(or "Mr. Thorson, Look at These Walls")
This is page 78, the beginning of the 7th Chapter, of a Field Guide to Stonewalls, an alleged expert opinion that you can see states that: "Zigzag traces, though rare, are low walls that were accumulated piece meal beneath a Virginia rail fence (aka the zigzag or worm fence)."
Once again I'll invite the expert, and anyone else who cares to, to look at this link, https://cslib.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4005coll10/id/6508 , to observe a section of town that was the planting lands of an Indian Village, a far older than Colonial town by probably thousands of years, full of these alleged "zigzag rarities." It's aerial photography from 1934 and if you don't see a massive number of zigzag rows, you need an eye doctor appointment because you could spend a considerable amount of time counting all the zigzag "segments" that appear anywhere that you choose to randomly click to magnify.
Human nature being what it is, it was easier to leave these stone rows alone since the first Europeans showed up here in 1672. Unless you needed a handy supply of stones to build something or perhaps allow access into a field.
This spring, it will be 21 years that I've been looking closely at the stone rows you can see in the frame numbered 07599. I can't help it since I've lived right there in the middle of it since 1980. I've never found a haphazardly built zigzag stone trace, but I've found many of these rows that still exist, and have protested their destruction time and time again (and even documented the destruction of a segment along the bordering property owned by my wife, on the "Indian Trail to Nonnewaug," as well as property acquired by eminent domain in the 1960's that the family retained use of, in posts from the spring and early summer of 2007).
Here's one for example:
You can read more and see more here (or pretend it's all "field clearing" by "Yankee Farmers"):
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/11/elusive-snake.html
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