Tuesday, July 21, 2009

At the top of a gully on Poplar Hill

Referring to the small outline to the left of the "P" in Poplar (introduced yesterday here):
I walked west from the road and was on my way back up the gully, a natural place to look for rock piles, when I saw a first one.
I looked around and there were more. Probably 15 or so and certain characteristics of the piles caught my attention.

The topography was more or less flat with wetness starting around the edges. Coming from downstream, I had just stepped up onto the slightly higher level area when I saw the first pile. The location reminds me of a site I saw at Regis College (scroll down)

These piles were a bit different from what I am used to. They seemed slightly rectangular.
You can judge for yourself if you think these have straight sides.
If they are not rectangular, perhaps they have two straight sides, like a "V".

Anyway, I also noticed a few with particularly larger rocks on their perimeter:
Most of the piles were built on the ground but a couple were up on support boulders, or maybe this one was just taller than the others:
It had a nice piece of quartz in it, unlike most of the other piles, and I take this seriously since this was the most prominent pile.
And I was busy trying to notice what I could, perhaps thinking about the piles with single larger rocks, and noticed an example that was shaped like the classic manitou stone:
I found another example in the next pile over:
And there were a couple of other more questionable examples:
(also see video at end)

Finally, the most recognizable characteristic of these piles was their even spacing. I counted out ~13 paces between several of them and ~19 paces between others. Later in the same walk I found another site that seemed to include pile spacings of about 13 paces so that is worth keeping an eye out for.


To summarize:
  • Top of a gully, about 20 ground piles.
  • Rectangular or V shaped (from above) piles
  • Occasional quartz
  • Occasional prominent stones, some shaped like manitou stones
  • Some even spacing of around 13 paces
So there you have it. Here is a glimpse:


For more on the topic of the number of paces between piles, see the numbers on this map.

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