Thursday, January 18, 2007

A Boxborough-Harvard conservation land - from May 2005 Journal

I went in at the trailhead, walked uphill with a brook on the left. The trail crosses a wetland where the brook begins and then skirts the left side of the wetland. They are building a huge mansion in there about 1/4 mile in and about there I went off the trail to the right to explore a series of little bumps and little ponds which may give rise to that wetland and brook I followed in. All through there are little piles of a "sky-watching" type- built on the ground, out of large fragments, with markers and occasional apperatures. I saw a couple of suggestive alignments. Also a place where there was a main boulder configuration with, nearby, a couple of rock-on-rocks lined up with it. I continued in here till I got to the backs of some houses and then turned left/west/uphill over and back onto the yellow-spot trail. This led across a beautiful burbling brook and, presumably would have led on to XXX. Instead I continued around to the left turning back in the direction I came in, went back down into the brook's gully and back up to the yellow-spot trail heading back out. Passed an old lime quarry. Came back to familiar territory and made my way out.

First sign that we are nearing something (coming in the way I did) is a couple of overgrown ground piles and a rock on rock.
As you proceed in a northerly sort of direction, staying to the right of the main outcrops, you get into an area with more of these larger piles.I am struck by the shape of the top rock in this last picture and comparing it to the top rock of the overgrown pile shown in the second picture above. This kind of looks deliberate and kind of looks like "marker" piles. Here follows another nice substantial pile and then a picture of a pile incorporated into the mearest hint of an alignment: At the center of all this was a noticeable boulder configuration. Also pictured is a rock wedged with something that looks red and burnt used for the wedge.
After I swung back uphill and over and down into a gully, following the yellow-spot trail over the brook, and a few moments later there is one pile over in there:
And on the way back, on the initial side of the brook, is a lime quarry cutting a deep trench through the woods.

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