This is a stone wall near the Pepacton Reservoir in an area called The Pepacton Ledges. I started out by finding the end of the wall.
The wall widens just after (to the west of) the beginning in the above photo. I walked downhill and photographed some small, damaged looking rock piles, and continued walking west. I headed back up to the stone wall when I saw this in the distance.
Feeling like this is arguably some sort of mill or agrarian purpose at first glance, I still found myself attracted to the beauty of the entire structure and also surprised that this survived the flood of 2006.
The water runs right along the base of the wall on this (the western) side. The eastern side is higher and wet, but the water there is not as free flowing. It's hard to get a close look at the wall from this side without getting wet, so I hiked around through a break in the wall.As I walked back east (now on the high side of the wall) and crossed the creek, I could hear water running underground (I have it on video, too, and it sounds wonderful). What I found next was completely unexpected.
Now standing with my back to that white rock and facing east, the wall looks like this:
After taking a waypoint and looking at it from Google Earth on the summer solstice sunrise, I changed my mind about the builder and the purpose of the wall...
...but I'll leave it up to the readers to decide.
Can you spell out what it is you are suspecting. I am having trouble filling in the blanks.
ReplyDeleteI notice that the "white stone" is adjacent to a kind of enclosure. Could that be a "seat". Putting quartz on the edge of a viewing position may be a repeated pattern.
At first I thought it was colonial, something to do with a mill or farming, but the white stone, the way the water runs underground (I believe it's natural, but that the stonework could have been made to accentuate it), and then the sunrise/sunset views have me believing it's Native American.
ReplyDeleteI think that spot you are referring to may be too wet to be a seat, but I wouldn't rule it out because it would provide a good view of the winter solstice sunrise and sunset.
The winter solstice sunrise creeps along the mountain that this stone wall is on (starting around 9 am) but doesn't fully rise until after 11:00 am. It begins to set at 2:30 pm and there may be a "last gleam" at 3:45 pm in a low spot (gully?) that reaches the peak to the southwest. Looking back at the second photo, all of this could be viewed nicely from the spot you are talking about as maybe being a "seat". I also wouldn't rule out that this could have been a dry place to sit some 300+ years ago.
The summer solstice sunset is also at a low point on the western horizon. I don't think all of the good viewing from this spot is coincidence.
So glad I found this blog. This is all so breathtaking.
ReplyDelete