Wednesday, June 22, 2011

One thing leads to another

Taking Alleve D with ephedrine, I didn't get a wink of sleep last night. So rather than daytime dreaming, let me tell a couple of stories about rock pile sites from last weekend.

Saturday I went down to Upton State Forest and wanted to explore the southernmost area but thought the only way to get there was via a road that enters the Forest about 2 miles to the north. It turned out the road was not open for traffic, so I tried to make the most out of being stuck at the north end. Walking south, I turned west and south onto a "blue" trail and soon came to a wall junction with a hint of rock pile, then a couple of smeared piles on either side of the trail. Looking around from there I could see an outcrop and when I went to look at it, saw a rock-on-rock. So I kept going and found another rock-on-rock and thought: "all right, I'll accept the invitation" and continued along that contour of land. A few feet later, there were 5 rock piles in a little group - sort of triangular piles [like at Punkatasset, etc] .
My personal experience with single rock on support rock is that sometimes they are like trail markers and sometimes like boundary markers. Here, they seemed to lead to the small group of piles but it is probably wrong to give too much credence to this sense of invitation. More likely they were visible from the outcrop, as were all the other piles.

Some other highlights: That first pile above includes a piece of quartz:Reminds me these piles at Patch Hill in Boxborough. Also, walking around a bit I saw several other piles, and a nice split-wedged rock:[It looks like a turtle but most split-wedged rocks don't.]

Sunday, I went back to Dunstable hoping to see more Wachusett Tradition piles but it was "A Hill Too Far". I found a site a bit like the one above from Upton. We'll take a look.

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