Friday, March 01, 2013

The Island in Bowers Brook with Rock Piles - Barton 3/Bare Hill Pond Area, Harvard MA

As I wrote previously [here], I was able to get out to the island in Bowers Brook to take a closer look at the rock piles.There are several different rock outcrops in this area where the brook opens up and feeds the pond to the south and, even when we parked on Under Pin Hill Rd, there was an outcrop there with its own small items of interest:
 
That is Rt 110 in back there. 
We crossed the road, then crossed the frozen wetland, and got to the island. At last.
 
The original picture from a distance was surprisingly good. Compare it to this:
FFC pointed to the quartz in the most prominent middle pile.
Note there is another rock pile beyond the one behind FFC. That makes four in a row and the impression is they would be visible and evenly dividing the view from over there on the western bank of Bowers Brook - where there seem to be several places to see the whole panorama.
Here is a detail of the quartz:
 We also noticed a little aperture (the quartz is on the right at the edge of the photo):
One of the smaller piles also had an interesting detail. It is something like a Manitou stone, hanging over a small niche in the pile.
Also the small rocks scattered around did not seem entirely innocent - meaning they had some structure too. It is a bit visible here:
and here. Note the diagonal line and another line going to the  right of the tree (in the foreground) and straight  back to the pile just visible in that direction.
FFC, in his usual way, poked around and noticed a few more buried rock piles at the southern edge of the outcrops. Here is the view south:
And some of the other rock piles:
A big rock-on-rock next to the main brook:
A pretty place we probably won't see again and leave it now, home to the beavers.

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

Wow, nice.

Anonymous said...

How nice to see this up close!
I think the old road was Lovers Lane and the current Rt 110/Still River Road was added across the marsh in the early 1800s. The dam to the south of the island was also 1800's. In earlier times, this area may have been drier and seasonally flooded. One reference says there was a cornfield here.