Monday, March 10, 2008

A hill near Gilmore Rd Southborough, MA

I went out to this hill and ended up exploring the two eastern summits of the several shown here: I started seeing rock piles as soon as I got to around A. There is a small rock pile site strewn over about 1/2 acre of the northwest slope of the hill there, bordered on one side by a very notice-able short stretch of stone wall. This is the red line in the map and the grey line near the top of this aerial photo:[By the way, if you go to Google maps to have a look at the rest of the hill there are several other interesting wall configurations].
There are perhaps 25 small rock piles clustered on the northwest slope facing the wall, perhaps 15 more on the more level top of the hill, visible from one large glacial erratic that looks to me like a viewing position, and another small cluster on an faint outcrop that faces more to the south. These clusters are not really separate but you cannot see from one to the next over the curve of the hilltop.


So I want to show a little about this site. Starting with a couple of examples and with the wall. Here is one of the nicest piles in the cluster around the large erratic. You could look through that gap if you were sitting on the erratic:
And here we are looking from the side of the same pile, but down towards the wall: And here is a quick view of the wall. It goes off towards 118 degrees magnetic to the right, 295 to the left. I'll write more about the details later. One more thing, here are three in a row:
(You know what I'm talking about.)

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