A couple of tries at photoing these, indoors.
For years I have heard mouth-watering stories about people pulling amazing arrowheads out of the mud along the river at Great Meadows in Concord. Heard one again the other day: I guy steps out of his canoe and sees a perfect arrowhead sitting on the sand at the edge of the river. When I go down to the river, I see only mud and dead leaves along the edge. For years I have been scheming about harvesting things more systematically but it was not till yesterday when I started to believe it would be worth it.
I live next to the Great Meadows. For a pre-dinner Thanksgiving stroll, my wife and I went around the Meadows, crossing the main causeway and stepping over to the edge of the Concord River. I noticed water levels are very low and there was some exposed gravel. Aah, a place to look! I looked down and saw that piece of quartz, retrieved it and found it to be thin at the edges, thick in the middle, and generally arrowhead-like. You can see light through it. [But I only decided this morning that it must be a arrowhead broken in the typical way. Might ha' been some kind of Clovis.]
I could not help commenting to a passing kayaker, that I just found a quartz flake. He replied: "Thoreau used to bend over and just pick up arrowheads. He had a gift". It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. Thoreau did not need to have a "gift" if he had formed the habit of looking down. What he had was opportunity. In his day the river was not silted, most of the land surface were plowed regularly, and no one had ever picked up an arrowhead before in Concord.
Anyway, I am so tempted to go stand knee deep in the water and feel around for gravel with my hands.
1 comment :
Great stuff! I like that dark colored material, I find very little of it where I look. Congratulations on the Thanksgiving find.
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