Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Roadside rock piles driving around and tresspassing in Townsend, Fitchburg, Ashby, and Lunenburg

I planned to continue exploring the southeastern portion of Willard Brook State Forest. As I drove towards there, I twice spotted rock piles by the roadside, got out to take pictures, and twice was accosted by landowners - made my apologies and beat a hasty retreat. Then later I got to where I was walking - completely sandy terrain - and gave up exploring because there were no rocks to make rock piles out of and then ended up driving around some more. A third time I saw rock piles next to the road, I thought I would wise up and ask permission, located the landowner to ask and he said: "no" with some lame excuse for his lack of charity. After that I drove around some more, saw a fourth rock pile site (we are at the top of Pearl Hill at this point) but decided to skip getting out and investigating, and skip asking for permission. So after that I was not sure whether I should drive around and locate the main Park entrance to the north, or call it quits and go home. At this point, Bruce M. phoned my cell and asked if I wanted to go to Brockton and Holbrook south of Weymouth, south of Boston. So I drove over there and that is a story for another day. In all I spend 8 hours driving and hiking and ended up seeing, let's count: four sites in Lunenburg and vicinity and at least two sites down in Holbrook. With six sites under my belt for Saturday, there was no strong incentive to go out Sunday, so instead I went to a home town site with my wife for a short and pleasant walk.

At the 2nd site in Lunenburg the landowner was not angry but interested in what I was doing and we walked around together for a few minutes looking at the rock piles on his land. This is near a tributary to Mulpus Brook. The piles were divided into two groups on his land. The first group consisted of piles on support boulders:
This last one is a real beauty, in my opinion.

Below these piles there was a stone wall and a swamp and brook below the wall. In there, there were a few other piles built on the ground. Like this one:
Note how this pile seems to have fallen in upon itself towards the center. To mean that looks very "grave-like".

And this one was on an island in the middle of the wetland. Seeing this the landowner admitted as how it did not seem likely to be made by farmers, although he had always assumed the piles were just that.
After this I owe you accounts of walking up Mulpus Brook tributary a short ways with pile along the brook. Then we can go down to Holbrook etc and look at some of the piles Bruce MacAleer found down that way.

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