If only rocks could talk, the ones pictured below that I recently collected at a western North Carolina location might tell us of a long and complicated history...

Many millions of years ago, hot water containing sulfides and other dissolved chemicals rose from deep within the Earth and were injected into faulted, fractured and brecciated rock. Regional uplift accompanied by extensive subaerial erosion stripped thousands of feet of overlying rock and sediment bringing the sulfide minerals and host rocks to near surface. The sulfides, including pyrite, oxidized to form goethite and perhaps limonite and hematite. Some pyrite cubes were transformed into goethite-after-pyrite psuedomorphs (a psuedomorph is a mineral that has the identical crystalline structure of another mineral but has a different chemical composition). At some point after the goethite formed, quartz and marcasite from near-surface silica/iron/sulfide-rich solutions crystallized in small vugs.

Although the rocks, as I found them on a very hot day in the field, appeared to be nothing more than homely leaverites, a small voice told me to take them home and clean them up so that they could "tell" me their story.