Friday, April 26, 2013

High above Falulah Brook, Fitchburg

There were several features I noticed at Franklin State Forest that seemed peculiar. Specifically (I give a link to a photo for each, from previous posts):
  • rock piles that were very far gone [photo]
  • large bright quartz cobbles in the surrounding stone walls [photo]
  • larger piles or "mounds" in a brook floodplain. In the swamp with their feet almost in the water [photo]
  • some sort of house foundation [photo]
  • a rectangular structure on a wall [photo]
Now I am going to show you exactly the same things from the next day in Fitchburg. The parallel is probably coincidental for the rectangular structure but let's have a look.
  • rock piles that were very far gone [photo]
  • large bright quartz cobbles in the surrounding stone walls [photo]
  • larger piles or "mounds" in a brook floodplain. In the swamp with their feet almost in the water [photo]
  • some sort of house foundation [photo]
  • a rectangular structure on a wall [photo]
Here are those photos, with more context. I started out through the woods from Ringe Rd, up a bit of the "Fitchburg Reservoir No Trespassing Rd", into the woods and up one branch of the Falulah. Passed this wall:
Then I headed up the brook and saw that lovely little quartz on boulder (here) right next to the brook. It is a ravine of sorts. A moment later there was a buried mound. So far gone, I would have missed it a year ago. Now I spot it and notice other faint traces.
A pile:
 
 A crescent, well buried, next to the brook:
Then I cross the brook below the stone bridge, use the old road for a while, then cut back down into the woods again only to come up on the back side of a site I know well at one of the headwaters of Falulah Brook. Sure enough, there were some large things I had not seen before:
And:
And here was something of such dimension that I would have taken it for house foundation:
And below in a new ravine, a faint new brook started, and was this a dam and a mill? Or what is this rectangular structure coming out from the wall? 
And what was up with these large mounds in what might have been a millpond? Well, at least in a brook floodplain:
Here is a one:
 
 And another, with quartz:
 closer:
And here was another:
With it's quartz (on the right in previous picture):
The main brook, where I came in, flows off in a different south-facing valley. On this one, on this side of the hill, there was not much of a brook. I followed the ravine downhill, past rock piles built into outcrops that reminded me of the day before,
past places oozing water, into a boulder filled amphitheater where every rock seemed suspect. The boulder fields might have been ruins, the little niches had to be real.
It was like what I saw in Franklin but not identical. Similar enough to make me think it was the same people. But the extra age I felt about Franklin, translates into a suspicion that those same old people were pushed out of Franklin - a coastal area - back into the rocky foothills of Fitchburg. According to this narrative, they lasted longer, until a later date, in Fitchburg.

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