Indigenous Peoples Day 2024

 There was just a single comment below that photo on the "Lost New England" facebook group page that mentioned Indigenous People at the original post. Someone named Joe said: "I was going to say, the early settlers recounted how clear the land was when they found it. In fact, much of what they found were fields. Possibly from Indians burning the forests to clear the land for agriculture."

 I'd have to add that the use of fire was more sophisticated than simply burning forests to clear land but more of system of maintaining a domesticated landscape that included "forest gardens," that was developed over thousands of tears - oops: "thousands of years" is what I meant to say... 

 The post included this link where I lifted the two separate images: https://lostnewengland.com/2015/06/connecticut-river-from-mount-holyoke-hadley-mass/

This place has a long human history, far longer than that 3% of time that includes the post contact period. Most of the comments spoke about "colonial farms" and Merino Sheep, ignoring that other 97% of the time humans made use of the landscape shown in the two photos.

  Anyone see the Giant Beaver in the distance?

      Do you know the story, how it recalls an actual glacial event??

(Also: I'm not sure if the Turners Falls Sacred Hill Site is visible in either photo, but perhaps someone more familiar with the landscape knows...)