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Doug Toland and the Green Monster By Cate Huisman Doug Toland arrives for an interview at Kokanee Coffee House in Sandpoint with a brown cardboard box. As the interview proceeds, he removes smaller boxes from it, and from each of them, a cloth bundle. The crystals that emerge from the bundles are of such extraordinary size and beauty that the interview cannot proceed, as the crystals do not go unnoticed by those at surrounding tables. “That’s gorgeous” is a standard response to the multifaceted groupings of greenish, black, and white stones that Doug collects. Doug is retired from a career as an environmental scientist in Alaska and now lives south of Sandpoint. But he continues to spend July and August of each year in the cold and rain of what passes for summer on Prince of Wales Island off the Alaskan coast near Juneau. For more than 40 years, he has been searching this windswept, rain-soaked island for crystals, particularly epidotes for which the area is known. The crystals come from Green Monster Mountain, where Doug and partner Tom Hanna own a mining claim. He is not sure how the mountain got its name, but he suspects it has something to do with its inhospitable nature. “It’s a terrible place,” Doug says frankly. “The hillside where we work on the south is exposed to the full brunt of the weather, and the bugs are horrific. The rain tends to drive away the bugs, so we look forward to rain. Drizzle is best.” What could drive a man to spend his summers in such a locale? Doug does not believe, as some do, that crystals have spiritual qualities or can improve one’s health, and he will not represent them as having such properties. But he does believe that the emotional response to them is therapeutic. “It’s like holding a Monet or a Renoir,” he says. “There’s a wonderful, joyous feeling of possessing something of beauty.” (Continued on page 19)