Chapman Mill Pond 2026 (Clinton/Westbrook CT)

 Along the Menunketesuck River on a Wednesday in July

  One and a half years later, almost to the day, my Valentine's Day 2025 Achilles Tendon injury allowed me to finally begin “walking like I used to” once again. I can even “walk the yellow line” without failing the sobriety test even though when I walk I still look more than a little bit like some old man unsuccessful at making you think he hasn’t been drinking.

  My wife Roberta and I parked at the end of Chapman Mill Road in Clinton CT and walked the trail into Westbrook which sounds impressive until you look at the map and see that the “border crossing” isn’t really that far at all. We had been here before, having canoed up to the dam on a high tide many years ago and another visit sometime after the parcel became an open space property in 2004.

 My wife actually spotted the first possible Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape feature, an anthropomorphic boulder that seems to look toward the sunset. The dappled sunlight filtering through the trees would have made a terrible photograph, so I leave it for a return visit at another time.

 I spotted the second feature, a probable flat-topped triangular boulder head snake effigy emerging from a boulder outcrop.

 

Perhaps the apparent body is also composed of several snakes, entwinned perhaps, one raising its head, another boulder with a little niche of sorts that creates the illusion of an eye in the boulder:

I looked around the All Trails site for the Pond for some photographs of “stone walls” in the Open Space Preserve and got some interesting images:

 I lifted a little historical history as well:

  But it was at the YouTube that I found the sort of “stone walls” I was looking for, “the tossed under wooden rail fences,” the “too low walls,” the “Lace Walls,” – the undulating walls with the “snakes and turtle” and other Iconography that may reflect the roles of these culturally stacked stone features that speak to land use by Indigenous Peoples over thousands and thousands of years.

  Out Doors with John: https://youtu.be/VygUih0YuWs?si=xEeluk7FiQgb66Fy

 So thank you John! I look forward to seeing the Stewart B. McKinney video and, once I get this new hip in a couple weeks, I look forward to being able to handle the rough northern limits where the stonework looks most interesting – provided I wake up after the surgery, provided it will all be so easy to recover, so good to be free from the constant pain…

“Káhtôquwuk in Narragansett, kodtuquag(kash) in Massachusett, and Kodtonquag(kash) in Nipmuk. They all mean "it has been stacked up." - Nohham

Skoguonk Skog/Snake and “spirit being ending”

Nohham”s suggestion: Skoguonk kodtongquag/Skoguonk Káhtôquwuk (the short “snake effigy” constructions?)

A little "imagist poem" in stone that might say: "It has been stacked up as a prayer to the Snake Being"

 

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/connecticut/chapman-mill-pond-loop/photos

 And some aerial images: 

From 1934:

(My mom's house is on the image:)

Tree on the Highway

and the Chapman Mill Pond Road Overpass

from the TV NEWS:

Ceil’s Stones Again (Westbrook CT)

 Under the Trumpet Vine and the bullbriar, 

There’s “What’s left of” that section of “stone wall”

Behind the barn

In my mom’s backyard…

 

My sister Margaret has joined in keeping this clear and visible...

They say that Indigenous “Walls” don’t meet at right angles,

And I’m pretty sure that’s not always true,

Especially when standing

Where three Qusukqaniyutôkansh meet

In my mom’s backyard…

 

Three Qusukqaniyutôk meet at two different offset right angles...

(Just like a certain spot somewhere else nearby to the south and west:)

A place above a species specific habitat:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/03/diamondback-turtle-hill.html

  The first turtle that caused me to consider if what remains of the oldest of the "stone walls" were an Indigenous creation can be found following that "Qusukqaniyutôk" in the upper left of the photo northward: 

Qusukqaniyutôkansh (pl): Rows of Stacked Stones, colloquially “stone walls” or “stone fences,” often assumed to be post contact constructions related to property ownership and agriculture.

I noticed an abundance of long nosed turtles that I hadn't really noticed before.

Snapping Turtles??

http://www.wildlifeofct.com/snapping%20turtle.html#:~:text=Common%20snapping%20turtles%20can%20reach,farther%20west%20than%20New%20England.

 

Or a different species, like the Spiny Softshell, with the very distinct nose:

I wonder if the range extended into CT in the past or perhaps, like the modern specimens found here and there in CT and MA, they were imported to someplace from someplace else sometime...

 https://www.britannica.com/animal/softshell-turtle

 At the south end of that row of stones - that leads to a steep bank and and a muddy spot I don't quite understand but now add "possible spiny softshell habitat?" to my mental list of considerations - there's a white quartzy version of that possible head shape: 

I have to think about this one for a while - a turtle and a snake head??

Another suspect, the Musk turtle:

 https://images.app.goo.gl/Jki56d8iGKwQzchU6

I'll get around to a second post of all the long nosed suspects...

 

 In the meantime, here's a bunch of past posts and more images et cetera of this row of stones:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157652313565576

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157710008114312/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157694801672611/

 https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2019/07/revisiting-stone-turtles-in-ct-cluster-7.html

Buddy's Walk Part Two (Westbrook CT)

Continuing on from the previous post:

"Buddy's Video"

https://www.facebook.com/1292771109/videos/784681739941205/

The "Upright" Stacking of Stones:

Above: A Stone "Stands Up"

Below: A Somewhat Turtle-like Stone 'stands out."

That same Turtle-like stone from the otherside:

It was quite near the turning point in Buddy's Walk

and most likely actually is on the National Preserve,

if I read the maps and the property line "stone walls" correctly:

The Hour of the Pearl began as "Buddy"began walking back:

The change of perspective or point of view sort of captured the Serpent-like qualities of the roadside row of stacked stones at this spot:

I suspect another Hour of the Pearl might lend itself to a more spectacular view

of this Stone Snake crawling over the outcrop,

much like the signage by the driveway where the new clearing began: