Wednesday, February 06, 2019

Sightline created in spite of stone wall obstruction

From the Quisset Wildlife Management Area in Mendon. The area has some magnificent stone walls capped with flat rocks in a very tidy fashion that I think of as "18th century".

Yet the "18th century" look did not prevent there being rock piles in close proximity. Looking back at the  previous:

Here, in the next picture, I came up to a rock pile and found it to be part of an alignment that intersected at the exact place where the wall had been broken down, creating a view of a solitary rock on the outcrop behind. Too much of a coincidence, consider the possibility that the user of the sightline restored the line, sometime after the wall was built.
More on this woods later.

6 comments :

Curt Hoffman said...

From what I can see on Google Earth, there is actually a U-shaped embrasure in the wall containing a large rock pile - if I've got the right location!

pwax said...

Hun. Didn't see that. But there is plenty of other stuff there. Stay tuned.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Searching for the spot on Google Earth, I landed at a parking lot entrance, where the wall is on both sides of the road. Looks like it incorporates a big boulder or out crop or something not too far west of the entrance. I'd be curious to see "gateways" built into the constructions, to see if something in the stones at those points resembles something like a snake's head, like a boulder or stones stacked to look like scales (like the one in PA John martin sent me) or some other combination of stones.
I don't think that the presence of what we call capstones indicates Colonial or Post Colonial constructions. Sometimes they are like the markings along the spine of a rattlesnake.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a November view in Street View mode, plenty of stone walls visible as I virtually drove along Quisset Road...

Tim MacSweeney said...

And sometimes you find those individual capstones might be other Iconography (like turtles), in a "wall" you'd always assumed was an "estate wall:" https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/capstones-defined-sort-of.html

Tim MacSweeney said...

Is that the "big mystery wall" I'm seeing near the entrance??

http://www.mendonma.gov/sites/mendonma/files/file/file/pal_site_forms-mendon_town_forest.pdf

pwax said...

I would say the damage and the related sightline indicate a Native American *rejecting* the wall construction. So I would be leery of a survey that contained this wall and claimed that it was Native American.