Atherton Brook - Quabbin and also a site near Cooleyville.

Atherton Brook, crosses Rt 202 in Shutesbury and feeds into Quabbin to the East. I picked this as a place we could walk upstream - having fantasies of how I would scramble up the hills. As mentioned, I am in poor shape after 3 years of stay-at-home from the pandemic.

So I picked this place on the map, with the plan of following an old road part way up hill, then cutting across and down to the brook. We did that. There were large piles of moose droppings and when my wife thought they were from a bear, she started getting worried and was not having fun.

When we got down to the brook and headed downstream we came to a flat bench next to the brook, with rock piles - low and almost completely buried - you had to be looking for them to notice:

Would most people notice this next one? And the chunk of quartz?

Looking at my pictures, I am surprised to see what looks like an effigy:

Is it a fish? A coincidence?

At this point my wife forgot about bear worries, and starting noticing the beautiful surroundings. I'll tell ya, these are very old:

No idea how old or how big these really are:

So we found rock piles. Not the huge mounds like the Moosehorn/Harris Hill mounds. Older, more basic: ground piles with quartz or white feldspar:

This is a common form of pile. Not in a grid, not a structured site. Ground piles with quartz, mixed with effigies.

***

Somewhere between Atherton Brook and Harris Hill, on Rt 202, there was some tree cutting going on, giving a view into the woods full of rock piles. I took a quick set of photos and, afterwards decided some of them were effigies. Looked like this:

The next looks like an effigy using colored rocks:

And this looks like the "fish" from Atherton Brook:

There is enough symmetry and sense of a "head" that this might also be an effigy:

So this site seems similar in age and intent to what was along Atherton Brook.

Last word about my 5 day trip: you get so you notice there are rock piles everywhere. Pick another brook along Rt 202; or go look more carefully along the road edge near Harris Hill. In fact our land is blanketed with old ceremonial structures that no one can see. What an irony!