Traces of ceremony, bits of quartz, a moose skull, etc. Pearl Brook SF

Some walks are dull and you find nothing. Some are exciting and you go home with a sense of weirdness that stays with you, in images, for several days. Still other walks are a bit dull because you find the kinds of things that are expected - so you go home satisfied but not particularly enthused.

Let me tell you about a walk that was dull but where I came home with a sense of weirdness. I saw little but it was unique. Here is the map:

I was following the brook, just to be systematic, and came to a boulder with a few fragments of quartz, next to a small gurgling cascade (at A). The video here.

Let's take a closer look at the boulder:

Rock-on-rock next to a brook, at a place like this, is reasonably common. But the use of quartz is very unusual. It looks like a little creature of some kind. Perhaps a fish.

After this, we continue up the brook and crest out on the top of the slope. I say to myself: "this is where I would expect to see rock piles" but am distracted from this thought by seeing a basin built into the brook (at B):

 There is a little sluice-way and, yes, that is a piece of quartz next to it.

 Looking upstream, there is another larger "quartz" rock above:

Looking downstream towards the basin.:

This "basin" is a curious structure. Not like a dam. Never saw anything like it. I note the bent tree is placed just right for standing or sitting over the basin.

Then I slogged across and up the hill - a dull traverse during which (I learned later) I was being observed by camouflaged hunters [I wonder, did they have me in their sights?].

I topped a ridge, was kinda heading back, and crossed over to the next ridge. Pausing to look back towards the first ridge (at C) I noticed something else that is unusual:

Do you see it? You'll have to right-click and open in a new tab to see it: a pair of rocks propping open the cliff. You see split wedged rocks but you do not see split wedged cliffs.

So I headed over there and stepped on a moose skull.

About Animal Skulls At Rock Pile Sites
Rock pile sites are not that common in the woods. I have seen around 800 of them. At the same time, animal skulls are even rarer. I find antlers not infrequently but only have found skulls four times in 20 years. Three of them were at rock pile sites.

So here is a moose skull.

I do not know if this was a male or female moose. If male, and the antlers were buried, this would be the same resting position as that of a deer skull I found at another rock pile site. I tried to move the moose skull with my foot but it was firmly attached to the ground. So how could such a large beast die, after sticking its antlers into the soil? Leaving no traces of other bones?

 Another time I found a pig skull at a rock pile site, not too far from a working farm. With both tusks intact, I collected it. Wait, there is a picture somewhere. Here is a link to the pig skull.

At least 3 out of 4 skulls being found at a rock pile site is quite a coincidence. Make of it what you will.

***

(Back to the cliff) I continued across the way:

Now you can see those two rocks inside the split. You don't usually see cliffs embellished this way. Closer:

[You can almost hear the wind rustling the beech leaves]
Closer:

More quartz. Also a number of smaller rocks.

So then I head off downhill and note a small rock-on-rock - a bit like a turtle:

 Closeup:

 View back towards the cliff:

You can just make out the split with quartz rocks in the upper right on this photo. The "turtle" is in the foreground.

So that is it. Very faint traces of ceremonialism. I would say these constructions look recent. I don't know if an animal skull would be used in a ceremony but such items dissolve quickly in our New England woods. That moose did not die long ago, maybe 15 years? And this is what I mean by "traces of ceremony": like delicate touches of a paintbrush, these small quartz structures appear and I have never seen anything like them. It left a faint sense of weirdness.

Back at the cars, I should have asked those hunters more questions. They said "we saw you storm by".

Update: I did not realize it at the time but this hike is in the land between two little wetlands. One was at the top of the brook with the little quartz fish and artificial basin. The other is the headwater of a favorite brook: the Mulpus. I always wanted to find something at the top of the Mulpus. Guess I did.

Rock piles from a site with a pig skull

There was a pig skull here, which destinguishes this site. Otherwise it was a place with little bumps and of outcrop next to a swamp. The swamp is a headwater of more than one watershed. Here are some nice sample piles, including ones on the ground:
Also piles built up on boulder supports:A beautiful spot and, as I said earlier, beautiful last weekend in the sun.

Other piles from a site with a pig skull

And of course the skull - which Barb found:

More nice rock piles in the snow, from Carlisle, MA

I know it means little to just look at the pictures of rock piles. I wish I had something intelligent to say about them. The best I can offer is that this was a site where the underlying bedrock was exposed in multiple little ridges creating corridors between the ridges, set off here and there by rock piles with a strong sense of there being deliberate lines of site following the natural bedrock. Like the pig skull site (as I said) and like the site from Harvard where it seemed the outcrops blended in with artificial terracing. All similar ideas of incorporating the direction of the bedrock.

Anyway, here were some of the nicer piles:

More BHill piles

Here are some interesting shaped piles. This first one is a familiar shape. I think there was something similar at the pig skull site. Tim M. asked about the second pile in the video and I do have other pictures of it but there must have been moisture on the lense: Here is a detail of the end of the pile: It is worth mentioning that this pile is at the same location as the small line of rocks that turned out to be more like an outline, the other day. This one:And this:

More Carlisle Cons. Land with FFC

This was a place with rock outcrops forming little corridors where you could stand surrounded by rocks. There was a sense that the rocks themselves were enhancing one direction.
And as we went in, we started seeing some pretty nice piles, in good condition.
This reminds me a lot of the site with the pig skull in Tyngsborough.


And what about this one? You better believe someone who built rock piles was also in there moving larger rocks around: