Lovell Reservoir Continued

Continuing from here. Essentially my walk took me along the side of a valley, up to its origin, and then back up the side to a plateau, after a brief rest.

Let me tell you that after my brief rest (under the letter 'v' of "Lovell") that slope to the northwest looked inviting. Open, sunny, not too much underbrush but patches of fern and, as it turned out, patches of exposed rock that looked more and more like deliberate rock piles. At the brow of the hill was a wall with a conspicuous wall bulge. It caught my attention because of the collapse at the center against the wall:

This was also "suspicious" because there was an auxiliary small pile (to the left) and because of some quartz details:

(Lower right, there is a small piece of quartz, then another above it near the green leaf and, finally, I am pointing slightly to the left of a third piece.) Also, I could see another pile from there and was more confident - for the first time during the walk - that yes, these piles are the real thing:

But never mind the little stuff, I turned and saw this with its feet in a vernal pond (there is water seeping out of the ground in several places on this plateau):

I took quite a few pictures. You can see there was a bit of structure (wall in back and hole in front), now fallen down:

 

I did not realize there were two larger ones out of sight off to the side. Here is one:

Let me call attention to the cream beige quartzite left of center:

About 15 feet down the left side of the pile was a second piece of quartz:

And here is a view from that end:

You can glimpse the quartz on the right behind the sapling. As with the first mound, there is obvious structure here - now collapsed.

The last, and biggest:

 And again there is a hint of collapsed structure:

Goodbye, I'll probably not see you again:

On the way back to the car, there were a few smaller mounds, a house foundation, then a further small cluster of piles around a seep. I have no reason to think the house foundation is from a different age than the piles. As is often true in northern Fitchburg, it looks like the farmers were continuing some older traditions. One comment about the style of piles: these are not your typical rectangles with hollows - they are more like messy, multilevel, with internal walls. Quite like others from this same specific area, as shown here and especially here.

The whole slope is a graveyard. Does it matter? Perhaps the town needs to know about it, so they can avoid bulldozing and logging. But otherwise it is a remote area and reasonably likely to remain undisturbed.