Woodbridge 2 - Bladen's River

Early morning, Barb and I climbed a steep slope. I was barely making it and said: let's just get to the top of this rise, so I can look around the level spot. We followed a busy brook uphill, and there was a little waterfall at the edge of the level spot, with a mound next to that. What I was hoping to see:

Closeup:

The sound of gurgling water was always near. This is something we saw again at Cahoonzie: a mound next to a small cascade. Here is Barb's video:

This little hanging valley was a beautiful spot. 

***

I was looking at the stone wall and noticed something interesting.

There is a low place in the stone wall, a dip, that was deliberate. There were no fallen rocks next to the wall, so the dip was built into the stone wall. I noticed that you could see a split rock, beyond the wall, and seemingly made visible by the dip. Closer:

That bit of quartz does make it seem that something special is going on here. Maybe this is another viewing "slit":

Upon closer inspection, the split boulder turned out to be wedged:

I wanted to explore more - this is just a side trail off the main Naugatuck Trail- but was too exhausted to get further up hill. This was the first of several times during our trip where I simply did not have the energy to go to the obvious next spot on the map. I am sure we missed as much as we saw.

Judge's Rock Hill is the hill across the valley in this last photo.

Woodbridge 1 - Peck Hill from Coachman's Ln

The first of several short hikes around Peck Hill, in Woodbridge CT. As it turns out there are two natural corridors that lead here from the Naugatuck River - one a broad valley leading north east from Ansonia, the other Bladen's River. Peck Hill, also known as Judge's Rock Hill, is a steep ridge between these two approaches - holding some of the springs that lead down to rivers and the sea.

By way of an overview, in the last week, we visited sites in eastern CT, western CT (Woodbridge), eastern NY, and central NY. I saw familiar items in all of these places but Woodbridge was a little out-of-step with the others. Everything seemed quite old and there were three or four types of feature in Woodbridge that I never saw before. More on that later. 

Here is a brief view of the first site we visited. We were driving around backroads and found an entrance to the woods off the side of Coachman's Lane. At the top of a steep climb we found the blue-dot trail a few yards east of the main "rock", as shown in previous post. Then a few yards further east, we found a nice site at the junction with the orange-dot trail coming up from the other side of the hill:

Detail:

I am going to say these:

are possible marker piles.  

And a few possible "mounds with hollows" of the oldest (small and beaten down) type:

This is a bit of a "lazy 9" style.

Nice piles, built on the ground and along the outcrops:

And many more:

Barb captured the essence of the place. Lots of things going on, hard to say any rock is not part of it.

Snapping Turtle Partially Compromised

 Spring clean-up took me into the south side yard with a leaf blower, and I found a few stones had fallen from the retaining wall...

Incredible that they rolled that far, I found myself thinking.

This is the largest one - not 100% sure why this one decided to go:

A good capture of shadows helps when thinking about how one might put this back together:

And those shadows show just how it was "dressed:"

Exploring an Indian Burial Ground

 (1) DR350-Exploring an Indian Burial Ground - YouTube

Felony territory.

Cockaponset State Forest

This is just up Rt 9 from Old Lyme, a bit east of Killingworth in Connecticut.

On the way up Hoopole Hill Rd. I spotted a small pile about twenty yards into the woods at 'C', but my plan was to drive to 'A', then try to walk around the hill. No way. The loggers had decimated the hill around 'A'.

Nevertheless:

Sorry about the audio. I comment on the scrappy woods, finding a rock pile just before giving up. There were five or so other piles hiding in the bushes. I'll skip the photos, they were cobble on support-style piles. All in pretty bad shape. You would be too, after the EPA front-loaders get done with you. It was very tough going - roses, raspberries, and saplings. 

So we bailed on the hill. The result was that, later, we got to our destination early and had an extra hike at the end of the day. 

On this first hike, as we walk back to the car, around 'B', I saw something worth photo'ing:

I figured it was some kind of viewing platform.

I did not give this much thought [I am afraid this is going to be the refrain: rushing from place to place, grabbing photos, and moving on. No understanding, just recording.] but noticed something later, when I was looking for examples of small circles on the ground [more later on this]. Look at the first of these two pictures. When you look for it, you notice a circle of larger rocks. It reminds me that many "random" rocks are, in fact, deliberately placed. But you have to be looking hard - and there are just too many rocks to check.

