Sun & Shadows (Nonnewaug CT)

 

   Yes, those are regular and evenly spaced segments of stone, on the first terrace side of the road, over by those floodplain cornfields. Five of my steps will move me ten feet forward and I’ve “paced off” so many of them over the last thirty years that I know that my old Boy Scout measurement method would reveal about the same here.

  Yes I know that you’ve possibly read and seen the graphic by Mary and James Gage:

  Yes, I know indeed that, “the rocks made it hard to plow the fields and early colonists piled them up along the borders of their fields. Later the farmers used them to build stone walls and to mark the property boundaries. The area was finally abandoned as the young United States expanded west and better farmland was discovered.”

   Yes, I know that but I also know that this stone might tell a different story – in sun and shadows.

The shadow of a zigzag row of stones topped with chestnut rails in the 1934 sun:

The sun and shadows on a Serpent Guardian making it come alive:

Also on the Long Way Home (Watertown/Bethlehem CT Town Line)

   I seem to have jumped ahead in my story telling narrative, so I shall jump back a few days, and bring you to the town line between Watertown and Bethlehem CT, and some interesting stonework. As I made my way home that day, I found myself passing by some stonework that I'd stopped to take a look at once before, I found myself looking at an outcrop of bedrock that has what most of us call a "stone wall" crossing through part of it. That "stone" in the bottom left corner is bedrock:

The bedrock outcrop on the other side of this "stone wall," the Watertown side, you could say:

Just like Ed Lenik says of other forms of Rock Art, the two most often depicted animals are Snakes and Turtles. As a long time observer of Indigenous Stonework, most often I am looking for stones or combinations of stones, that suggest those same two animals.

Looking at this stonework...

Becomes this:

   Looking at the largest of stones at the bedrock outcrop, this large block of stone suggests, to me, that it has been placed "just so" in order to recall the spiritual being known as the Great Serpent.

 If you are wondering "Why a Great Serpent?" then I will link you up to these stories about the "Horned Serpent:"

http://www.native-languages.org/horned-serpent.htm

   If you actually clicked on it and looked at the link, you may have noted that "in Native American myths and legends, horned serpents are usually very supernatural in character -- possessing magical abilities such as shape-shifting, invisibility, or hypnotic powers; bestowing powerful medicine upon humans who defeat them or help them; controlling storms and weather, and so on -- and were venerated as gods or spirit beings in some tribes..."

    I'll also add that the Horned Serpents (from the Underwater or Underworld below the surface of this world that "we walk on" and "eat from") are the enemies of the Thunder Beings or Thunder Birds of the Upper or Sky World, who can start forest fires by shooting lightning out of their eyes. The Great Serpents would show up to put out the fires, making a battle cry that sounds like thunder, in response to the flames started by the Thunder Beings, bringing the forest fire under control. I'll add that many of the numerous "stone walls" that resemble these great horned snakes could have functioned as fuel breaks (and probably still could) during that "burning of the landscape" that many of the earliest European visitors to  the hemisphere noted in the little bits of writing that survives to today. I suggest that many of these Snake Rows of Stones (as Doug Harris puts it) were intended to function as such, perhaps becoming widespread during that "Hunter Gatherer Fluorescence" of the Late Archaic Period (6000 to 3800 Radio Carbon Years Before the Present) that my friend Dr. Lucianne Lavin writes about in "Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples," when the archaeological record shows more frequent fires, an increase in animal and human populations, and increasing concepts of territoriality.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300212587/connecticuts-indigenous-peoples/

The photos:

 "On It's Head:"

  

       

   

Just at the Right Time of Day (CT)

 

Farther Along:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/10/protective-great-stone-snakes-bethlehem.html

On the Long Way Home (Watertown CT)

 A Remnant of Indigenous Stonework of Undetermined Age

   

As I passed by this old Cape style house, I was pretty sure I'd never actually driven along the newish road that leads to all those big houses on former farm land to the north of this old house...

So I drove up it, just to see, and found I had to stop to look a little more closely at some stonework that remained on the landscape after the earth moving machines had "done their business."

 Yes there was, on that curve you see in the photo above, a bit of old barn foundation:

But there was also this, just to the right of that:

I'll often refer to the 1934 Aerial Photography in order to see if the stonework is visible:

I got some "long shots" of the stonework before taking some close ups (using the sections of sidewalk as a guide) and got to that white milky quartzy stone one may observe near the junction of these two structures we seem to call "stone walls" out of habit: 

A seeming coincidence struck me - I'd just recently seen a photo by Fisherman Dave McLean, an independent researcher with a great eye for probable Indigenous Iconography. I was reasonably sure that a snake was emerging from between the stones, just as sometimes occurs at certain split boulders:

(Above: for your small screens; below: for your larger screens...)

(Enhanced just a little for the human-like face:)

Cow and Apple Farms Days of 1934: