Wee Bit of Green (California Rock Walls)

     Out in Northern California and Oregon, it was just the warmest February on record. My friend Alyssa has been walking along rows of stones that some Elders call Spirit Paths which lead up into some High Places - and taking photos. The one above is quite near what she calls Pyramid Peak which has appeared on these pages (see: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2012/01/photos-to-compare.html or at Waking Up on Turtle Island - http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/02/following-smokefish-forests-fire-and.html ) before, as in the image below: 

   More green:

 

And I have to include this from a different spot (Howling Wolf Ridge):

Up to your neck in snow

Up to your neck in snow,
Where can you go
To some stone piles and rows?
How about Bad Bad Potato:
  (I always see something there that I'd missed before:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sgobbare/16085415040/in/photostream/

Photostream: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sgobbare/with/16085415040/

Nuclear Lake NY

   “Believe it or not, there's a lake off Route 55 near Pawling in eastern Dutchess County with the rather unusual name of Nuclear Lake. How on earth did it get that name?  It's certainly not something the local Chamber of Commerce would choose.  Well, it apparently was named when a former hunting preserve around the lake was purchased in 1955 by an outfit called Nuclear Development Associates.

The following, from Hike the Hudson Valley, has an amusing take on it all: ‘I know what you’re thinking.  Why would I ever want to visit a place called Nuclear Lake?  Well, let me set your mind at ease.  The only reason it’s even called Nuclear Lake (you’re going to think this is so funny when you hear it), is that in 1972, a chemical explosion blew out two windows in the experimental nuclear research lab that used to sit on the shore of the lake, blasting an unspecified amount of bomb-grade plutonium across the lake and surrounding woods. 

      See?  I bet you thought it was something bad.’

     “Now for some more strangeness.  At the north end of the lake, there are a bunch of stone walls in the woods.  Not normal stone walls like I'm familiar with - the straight walls that once lined farmer's fields but now lie in the woods as some hardscrabble farms were abandoned a century ago.  No, these stone walls ran up and down hills in curved paths.  Not marking farmer's fields either since no one could farm anything on the steep, stony hillsides around this part of the lake.”

A curvy stone wall running to the lakeshore. 

Another zig-zagging wall

   Who the hell builds a rock wall that zig-zags up the hill?  It's certainly not marking anyone's property line.  Another ran parallel the shoreline.  Why do that?

Is there a point to this?

Wall went around this mound

    One area had a wall encircling an artificial hill of stone.  It looked like a ritual space to me.

Another wall enclosed a rectangular area but was too sloppy to be a building foundation.

Not a foundation - Again, what's the point?

     Very strange.  Who built all of these stone walls (there were a lot of them!) that are running willy-nilly all over the place and why?"

From:Hudson Valley Geologist
See also:Turtle Rock in Warwick