Being disappointed with the top of the hill, we drove back down and stopped the car where I had spotted the small pile. [Another refrain is going to be apologizing for low volume audio .]

So let me show you some pictures from the "iceberg". At first I noticed the usual small piles, going off into the distance. Perhaps evenly spaced?

A few of particular interest:

The main feature that caught my eye was a spring with the "usual suspects" all around:

Looking closer at the boulder group in the background:

The boulder on the left looks like a donation pile. One notes the rusted buckets. This is enough for the conventional thinkers to dismiss this site around this spring. Since buckets have been identified as typical ceremonial offerings, I'll go with that. This is a site that was in use in the last fifty years.

Judge's Rock - Woodbridge CT

 We had several interesting walks in this area. From one:

My wife, in yellow. I used to live about 1/2 mile east of here on the same hill.

Contemporary Cairns

Norman Muller writes:

More than ten years ago, I was alerted by a geologist with the PA Geological Survey of some unusual cairns in Knoxlyn, PA, about five miles west of Gettysburg.  I obtained the address of the landowner, and then I and a few friends drove to Knoxlyn to see and photograph the cairns.

It turns out that the landowner's grandfather built the cairns in retirement.  The lack of moss or lichen buildup on the stones was a clue that they were recently constructed.

Menhir Chico

Thought you might like this:

They are everywhere....but not quite

The other day I wrote about how there are rock piles everywhere, seen out the car window as we drove through 5 states. But the sixth one, New Jersey, had zero rock piles, in the part that we cut through briefly. Here is what you get instead:

We used to call those "corner bulges".

As to the ubiquity of rock piles east of the Hudson River, American archaeologists are not going to want to find out about it. For one thing, they are going to have an immense amount of work to do. For another, they are not going to be able to document things anywhere near thoroughly. There is just too much data, when new sites appear behind every bush (so to speak). What!? Are they supposed to examine every back yard in New England? Try driving around Woodbridge CT, or even Cahoonzie NY. Yep, the rock piles are so numerous they spill out of the woods onto people's lawns:

Trying a little harder to make this point: Suppose they had to bury their dead inside an individual  mound. How many people died in the last -say- four thousand years? Shouldn't their graves, blanket the countryside?

Another example of the "They said their Demented Uncle Built Those Rock Piles"

 The Mysterious Shaker Rock Piles (nhmagazine.com)

(see the comments)

Unique Structures

By "unique structure" I mean a one-of-kind structure that you have never seen before, cannot put in context, and have no clue about. Sometimes you can guess the function but the point I want to make is that these can be easily interpreted as a "prayers in stone", meaning an individual and specific thought gave rise to the building of this structure. 

For example an effigy:

Wilderness Hill, Littleton

Or the use of a peculiar landscape feature:

Pudding Street, East Fishkill

I think we can do a better than calling everything a "prayer". Let me tell you about two small things I saw, while walking back from the King's Chamber in Fahnestock. I did not photo either one but found myself thinking about their details later that night, while hoping to go back to sleep.

So, we were trudging back up the trail, around 'F' on the map, and I saw a small pile next to the trail made of four rocks on a support boulder: a wedge -shaped 'head' rock about eight inches long and three smaller rocks lying around it. I took a few steps off the path to look more closely. The head rock was shaped like a fox head. The ears were well-formed little points sticking out from back corners of the wedge. They looked artificially enhanced. The snout was squared off. There were little cracks and curves shaping an eye, in the correct place [I only looked at one side]. Of the three smaller rocks, one was a palm-sized little manitou stone; one was a small, black, cube of rock; and one was a small, beige, rock I didn't examine. The whole collection seemed too messy to be an effigy and I decided it was "uninteresting" and didn't need a photo. Seeing something new for the first time, my mind was not even processing it.

The other example, was around 'B'. on the map. We were tired at the end of the walk and I did not have the energy to go down and have a close look. But what I could see from about 30 yards away was a boulder with four black, round, shiny component rocks sitting on top of it. Like four fat plums, laid out in a square on a table top. Again, no photo.

