Sunday, March 12, 2006

Snake Meadow Hill, Westford - Introduction

When Massacusettslovakians start tearing up a hill, they are not slouches. In previous times they removed most of the southern summit of the hill. There are huge piles of rubble up there. Here, in modern times, they are doing the same to the southeastern side of the hill.

After climbing up there, I headed northwest off the summit and came, glady, into an area where the granite quality was not so good; or perhaps they already had their hands full on the southern side. So I came to a small auxilliary summit and here is the typical Eastern Massachusetts hilltop. It has these features:
  • bare rock, blueberry bushes, scrub oak and pine
  • round boulders perched about, apparently randomly
  • smaller pieces and slabs of rock that seem a bit deliberately placed, especially when they are clustered around one of the round boulders.
  • recent fire circles made from the same small slabs
You can be pretty sure that this hilltop was burnt off sometime in the past and lost most of whatever top-soil it might have had. I feel reasonably confident that the Indians did do certain types of activities up on these hilltops, and that some of these smaller loose rocks were deliberate. Probably a lot have been moved around. But this is what you see, and it is always possible to speculate about what might have happened up here.

One of the small round boulders rocked, with a four-note sequence felt through the ground as much as heard by the ear. I stood on it and rocked it for a few moments, then continued in a northwesterly direction down the hill.

1 comment :

NOLA said...

Cool, I love to hike the trails in Westford--gues I'll have to find this one!