Thursday, October 18, 2007

A small Westborough Rock Pile Site

A colleague told me about a conservation land with rock piles and I decided to go and try exploring it myself. I didn't find anything until I was trying to get back to the trail, feeling slightly lost and, ironically, stumbled on a small site in a break-out zone, where water was coming out of the hill in a little gully and wetland. I do not think these are the piles my colleague told me about and I did fail to find some nice site he talked about. Anyway, I was walking along feeling lost and saw this:Quite a nice pile. Usually at a rock pile site in a break-out zone like this, the piles are not so substantial, usually I expect just a handful of rocks on a support boulder.

Here is a picture of the slope with a more typical smaller pile. The view here is roughly southeast.
Here is a view of the same slope, facing more southwest:
A closeup of that pile:
(It is nice also to have such good light under the trees along with the color of the leaves. The light is never too good in the woods in summer).

So I walked down the slope, towards the north, following the faint gully that was forming there. Snapping pictures of most of the piles. Walking through the thick barberry bushes, getting a few scratches but, look at this:Worth the wait, in my opinion. Here are a couple more from in there:
A few feet further down hill I hit the trail and, looking back I could see this last pile, clearly visible from the trail about forty feet away. I had passed the site on my way in.

There is not a great deal I can conclude from this site - a small collection of rock piles along a faint gully, forming on the northern side of a hill. The piles are all supported on boulders and seem to be made from the rocks that were lying around on the hillside - some rounded, some sharp edged. No one ever tried to farm this rocky slope. At a glance I would have thought there were only two or three piles in there but poking through the bushes carefully turned up about eight different rock piles.

2 comments :

Geophile said...

There's something very pleasing about these pictures. I especially like the fifth one down. The piles have a pleasant feel to them.

pwax said...

Thanks geophile. Sometimes I cannot think of anything technical or sprirtual to observe at a site and am left trying to convey the mood of the place so readers at least get a sense of what it was like at the place.