I was thinking about both of these piles later, especially the "uninteresting" fox head with black cube and mini manitou. Speaking of "prayers in stone" this pile does seem very individual and specific. But it makes me think of that "wing of bat... chicken bone... blood of virgin"-sort of combination of elements, which I associate to a spell not to a prayer. Or what about the four black "plums" on the table? 

Actually these structures seem to be more like incantations than prayers. Are spells and prayers the same thing? To me, the idea of a 'spell' has me looking at the details in a way that the idea of a 'prayer' does not. 

King's Chamber Reference Map

 

[Hiking in, going south]

A - the parking spot at the end of Waywayando Rd.

B - the long slope up to the power lines.

C - a valley with interesting things. On the downslope, between C and F, a false trail leads off to the right; then there is a clearer road turnoff just south of F. Then we stay to the left (east), at the bottom, where we leave a dirt road and take a footpath to:

E - location of King's Chamber

D - a long slope across the valley. I was looking at a smeared out mound over there. The slope is laced with stone walls.

Hidden Vermont

 Mountain top serpent

   "I have been exploring this area for roughly a year. There is a large complex of stonework in this area. In this video, I walk a few different stone rows starting at a mountain top overlooking a gully and ending at a mountain notch pass." - J.S.

https://youtu.be/4Roxh1ut_C8

Cahoonzie - a bit of a disappointment

Got to Cahoonzie, a few miles north of Port Jervis NY. We could not find any way to get into the woods. The "No Trespassing" signs were on all roadsides. Snuck in in a couple places cuz I saw some small "barrel cairns"  - which was what I was hoping to see. I am suspicious of them (more later) but not of this:

I was commenting to Barb: "This is a very very rock area", pointing at this. Then I go, "Wait, those aren't just rocks lying around. Those are rocks in an oval with a hole in the middle. Kind of a sweet spot, too".

This was near the highpoint of a sideroad called Boehmler Rd. Too bad I was not able to follow the brook up hill a bit.

Shhhhh!...(they are everywhere)

[Writing after little sleep, the first of a several thoughts to be posted]

Folks: I just love finding rock piles, looking at them, and thinking about them. Retired, living within my financial means, I am just having fun with this subject. It is time to do some "overview"-kind of thinking. 

Driving through 5 states and looking out the window, I saw rock piles every time I looked, from New London to Port Jervis, NY. The only exception was a boring flat swampy area just west of the Hudson River, on Rt 84, where we began encountering Dutch place names with the word "kill" (which means brook). And we stopped in each place, at Cockaponsett in CT, at Woodbridge in CT, at Fahnenstock in Fishkill, NY, and on to Port Jervis NY - where I am hoping to see some of those barrel "cairns" that we see photos of. There were obvious rock piles in every rocky woods I could see into. For example, as you drive west on Rt 84 up the slope from the valley of Danbury CT, there was a prominent mound south of the road in the woods.

And you see mostly the same sorts of things over and over: stone walls, mounds, and rock-on-rock. Each place has the same sorts of things but often there are stylistic differences that are special and local. I might say that what I see along the Naugatuck watershed has much less diversity than along the Concord watershed. In the same way, what is in Fitchburg is more consistent, lacks the Concord diversity, but is quite different from what is there in Naugatuck.

I'll write later about some of the unique things I saw, when we took walks and looked more carefully. For now, I want to say that as we passed an occasional rock pile in Rhode Island - making a faint "chirp", moving on to the rocky, wooded, slopes of western CT, where the number of structure increases to a "low roar". By the time we got to where we parked in Fahnenstock (actually "California" State Forest) where it became a "loud roar", to the walk in to the Kings Chamber, where the sound became deafening - like the crows attacking the phone booth in Hitchcock's The Birds. In that place, where every darn rock had been messed with (and believe me there are lots of rocks) you imagine an Indian walking around thinking - Geez! Where can I find a boulder that hasn't already been used?

In that last place, the piles demand attention. All the more incredible that they remain un-noticed by the hundreds of people who visit. Still more incredible that there are still pseudo scientist trying to claim there had been lots of fields being cleared; up in the completely rocks hills of eastern NY, where there are no farms and definitely no fields.

