Larkin Hill - Boylston MA

There are still a few hills looking west over Wachusett Reservoir that I have not climbed, so I thought to explore Larkin Hill a bit. I already knew there were some rock piles there visible from the road (from the main road left of the hill). The interesting looking deep valley on the northeast side of the hill was, in fact, an old quarry. The whole hill is covered with broken rocks and, after a few minutes walking, I concluded that this was a badly ravished hill and not likely to have much of interest. Somewhat similar to Miller's Hill in Holliston, there were a few traces near the quarry. Just at the northern end of the hill's shoulder there was quite a lot of broken rock, there were also some subtle clusters that might be piles. It turned out they were upslope from a small spring. Then a similar little wet place south of the quarry also had a few rock piles.

Heading north towards that quarry, came to an area with broken rocks and some clustering. Were these rock piles? Some clusters were more distinct than others,and I concluded this was a site made from quarry fragments: A faint sense of three-in-a-line at a couple of places, suggested it was a standard type of site: You can see this rock-on-rock higher up in the last photo and it is featured in this video below also.Here is a more substantial pile that was certainly not just a coincidental clustering: A bit of video:

Here is some of the quarry debris: Here is something from the second "site" south of the quarry: This shim of the upper rock, and the shape of that rock with a sharp point on it are both significant. I think exact positioning of that upper rock was important. Why would anyone care? In general, the answer has to be because of a visual property of the pile or its shadow. Mmm...now the mountain laurels are flowering:One last pile: This was off a bit by itself. Its position with respect to the ledge is typical of many of the faint traces there on the west side of the hill. Looking back over my pictures, I see that there were actually several scattered rock piles along similar ledges, all along that western side. Probably worth exploring more lower down too, I did not.

Update: Here is another picture of the shimmed pointer rock on a ledge. See how it's shadow might project on that flat surface?