Thursday, May 07, 2009

Muddy Pond West

I thought if the northeast side of Muddy Pond had interesting rock piles (as reported here) then perhaps the northwest side would too. It turns out there is a low peninsula of land extending into the edges of Muddy Pond from that side which has numerous large and small rock piles, berms, and walls. There is a sense of the site having an overall organization. I believe this is similar also to the sites in the Manoosnocs and the one in Callahan State Forest.

I wasn't sure where to park but picked somewhere near Barrel Rd and walked eastward into the woods and immediately hit a small isolated rock pile.
(closeup)
Then I continued along a path and saw a different kind of pile next to the path (at A).It did not look very prepossessing but I looked downhill from it, towards the water, and spotted a stone wall coming up from the wetland and ending in a couple of disjointed rock piles (at B). The middle pile was interesting because it looked to have been chambered and vandalized:
The terminal pile was an elongated mound angled differently from the direction of the stone wall below.This is very similar to the second pile I saw on the way in, the first day at Muddy Pond (northeast) a couple of weeks ago - where that pile looked like a continuation of a stone wall after a gap but angled differently than the wall.

Further down the peninsula (at C) there was a berm of cobbles with nice pieces of quartz and several satellite piles. Like the wall, the berm ended in a discontinuous pair of elongated rock piles. The map fragment is not accurate but gives a slight sense of the layout.

On the peninsula, at a kind of apex, there was one larger pile made from significantly larger rocks.At the edge of the peninsula, a berm of smaller cobbles mixed with quartz.There were several smaller piles that I imagined as in relation to these larger features. Pictured here in the foregrounds:This last one was the first thing I noticed and tried to video. Later on re-examination I thought perhaps it was placed in relation to the chunk of quartz in the berm behind it. Here is a low grade video to try to make the point. You be the judge.

1 comment :

pwax said...

In the video, I meant to say north north west (not east).