Kings Chamber - Before and After

Was looking at (older) online photos of this chamber. Compared to the ones I took. Using images from image search:

Before:

After:

Notice the difference? Someone stood up a standing stone. Damn, I was trying to make sense of it not being in front of the chamber. Now I realize it is the result of vandalism. What the F?

Here is a question: knowing it is fake, should someone cast it back down? Any guesses as to who thinks they are astronomers? Or, are there even older photos that show a standing stone, which this restores?

Update: I just heard that the stone was there long ago, got knocked over and, in it's current state, it has been restored.

Basic Theses

One thing I am going to be ragging about is the idea that:

Indians built ceremonial structures everywhere. No place was left un-used because they ran out of places to put things.

As I drive west with my wife, I can confirm that every single place we looked had rock piles. They were also in many places we weren't searching: Outside the car in CT, at every open view of the woods, I spotted rock piles. They are ubiquitous. So come on, am I the only person who sees them? 

Another thesis is the "path from the water up the hill" following a path of least resistance. The main site we visited in Woodbridge CT is at the Elderslie Preserve. What becomes obvious is the valley that leads up the hill from below. The ceremonial structure density was highest at the top of this valley.

DIFFERENCES: Way out west in Woodbridge CT.

I am taking a long drive with my wife, stopping and taking walks along the way. After two days of hiking in southwestern CT, the land of the Paugusett, let me mention some differences between here and "back home" in Middlesex MA. Come to think of it, examining differences between here and there is one of the main purposes of taking this long drive. I assume that there will be differences that reflect differences in the history of these places. So without further ado:

There are no large rectangular mounds with hollows. All I see are faintly rectangular outlines on the ground. I suspect these are one of the oldest forms of burial.

While looking for other photo examples, I was looking for outlines and, otherwise, would not have noticed this, in another photo (from Cockaponsett State Forest in MA)

A lesson in how you see what you are looking for (and miss it otherwise) is noticing the oval outline in the middle of this structure. Maybe this is a viewing platform and that inner "circle" was a place to sit? Also this is a lesson in how each little rock is part of the picture and should not be ignored.

Speaking of outlines, there were three examples of a small circle, that are not something I see back home [at least not often]. More on these later:

Anyway....back to the differences:

Everything I am seeing in Woodbridge CT is broken down. Also the piles are made from larger component rocks than the average rock component size back home. Everything being broken down qualifies this as a true "signal". These places are all old compared to Concord and vicinity. Back home we have old, broken down, large component, piles. But we also have many that use smaller rocks. The uniformity of the degree of damage, suggest this "older" southwest CT culture was uniform. In Concord and vicinity we have nothing but variety. The "signal" here in CT is pure and uniform.

Everything I am seeing in Woodbridge is relatively small. Nothing larger than 16 feet across. I am sure there are such thing but I would have seen some by now if they were common down here. 

And then, I am seeing a number of things (especially with Tim MacSweeney pointing out some things I would have missed) that are unique and unfamiliar to me. Namely: lots of "cup marks" in the boulders; a ziz-zag stone row, directly in a spring and heading down hill as a brook forms to one side; and a few suspicious dirt mounds that might not be modern. I'll cover these things more in later posts. But for now, some cups:

The beginning of a zig-zag:

A dirt mound in the background, suspicious because of the rock pile closer to the camera.

This is across from 485 Bethmour Rd in Bethany CT. Saw similar mounds elsewhere but did not photo, they were suspicious for another reason. [Somewhere between Rimmon Rd and the end of Osbourne Ln, possibly along Ford Rd, there is a pond with two identically shaped mounds, next to the pond. Later I was sorry to not have taken a photo. What was slightly suspicious was that there were two earthen mounds. If it was dumped sand, why have two? And why next to a pond? Suspicions but nothing concrete.

Other differences may have slipped my sleep-deprived mind.

Took 70 photos yesterday and about the same number on Friday. Lots more posting to do.

At the edge of Woodbridge

First in a series of "Fat guy lumbers around finding rock piles" 

Got there early and took a little hike.

More tomorrow. I expect I'll have too many photos to post.

Bye the way, there are nice woods everywhere. Right west of New London, thinking..."gotta come back here."