Friday, September 14, 2007

Oglilvie Forest in Weston MA

This is the northwest most place in Weston MA, a diagonal of higher land at the edge of a wetland and running northeast-southwest. So the outward view along this slope is to the northwest. I have been in there exploring before and know that it is a place with scattered rock piles. One at the entrance:
I don't know what to make of this one. So close to the road. Nothing else like it around. It seems not ceremonial.

I also remember rock piles on the bedrock outcrops: and also remember a few rock piles scattered in the pine saplings, isolated. But I thought it would be worth going back to take a look and found one small site along that northwest facing slope at the edge of the wetland.

At first I saw a single pile and thought: this is a genuine pile but it needs to be in the context of something else. I never trust isolated rock piles. So I looked around carefully and after a moment and a few feet uphill I found another very simple rock-on-rock with a line of larger rocks leading uphill from there.This suggested to me that a viewing position might be uphill at the termination of this line.

So then as I walked around I kept in mind that I was still in places that would have been visible from that higher point on the slope. And I continued to look outward from where I found the first pile and mostly along the slope at the same level until I did find two or three more piles.
(I had to step on this one to know it is there. So I peeled back a little moss and next time it will be slightly visible. I was going to do this with another and then realized it was next to a path. The rule is: no cleaning of rock piles near a path.) I think this is a Sudbury Valley Trustees path
The piles are to the left of the path in this picture.

This handlful of structures in one place on the slope is the closest I have seen to an organized site over in this conservation land. I think it is the remnant of a kind of marker pile site.

1 comment :

Ji Hyang said...

Those are the size of the pile I found in Natick town land-- a pile I nearly passed over due to its size.

This gives me the impression there may be more-- although this area hosted a paint shop and possibly other structures in the past, I will go out this weekend and look again.