Last Two Walks in 2015 (Part One)

The 3 photos above are from the last little walk I took in 2015.

A little stream in a little ravine, a row of stones along the ridge above.

The day after Thanksgiving and I couldn't go any further, look for turtles and quartz and snakes and all in that wall above, pain in my knees bringing tears to my eyes...

The day before, Thanksgiving 2015, I walked up (from the building labelled Shadowbrook Novitiate) and crossed the back of that Great Serpent below - it's the town line between Lennox MA and Stockbridge (also MA) and I wonder which came first...

I wanted to see the view from Old Baldhead, stopping of course at the New Baldhead that is marked on the map as (the only) Baldhead, suspecting some boulders or stone piles just might mark some viewing spot where I could look down into the Stockbridge Bowl with all those mountains in the distance. Little did I know that the New Baldhead was the last spot that someone used to clear for a view through the trees after they stopped going all the way up to do the same at the older and higher former Baldhead. Someone still does clear a bit of trees for a view, but that's back down on the road:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/11/also-known-as-paugusett-path.html

 I guess there's a lot of "used to be" on that slope up to Baldhead and if I wanted to guess about why there are very few stone features along the way, I'd have to say that it looks like an easy place to collect stones and cart them downhill to the summer mansions of the Gilded Age. That Great Serpent is greatly compromised, looking as if its body has been robbed bit by bit over the years.

Up on the hillside, you can even find a few drill marks as if the hill was "lightly quarried:"

But then again, there was one mound-like stone pile I did stop to take a look at: 

The words "possibly zoomorphic" did pass through my mind once or twice as I looked closely: 

Historically, a few Indian Monuments have been noted in the area:

    The Stockbridge Indian monument and burial grounds in 1905, situated now on an overlook above the Stockbridge Country Club golf course the the Housatonic River beyond.

 Photo: http://theberkshireedge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Monument_to_the_Stockbridge_Indians_Stockbridge_MA.jpg
     Connections: "Race relations — then and now. How Indian Town became Stockbridge:"
                http://theberkshireedge.com/connections-race-relations-then-and-now-how-indian-town-became-stockbridge/ 

Baldhead Boulders and outcrops, probably messed around with, but still, all things being equal, may be it hasn't been all that messed with either (as the "easier" option). What would it be like here, back when the landscape was fire tended, the view possibly unobscured by trees at sunrise and sunset:

One deer rub...

...and one strange modern stone feature later along the trail...

...I finally spied some stones undulating along the landscape... 

...speckled with white quartz, 

- an old path and a new path?

-  two different landscapes?? 

But are there

Turtles, Snakes and Bears??

Where will that path take me???