Tuesday, April 02, 2019

A stroll under the power lines in Bellingham

Actually, I walked in along a power line, seeing a mound at 'A', an interesting split wedged rock at 'B' and a number of brook-side piles of various sorts, around 'C'.
I wanted to get to that beautiful landform between the swamp, left of center, and the river, not shown to the left of the map fragment. I guess my legs are getting weak, or the day was getting late, cuz the featureless lowlands discouraged me.
The mound at 'A' was a reasonably typical rectangular mound with inner structure. It is built into a wall. Walking southwest from the road, under the power lines I find:
I see a white rock on top.  

Looking for details, I do not see much, just that there was some structure, now, degenerate.

[Update: Look again, it is clear someone drove a heavy piece of tread equipment up on top of the pile.]
Looking back:
I did not find a lot later, so took other pictures at the end of the walk. For instance, of this smaller one a few yards away:
And some details on the back side, showing the sense of "corner" on the rectangle:
 Showing small "chambers" near another corner:
Quite a beautiful example. Should be relatively safe, there under the power lines.

Other things worth showing from my walk include this interesting example of a wedges inserted in a split boulder. I never saw an example like this:
Some of these inserts look modern. Also, some real effort went into getting those small rock jammed in there. Increasingly I get a sense that there are some modern people, Indians, who know something about the uses of ceremonial features.
For the record, these are called split-wedged rocks or split-filled rocks and not "split-wedged cairns". I discovered them and I get to name them. I assume the users know other names.

Also saw this wall bulge:
And this pretty little pile by itself near 'C':

6 comments :

pwax said...

I made a little joke about people who stick the suffix "cairn" on the end of names to make things sound official (and more Gaelic):

"I was going to have eggs, bacon, and biscuit cairns for breakfast...but I did not feel like getting out of my bed cairn."

It is a bit like a musical performer who furrows the brow and moves about with expressive passion to convey a profundity that, in fact, is lacking in the music.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Here in Western CT, "under the power lines" sites like these have been thoughtlessly destroyed in order to replace older lines with new ones. I've yet to walk up to that spot you, Norman and I walked up to back in the late 1990's to see what remains...

Curtiss Hoffman said...

Peter -
I reserve the term "cairn" for well-built, vertically constructed, ground-based structures, and I agree with your critique of those who like to call other things cairns.

For the kind of structure you call "split-filled rocks" or "split-wedged rocks" I use "split-filled boulders". OK?

How far off the map is site C?

Curtiss Hoffman said...

BTW, all 3 sites are in Mendon, not Bellingham.

pwax said...

You are right, Mendon it is. 'C' is on the map fragment, right in the middle.

pwax said...

I sometimes distinguish between "wedged" and "filled".