In this last picture you can see some traces of rock piles in the middle-distance behind. This is the last alignment I showed the other day [Click here and see last photo].
A few feet away: 
And some really pretty little things under the thin crust of snow: 
Although we are told that the destroyed site contained wondrous things (large cairns of limestone, with blocks cemented together from age) there is no reason today to suspect that that part of the hill was much different from here, 50 yards away. I cannot find a single piece of limestone, nor any very substantial cairns.
In another part of the hill, the line is un-mistakable, here are four or five in a row:
Wondrous enough.
Photo by Dmitry BulavinovThe connection between the stone's location and the surrounding landscape can be sensed distinctly. Some boulders have signs of human effect. Some of them weighing almost a ton are placed on smaller stones as if on legs or smaller stones are placed on top of them. They also have signs of their intentional placement in certain places, usually in high sections of the rock closer to other stone accumulations. Meanwhile archeologists haven't found any evidence to state an exact date of the creation of seids."
It is threatened by mining operations, and if you're interested, a petition to save it is here, with more pictures here and here.Acclaimed photographer and anthropologist Martin Gray has spent the last twenty years on a pilgrimage photographing and exploring more than a thousand sacred sites in eighty countries. Now, this stunning beautiful and deeply rewarding book conveys the essence of this remarkable journey to locations and sites imbued with the power to awaken feelings of transcendence, awe, and peace.
In these pages we not only visit, but find ourselves deeply immersed in our worlds most venerated and visited sites, including the ruins of Delphi, the supreme oracle site of the ancient Mediterranean; the Ka'ba at the Great Mosque at Mecca, birthplace of the prophet Mohammed; the great temple complex of Angkor in Cambodia, one of humankind's most astonishing architectural achievements; Machu Picchu, the secret ceremonial city of he Incas located high in the Andes; and New Mexico's White Sands, a place of shimmering beauty that was once a fabled site for the vision questions of Native Americans, to name but a few.
Accompanying each photograph is an insightful commentary that takes us deep into the history, mythology, and spiritual magnetism of the particular place. We come to realize that these stone rings, pyramids, shrines, and temples are often situated in locations that were discovered to possess special powers and energies by pre-industrial peoples who recognized the earth as a living and sacred being worthy of deep respect.
-- excerpted from the foreword, by Graham Hancock
Martin Gray is a photographer and anthropologist whose work has been published by the National Geographic Society. During the past fifteen years, he has presented slide shows on the extraordinary beauty and precarious situation of the world's sacred sites to more than one hundred thousand people on four continents. His award winning website, www.sacredsites.com has received over twenty million visitors since 1998. Sacred Earth is featured in a major Feng Shui journal. |
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Jim thought it might be especially worthwhile because it is the highest point in Natick and was once a southern boundary of the Natick Praying Indian Village. We have had good luck finding rock ple sites by exploring places associated with the Praying Indian Villages. Certainly some of the hills around the Nashoba Praying Indian Village are among the best places to look for rock pile sites; so I decided to go out at the first opportunity. Also this hill is within a slow bend of the Charles River, so it would have been visible and accessible in the past.
Today the hill has a uniform, low density of oaks and some pines, with little or no underbrush. As I walked along, zig-zagging gradually up the hill from the north, it was mostly just the brown of dead leaves underfoot. This made the bright gray of the occasional rock all the easier to see. So I kept on the lookout. I went up towards the top expecting and hoping to see something on the western facing side. But when I got up there all I could see was a few scattered rocks. In one place three in a row lined up and I have no doubt this was a deliberate alignment:
The direction is roughly southwest. I would have walked further in that direction but private properties are close by on that side of the hill.
And this was a first rock pile and the gray with shadow I had been watching was a second one a few feet away. 
There is a barren beauty to the spot. The Indians chose beautiful places.
and it was near a smaller pile too.
[The larger pile is visible in the background. Note the shape of this smaller pile. It is a lot like the one we saw a few days ago as the first picture in "Three in a row with turtle" [Click here], possibly a coincidence of both piles haveing five rocks.]
The gully develops into a valley which, today, is a driveway. In fact there were some other damaged piles on the far side of the stone wall, just above the driveway, probably on private land.
Since these other ones could be part of the same site, it suggests the stone wall might be a more recent addition. In any case that was the scope of this small site along the trail on the southern side of the summit of Pegan Hill - perhaps four mid-sized, damaged, ground pile and one small pile, all placed at the beginning of the water flow from the hill. 
I was in Sedona on business this past summer and had an opportunity to stop along the way at both Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well National Monuments (both erroneously named after Montezuma). The castle is built into the side of a high cliff -- a marvel of ancient engineering. Sinagua ruins can be seen at the base of the cliff. Likewise, ancient stone ruins can be found at Montezuma Well, along with a 1,000-year-old canal that still works flawlessly.
It was good to see a new site. It seemed that several of the piles had one larger "head" rock facing the water 
If I may be allowed a poetic moment, no jewels could be so bright or colorful as this view: 
Further back, still other piles:
The pile was isolated, out of context. But then we saw another pile across the hill a bit, so I realized the first was not completely isolated.
(You can see the first pile in the background beyond the fallen tree.)
But then looking back towards the previous piles I realized that all the structures were exactly in line with each other. You can make out all three in this picture.
So imagine a framework in which a turtle would have some function within an alignment of three objects like this.
Then he also pointed out a slightly larger then an slightly larger pile back further along the same axis. Sort of like this
Another view:
How about this. It sure looks man made:
I came across what looked like a little one-person room made against a stone wall from rocks borrowed from the wall. I guess you could roof this with branches although there was no sign that anyone had.
And others:
There are some ponds or lobes of one pond back in there with bedrock ridges separating the lobes. In one place a wall follows the bedrock ridge towards the water, then ends but a smidgeon of it continues as a small rock pile in one place and a perched arrangement at the very end. Here is how the ridge ends, embelished with placed rocks:
Here is a closeup of that last arrangement:
And then, short stretches of stone wall, are getting very familiar. This one ends in a standing stone.
I spent a few minutes with FFC looking at this with his "Stupid Sheet" and none of the directions quite came out right. Of course the horizon is not flat here, it is a steep southwest-facing side of a hill in Stow, MA
"My good helper, stone pile, you give me good luck. I am going out to hunt now. I give you this [stone]. Help me to have good luck hunting deer. This is what I want you to do." (Ramsey 1977:186)
