Born and raised in the northwest, Lars W. Johnson’s passion for absorbing geologic beauty developed early when the family took a trip south to Portland, Oregon, just in time to catch Mount St. Helens erupt in 1980. Decades, and countless rockhounding trips, later, Lars opened a retail rock shop and organized many fieldtrips, inspiring enthusiasm and inclusivity to those new to rockhounding and a renewed curiosity for locating, collecting, and sharing experiences that seasoned rockhounds could appreciate. A blog quickly spawned to share his accumulated rockhounding information (LarsRocks.com) and exploring, writing, mapping, and cataloguing became his focus. Lars belongs to several rockhounding clubs, including NW Rockhounds and the Mt Hood Rock Club.