Line of (Disturbed) Stones”

The Desecrated Stones of Nonnewaug Wigwams

   It's the last dying day of Winter. By the time the sun sets later Spring 2019 will have just begun.
I guess it was back in 1990 that I first watched the Equinox Sunset, standing in the Heart of the Nonnewaug Wigwams, looking across the old planting fields toward the Fish Weir, noting when the sun touched the hillside above a sort of triangle of stones.

East "View Stone" - looking east:

Equinox Observation Stones:

Possibly the Summer Solstice Standing Stone/Marker Stone:

  I was already looking at some very poor Lidar Hillshade images of a place nearby, so I swung down a little and got just as equally disappointed, looking to see if I could spot these boulders I drew:

    What stands out most in the image above is that ditch that goes back to the 1850's at the top and the 100 year flood damage from the mid 1990's that took out the zigzag rows of stone on both sides of that stream. For a brief few weeks of time after that flood - when for an even briefer few hours of time the floodplain resembled the ancient glacial lake it once was at maximum flood - water flowed back between serpentine and zigzag rows of stones on this "hillock." 

   The only row of stones that stands out is one that has a sad story behind it. Strands of rusted barbed wire festooned with the occasional disintegrating piece of surveyor's tapes, covering over remnants of the older serpentine rows of stones in a seemingly long forgotten apple orchard snake through and are nailed to wooden posts and trees along this linear segment of stones that really do appear (atypically in an area where most "stone walls" are more carefully - and artistically -stacked) to have been "tossed along a property line" that exists to today.

Here's how Woodbury CT Historian William Cothren recorded the story:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/02/oldest-of-apple-trees.html

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/02/center-part-2.html