He would visit a hot springs in the area and often felt someone — or something — pegging him with rocks.
/Googles “pegging”
Yes, one would certainly feel that, though you think he’d look back to make sure who it was doing it. Puts an interesting spin on the story, anyways…
“I would go out there often and find things, fossils, rocks.”
I can only assume his “fossil” collection is just more rocks vaguely shaped like things: “This long one is a petrified snake, this one I found by the river is a petrified egg, this blobby one is a petrified jellyfish…”
