Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Strawberry Hill, Acton

Had no time for exploring last weekend but managed to convince FFC to take 10 minutes to drive over to Strawberry Hill (really in his back yard) and step into the woods over there. There is a Spring Hill conservation land trail head at the top of the road where you can walk in, heading north. It is a nice woods and I was surprised to not see anything up there. Then FFC cleaned off a "bowl" and, a moment later, I thought I saw a rock pile off in the woods to the left. The bowl:
The first rock pile:
 There is a white rock nestled in the tree roots.
And then, there was another rock pile and ... ooh! what's that beyond?
 First we give this pile # 2 a closer look:
It also has a white stone in the interior:
And a grey quartz on its perimeter (the pile is slightly rectangular and the quartz is on the right  hand corner):
closer:
 Then, the mound! It is a rectangular mound:
Note the manitou-like stone leaning over, in the middle:
Here is a view in towards the inevitable hollow, passing beside that interesting stone:
I think this is a hollow that no one would blame on vandals:
The argument against vandalism is: this L-shaped hole is deliberate and shows no sighs of being the result of someone digging a hole into the pile. On the contrary, it shows tidy arrangements of small rocks in spite of severe damage. Also, there was a small white rock (against the tree):
Look at the context of this mound:

FFC was looking at other details. He pointed out several other rock piles buried under leaves:
and curious rock shapes.
How bout this pile and it's white rock:
 closer:
This one had a lot of structure:
He also called attention to a linear feature that was at the top of the site (which we saw near the bowl on the way in, but ignored not seeing that it was a separate structure). This linear feature ended below near some of the rock piles. It had a few white rocks at the end:
 It ended above, looking towards a distant horizon
 We'll have to "Stupid Sheet the wall" to see where it is pointing.
 
Pretty good "10 minutes". One of the closest sites to the road, that I can think of. 

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