Shhhhh!...(they are everywhere)

[Writing after little sleep, the first of a several thoughts to be posted]

Folks: I just love finding rock piles, looking at them, and thinking about them. Retired, living within my financial means, I am just having fun with this subject. It is time to do some "overview"-kind of thinking. 

Driving through 5 states and looking out the window, I saw rock piles every time I looked, from New London to Port Jervis, NY. The only exception was a boring flat swampy area just west of the Hudson River, on Rt 84, where we began encountering Dutch place names with the word "kill" (which means brook). And we stopped in each place, at Cockaponsett in CT, at Woodbridge in CT, at Fahnenstock in Fishkill, NY, and on to Port Jervis NY - where I am hoping to see some of those barrel "cairns" that we see photos of. There were obvious rock piles in every rocky woods I could see into. For example, as you drive west on Rt 84 up the slope from the valley of Danbury CT, there was a prominent mound south of the road in the woods.

And you see mostly the same sorts of things over and over: stone walls, mounds, and rock-on-rock. Each place has the same sorts of things but often there are stylistic differences that are special and local. I might say that what I see along the Naugatuck watershed has much less diversity than along the Concord watershed. In the same way, what is in Fitchburg is more consistent, lacks the Concord diversity, but is quite different from what is there in Naugatuck.

I'll write later about some of the unique things I saw, when we took walks and looked more carefully. For now, I want to say that as we passed an occasional rock pile in Rhode Island - making a faint "chirp", moving on to the rocky, wooded, slopes of western CT, where the number of structure increases to a "low roar". By the time we got to where we parked in Fahnenstock (actually "California" State Forest) where it became a "loud roar", to the walk in to the Kings Chamber, where the sound became deafening - like the crows attacking the phone booth in Hitchcock's The Birds. In that place, where every darn rock had been messed with (and believe me there are lots of rocks) you imagine an Indian walking around thinking - Geez! Where can I find a boulder that hasn't already been used?

In that last place, the piles demand attention. All the more incredible that they remain un-noticed by the hundreds of people who visit. Still more incredible that there are still pseudo scientist trying to claim there had been lots of fields being cleared; up in the completely rocks hills of eastern NY, where there are no farms and definitely no fields.