Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Serpentine wall - Northern Berkshires

Reader Mike H writes:

I was out in the Northern Berkshires in Lanesborough, MA at my In-laws this past weekend. There is a 200 yard wide stone wall enclosed semicircle at the top of a hill with the open side overlooking a steep bank. A spring originates in the middle of the circle and flows through the opening. Enclosed is a photo of a nearby serpentine wall that is 50 yards long (possible Manitou Stone to the right?). Also a photo of the Turtle? formation located at the start of the spring with quartz.
The third photo is of another pile with a quartz boulder that has reddish quartz at the bottom.
The fourth photo shows some pure white quartz rocks in the otherwise grey wall. Close to the site is Seecum (Sachem) Brook, also called disappearing Brook because it flows underground and disappears at points.

6 comments :

Norman said...

Excellent discovery, and very convincing. Others should note that, again, a manitou-type stone is found leaning against the serpent effigy wall.

Someone had earlier posted photos of a stone row site in Sturbridge, and one of those photos showed a manitou stone leaning against the row just to the right of a barway capped with a horizontal bridge stone.

theseventhgeneration said...

In the first photo, there is a stone to the left of the manitou-type stone, wedged into the wall perpendicular to the other stones. Compare that to this picture which is a close up of this wall in NY.

Anonymous said...

Tim, I'm awaiting your photoshop magic to highlight the turtle effigy. Thanks
Keith

pwax said...

That "effigy" sure is symmetric and the quartz looks like the head. "Turtle Vision" excludes other possibilities. It looks birdlike to me.

Tim MacSweeney said...

I suspect the stone row (where did I read about the serpent that encircles the world?)might show up well in a bing map bird's eye. And while I can't en-turtle-vision the carapace for the possible turtle, I think I see a similarity to Peter's "Thursday, June 04, 2009
Effigy with a quartz head - Boxborough, MA." post, that sort of "flate plate" between the two heads.
I turtle-visioned that at
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/06/box-turtle-mating.html
And perhaps it is a bird as Peter says.

Norman said...

The combination spring and turtle makes more sense to me than spring and bird. Part of the problem is that we are seeing these features at an oblique angle, which causes distortion. Also, the Indians allowed a lot of leeway in how stone effigies should be seen. Some features are pretty obvious what they represent; others not so.