Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Wood Rd on the edge of the Blue Hills Reservation - Braintree MA

Wood Road is the service road that accesses the office building there along Rt 93 across from the Rt 37 cloverleaf. Along it, there are several entrances to the reservation and I parked at the first one (northeastern most along Wood Rd) and circumnavigated the wetland there, to the left of the cross-hairs. You can see the dashed lines indicating old roads.

I found nicely built "cairns" twice. Once at the headwaters of the wetland, where the brook comes out of the hill. I dismissed these since they were present only along a short stretch of the old road and seemed much too integrated with the road. But then I saw others, again along side of the road [at the cross-hair in the above map fragment], and thought they were too nicely built to ignore. But I was pretty unsure of their nature. They were kind of recent, and exactly along the road in a most suspicious way. Luckily as amateurs we do not have to make a final decision. Someone should go have a look when they are in the neighborhood. Here are some pictures:[This next one was more rectangular than the others.]Another:
Maybe ~8 piles in all.

Reasons why these piles might be ceremonial:
  • nicely built
  • of a familiar "beehive" shape
  • constructed together as part of a single 'expression'
  • one pile was on the other side of the road, and seemed to have been cut in half by the road:
Definitely a place worth examining more carefully. I poked around and the only piles I could find were right next to the road. The undergrowth is pretty dense in there. I think it might be re-growth after a fire. In any case it would take someone a lot of work to explore any part of that reservation thoroughly. It is too far a drive for me.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

possibly "old road" may have followed an old indian trail? hense the piles position.
Keith