Pretending It's the First Day of the New Year...

I thought I might just do one of those "Highlights of 2013:

      My Find of the Year was yet another testudinate "species specific" stone representation/petroform, of a Diamondback Terrapin incorporated into a very beautifully stacked stone row (a very long linear segment of an Indigenous Stone Pile?) at the top of a small hill above a salt marsh in Madison CT, just where you might indeed actually find Malaclemys terrapin.  
{ http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/species-specific-diamondback-terrapin.html}

     
You could just call it a Terrapin, since according to Wikipedia: The name "terrapin" is derived from the (Virginia) Algonquian word torope...The name originally was used by early European settlers in North America to describe these brackish-water turtles that inhabited neither freshwater habitats nor the sea." Both Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster agree that it is an "alteration of earlier torope, from Virginia Algonquian*to·rəpe·w. They also believe the word's First Known Use was in 1613 - but not in Madison since you had to wait for War of 1635 to open up the area to European acquisition.
       The good part it that the Diamondback is in Hammonasset State Park. The bad part is a trail that's planned to stretch to East Haven, on the edge of the former Indian Path Along the Shoreline that is being constructed by robbing the ancient stonework that connected to and perhaps bordered the Path. 
I tell that story here:

 http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/shoreline-greenway-trail-madison-ct.html

       As well as here, finding perhaps a baby Diamondback Terrapin - or at least another "single stone" rock art turtle, a cobble placed on a "Stones on Boulder" sort of Stone Concentration or Stacked Stone Feature or *(edited on 7/23/2022)* a Káhtôquwuk or Stone Prayer, “invested with prayers for the balance of the universe,” something that is heaped high, ceremonially, religiously, by placing one stone above another stone:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/sgt-part-2.html

And I even continue to drone on: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/shoreline-greenway-trail-part-3.html including a photo of this that I always meant to call to to the attention of Mr. badbadpotato - a variation of a table or shelf sort of thing, perhaps:

And my friend DC hooked me up with some Google Images on a post called:

Thanks DC!

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/thanks-dc.html

There's the new construction looking so bright above, the far more ancient stones hiding under a cover of green, waiting for the LiDAR to show what's left of the fuel breaks of the Indigenous Sacred Landscape Before 1635, when the People cared for the land with prayer and sacred fires in Ceremonies that are long forgotten - but probably very similar to others that are known in other places - just like other stonework in other places... 

I continue on here, seeing either some (eroded with time) human enhancement or just another example of myself exhibiting and recording some delusional pareidolia:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/shoreline-greenway-trail-4.html

Just when you think you can't take any more, I begin to correct myself as visit the spot for the third time, which  "involved taking the "Bob Cat Trail," the trail left by that little machine that I was pretty certain was borrowing stones from somewhere..."

The Aerial Photo of 1934:

In the comments Someone asked: Could this be an ancient fish trap?

I meant to reply: "I can answer that very quickly: I don't know."

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/08/reminds-me-of-stone-rows.html

I don't know when I'll get to the next segment of the trail to look more closely - whether I'll have the chance to take some photos of what still exists or just witness it's silent departure.

If you get there first, take some photos before more disappears.

The other highlight was the inclusion of a photo of mine in a book on the Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples by Dr. Lucianne Lavin, who actually labelled it as "turtle-shaped."

     

The above makes me feel some degree of validation - and I don't want to forget a little more, another highlight, the number of sites I've documented that Curtis Hoffman includes on this map of "stone constructions in the eastern seaboard:"