Friday, October 01, 2010

Blomfelt Conservation Land, Harvard MA

On my way back from an unsuccessful exploration in Pepperrell I figured to stop somewhere in Harvard - since those woods rarely disappoint. Went to the end of Glenview Rd and spotted (by coincidence) a conservation land entrance. This led into the woods and up a hill: I explored the eastern side of the hill, saw an interesting feature, where a stone wall ended at a boulder:
And, from there, I cut diagonally uphill. Surprise! Here was a rock pile near the top of the hill facing northeast.I poked around the area and found a cluster of maybe twenty rock piles, mostly very beaten down and smeared out.Some of these piles appeared to be rectangular. This is in contrast with the many sites I saw this summer and fall where the rock piles were triangular.Others?Looking at these pictures now, I am noticing they tend to be a bit lower towards the center: each one seems to consist of a slightly raised rectangular rim of rocks, surrounding a lower middle portion. Perhaps these are small piles with hollows? At the time, I was thinking these were a bit like the wedge-shaped piles of the day before (Tuttle Rd). I did notice a bit of three-in-a-row of evenly spaced piles ("markers").When I see marker pile characteristics, I look for a common vantage point. In this case there was a boulder at a few feet uphill that looked over the site:After taking photos, I continued along this part of the hill and found some other clusters. I was not sure if these were visible from the overlooking boulder. The furthest from the boulder, was the tallest pile I saw:This site was an interesting data point, in my surveying of piles with hollows, wedged-shapes, triangle-shapes, etc. It fit nicely with what came the day before and made me think I am starting to break away from the "tyranny" of always seeing triangular rock piles. Back at home, when I went to record the site as a "dot" on my topo maps, there was already a dot there. Good to be back and see more than before.

2 comments :

john said...

wow! just found this blog, have you ever written anything lengthy on this topic, that can be found on this blog or otherwise online?

currently thumbing through the blogroll, i'm very excited about discovering this blog..

pwax said...

Glad you like it. I wrote a "book" called "Indian Rockpiles" - it is among the links.