Cummington, MA

Out for a drive today: Spotted an interesting ledge:

Stone wall on top of a Cummington MA Ledge. A  historic Hunting Blind?

Rock Pile

I decided to stay out of the woods today, and  walk instead  along a 3/4  mile  private drive which
had been cut through a heavily wooded area from the "main" gravel road,  about 50 years ago .
 It provides access to a single lake-side cottage.
Half way along, off to my right,  200 feet into the woods I spotted
this interesting pile of rocks.  It is located on a knoll between two  rocky, spring fed brooks.
In the immediate area there were two other rock piles made up of a single flat boulder with several smaller rocks
placed on top.

The Logger is Back for another Season

Today I  headed out  to walk along  a 1/2 mile section  of the Old Indian Path which is  lined with effigy shapes and rock piles on both sides.  It was a jolt to discover  The "Forrester" has downed dozens of Ash and Oak trees. He doesn't want the Hemlocks but cuts the ones that are in his way.
Currently these downed trees  are lying across The Path.  He will drag the logs out with his heavy equipment, which crushes and destroys. Everything. The Path. The Rock Piles.    I have marked most with pink tape.  Their survival is now  out of my hands.

Rock-arrangement petroglyph.

I try to imagine myself placing this  arrangement; the heart shaped rock on the left, then four
smaller rocks of equal size and shape to the right. The correct view would  be  from the  right  side.
This is located on a  wooded hill side,  hundreds of yards away from any path or trail. Nearby is a large erratic that has been "decorated" with round  basketball size stones, starting with  a single row  along it's top, and ending at the south end with a cluster.

Looking down upon a foot high, flat topped Boulder, about 4 feet across.

• Effigy: A large boulder with several smaller rocks arranged on it.  Often these rock arrangements seem to form a symbol or animal shape.  These are interpretative as to what they might be representing, but there is no doubt that they exist, and by the hundreds.  They appear to be rock-arrangement petroglyphs. For more information on Effigies (and rock piles in general) see Peter Waksman's Indian Rock Piles website.

Cache in a Large Split Boulder

A unusual arrangement of small rocks on top of a large split boulder

While on a  walk in the  Woods, following the remnants of an
old deer track, I came upon a large split boulder. An unusual collection of various size rocks on the top of the boulder caught my eye; not stacked to create a wall, but placed, sort of a "door" in front of a space or shelf.

 Reaching  into  an open space  at the left side, created by some of the  placed rocks tumbling down,  I felt a pile of smaller, irregular shaped rocks. I pulled out some. They were colored by the soil in which they were nested.

It was a collection, not unlike the small pile building outside my own door; pretty shaped things brought home from my walks.

I placed them  back as close as possible to how I found them.

Reaching around into the crevice  behind the arrangement of rocks:
I retrieved an assortment of  perhaps a dozen smaller rocks gathered together into a pile.
They were colored by the soil in which they were placed. 

With my back to the boulder,  I looked north.
I have to remind myself that there may be snakes hiding in crevices. 

Another Unusual Arrangement

My feet sunk deeply into an area that looked flat; a hollow of sorts, filled with woodland debris.
Stopping, I noticed an interesting collection of rocks tucked up against, and under two long flat stones. This is located about 30 feet from several  "turtle" piles of stones, and the face of this arrangement faces west-south-west.   Last  August, 2015,  I discovered  that the small white quartz rocks tucked into the stone piles glow bright like lanterns  as the setting sun strikes them. I pulled the leaves away. There  is about 6 inches of  soft leaf debris filling the hollow.

Boundary Marker

The spring snow has gone and the Equinox winds have ceased. It is safe for this grandmother to walk in the woods...with loads of repellant because the ticks are out early.
I walked along the old Indian Trail, visiting some of the more interesting  stone features, before the Logger starts up for the season. At each one, I looked around,  wondering why each might be placed where it was; what it's relationship to the others might be. And it struck me that the "standing stone" on a knoll between two brooks, with no other "features" nearby,  might  be a BOUNDRY MARKER. Duh. But what boundary? No current (1770-today) property lines passed through this area that I have been able to find.


Working on the assumption that all of the features in this  40 or so acres  represents the site of a Native American Village, and keeping a map and nature of the features in my mind, it is easy to conclude that standing stone marks the boundaries between various family groups. Clans of the Village.  The Clans can be identified by the "effigies" or stone etchings that appear in one area but not another.  To the  south and west of this spot one could imagine the location of the Clan of the Bear.    Bear Effigy Near Old Spring

To the NORTH would be the  fascinating and unusual features of the Clan of the Wolf:

To the WEST is an area sloping down to the south and west, to a beaver pond and glacial lake:
The location of  the Clan of the Turtle.TURT