One end of another formed stone pile at the Longswamp site

Here's a passage from the talk James Mavor gave at a NEARA meeting October 31, 1998, after Mark Strohmeyer's death. Found it interesting reading and thought some of you might, too.

"... I want to convey something of the way that Mark thought, worked and wrote about the New England stonework, by quoting one of his letters to me. Under the date of April 2, 1995, he wrote,

'And then in your booklet (Mavor, A Line of Stones to the Sun [which I also have a copy of, with Mark's notes]), you present the compelling statement - "If the stonework is conceived as native American, we have an opportunity to participate in a sacred landscape and to learn the respect for it that is universally traditional among native Americans." These are beautiful and strong words and it is an experience I have witnessed as I speak about the stonework. People who live in the communities where these stones make the landscape vibrate, innately sense the meaning of the stonework and are very moved by its presence. Hearing and learning about the stonework require that you reexamine the land and your environment in which you have lived all your life and come to see it in a different way and - in many cases for the first time - come to understand how you are eternally connected to aspects of it. In the towns of Carlisle, Actone, and Concord, Massachusetts, where I have spoken, people have been consistently overwhelmed by the experience of redefining their world - and thus themselves - through the way the native Americans understood the same land they live on.

'I have found that the critical breakthrough point for people is when they come to accept that these sites are not dead; they are not buried only to be recovered by a different people one thousand years later. When I speak about how the native people are still using these sites today for the same purposes they were originally placed, I often hear gasps coming from the audience. But I continue to reinforce there is noting to fear; that they should welcome this information - that this is for them, too, if they want to see it and participate in it. The power of the stonework's meaning begins to come clear when it is realized that its continued use and maintenance has transcended thousands of years - including fairly recent genocide, disease, war and poverty - surviving and thriving through a system of oral tradition. When the inevitable question comes up - how old are these rows and mounds?, I answer, "14 thousand years old - as well as one day old." Meaning that whenever the stones were placed, they came from an ancient concept of the natural world which is revived each day they are seen.' "

I enjoy his phrase, "in the communities where the stones make the landscape vibrate".