state. Email your rock photos to jthomas@thebeaconjournal.com and, importantly, put the words OHIO ROCKS in the subject line. If we receive enough responses by mid-July, we’ll put together a photo gallery on BeaconJournal.com to showcase your brilliant finds.

When he isn’t toiling away as the Beacon Journal metro editor, you can occasionally find Joe Thomas musing about everyday life as the Average Joe. Reach him at jthomas@thebeaconjournal.com

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Average Joe chronicles contagious obsession with Ohio-shaped rocks