When something new and important happens, I am often dismayed by how slowly I catch on. The best example I can give you is 9/11, which I witnessed on TV in real time.

I knew something horrifying had happened and I grieved the loss of life. But it took quite a while before I understood how unique the event was (first attack on the U.S. mainland) and how huge the implications were (we started on a path towards war, not to mention removing our shoes at airports).

Last week, it happened again, fortunately with a positive event. A meteor was spotted over the Sierras at around 8 a.m. on Sunday, April 22. With no thought that this event could have personal implications for me, I went about my normal life.

I was at our cabin in Lotus when the fireball streaked across the sky. Although I learned later that the sound was long (one friend said a minute) and loud, I was indoors and didn’t hear a thing.

My husband and I drove back to Davis. A couple days later I heard that the meteorite was estimated to be the size of a minivan before it broke up.

As it turns out, debris from the explosion spread over a few-mile swath that practically has our cabin at its epicenter and covers the same area made famous by James Marshall’s discovery of gold in 1848.

Talk about another historic event where people didn’t foresee the long-term consequences. James Marshall crowed about his find and word traveled much faster than he anticipated. Adventurers came to hunt for gold — in droves.

Marshall died in poverty. You can visit his rickety cabin at Marshall Gold State Park.

On Thursday, April 26, five days after the meteor strike, I drove back to Lotus for an unrelated meeting and someone told me that hordes of people were expected over the weekend. Still not understanding, I emailed a joking note to my friends.

“Let’s go out for some midnight meteorite-hunting,” I wrote.

On Friday, six days after the fall, I did my ordinary things, buying bread at the Lotus bakery (the line was unusually long) and checking my email there. I read that NASA scientists were gathering at Marshall Gold State Park. Outside the bakery, I noticed five people walking in circles in the grass, staring at the ground.

It finally began to dawn on me that something big was happening.

A few minutes later, a neighboring landowner called. She had been contacted by professional meteorite hunters who had driven up from Arizona and spent all of Thursday scouring her property. She wondered if I’d like to drop by and meet these folks, too.

“I want to look first!” I thought. “And, by the way, what’s a professional meteorite hunter?”

How little I knew.

That didn’t stop me from searching. I read that meteorite chunks were black with white striations. I stepped out my front door and walked to our driveway. Why had I never noticed that every third rock was black?

Obviously, I didn’t know what to look for, a problem that was remedied a few hours later when the professional meteorite hunter showed up at my place with three small suitcases of samples, eager to explain her passion.

“It was a witnessed fall,” she said, teaching me new terms. “How lucky we were.”

“This is a carbonaceous chondrite,” she said. “Billions of years old. Possibly part of the origin of life. Very rare. Very valuable.”

The NASA scientists must have been hoping for specimens. I began to understand that a competition was in progress. On the open market, those same specimens could fetch as much as $1,000 a gram.

The meteorite hunter’s enthusiasm seemed genuine as she showed off beautiful stones of several different kinds, and told us she always asks permission from landowners like me before searching. She warned me about unscrupulous meteorite hunters who don’t.

I realized that I was getting a sales pitch as well as an education.

“Yes,” I said to the nice lady, “you can search our property.”

“We’ll share,” she promised. “Twenty percent for you.”

Count it as part of my naivete that I still said yes.

The next day I flew to Wisconsin from where I am writing this column. No hunting time for me. I worry that our property is being invaded by meteorite hunters, professional and not, scrupulous and not.

I hear that people might keep hunting in Lotus for years, not unlike the gold rush, although with disintegration due to rain, weeds, rattlesnakes, and black stones everywhere, finding meteorites isn’t easy. But people have caught fire and fragments are turning up.

Those of you who knew immediately that a witnessed fall on searchable land only an hour from Davis is a big, big deal, congratulate yourselves. You’re much more with it than I am.

Maybe someday, after all the scientists, professionals and newly kindled hunters leave, my husband will pull out a star thistle weed and find a chunk of meteorite underneath. Then we will face a decision: sell it, keep it, or give it to scientists. I never expected a decision like that in my lifetime, but now it’s happening to every neighbor who finds the right stone.

I hear the Lotus store has run out of locks and “no trespassing” signs.

— Marion Franck lives in Davis with her family. Reach her at [email protected]

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