On the Cliffside by the Ridgetop

Back in April 2012, I explored a little of this cliffside. If memory serves right, there's a little overhanging spot with a curious little slab of stone that might be intentionally set up the way it is and maybe enhanced as well:

I had this nagging little feeling that I'd seen something like this somewhere before.

Eventually I realised that it was reminding me of a photo I'd seen that Larry Harrop had taken, somewhere in Rhode Island, I believe:

This might just be a coincidence, but then again, maybe not not. Larry's photo is striking and dramatic, might give you goosebumps every time you look at it, and leave you filled with a sense of Mystery and Wonder. Mine is maybe just some rock that cleaved off an outcrop and just happened to stick into the little bit of soil below, but you never know. I flipped these images around, as if this would help me gain enlightenment, and still really don't know what to think...

Ridgetop

Boulder, perched on the bedrock, in Sept. 2012 

Looking to the right, there's some suggestion of stones stacked on the bedrock, as if the large almost level area of the ridgetop just above here might be encircled by stones - which turns out to be almost the case and cause for me to wonder about all sorts of possibilities. There isn't a solid unbroken ring of stones - are they now missing or was the encircling row being built and never finished? Were the gaps intentional and part of the whole deal? These are probably things I'll never be sure of unless I find that 3 or 4 hundred year old Pootatuck man that could tell me...

Another bunch of photos to open in a new window or tab, this photo was taken looking back toward the colorful boulder, which would be to the extreme left. There's a stretch of stone row toward the left in the photo above, boulders and cobbles that in a way is like a barrier that also makes a little walkway along a cliff side, on the cliff side of the stone row...

Above: outside looking in, below: inside looking out...

The three photos below are of some sort of possible effigy...

At its most northern point this row blends into the outcrop, you might say...

...and walking to its south it blends back in again (note the cobbles placed in the gap).

Then the row seems to dissappear - or something...  

...another walk along this eastern edge of the ridge is certainly something I intend to do.

I want to look at this "not too short stretch" of stone row again, as well as this one below that is orientated East and West - and how did I walk by that boulder without looking at it more closely???

This boulder hidden by the tree that my photo merge chose as a focal point, cropped from the original:

There are tangles of barberries and those invasive roses I can never remember the name of as you head to the southern border of this piece of land trust property, hiding more stone work. Some is zigzag and some is not, including that linear property line with its posts and wire...

...a little modern shrine (with a stone pile in front of it?)...

...and a wild life (or curious unintentional tresspasser) cam:

I smiled and waved, of course, and then waded back into the brush, following this low stone row that can't be seen all that well really, but eventually led to the "Short Stretches" from that first post:
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/09/short-stretches-for-pw.html

Leading to the Ridgetop

(You might want to open these photos in a new tab or window for "full effect.")

Back on that April day I was talking about in the post before this one, I recall having to choose which way to go, once I'd come to these "short stretches of stone piles." Some were in a North/South direction on the western slope of the ridgetop, but I could also see some to the East and above me:

(The shadows from the trees are pointing north in the photo above, taken around mid-day. The line of stones/stone piles in the photo can be seen running from the bottom right corner to the "cobbles on either a boulder or bedrock" sort of pile in the center of this image.)

My original intention that had been to see what was "up on top," up above that Snake or Serpent Effigy, so I continued to the top - I think I even said "To the Top!" out loud. Besides, who could resist taking a closer look at such a dramatic appearing group of stones like that?

On the way to it was this one below, sort of like a low domed turtle carapace, if you are looking for that sort of thing. Otherwise it is just a "rock" - which is really a "stone" - a "cobble" at that...

Moving upward:

I have to include the re-touched photo below that either shows a recognition of certain patterns that occur in testudinate or turtle-like petroforms found on Turtle Island or the so-far unrecognised mental illness that is diagnosed by the long term occurance of when someone for an extended period of time "sees turtles everywhere, especially in stones."

(Maybe they will name it after me!)

Moving onward:

The impression I recall is that the piles were mostly "round' sorts of constructions:

I can't honestly say whether or not this boulder is in this "line" of stone constructions. I do know that when I spotted it that it was an "Oh wow!" sort of moment. It was, and still is, a remarkable sort of boulder, very colorful and very beautiful, just below the ridgetop, beckoning a person upward still... 

...to the ridgetop.

"Short Stretches" for PW

Here's the short stretches (best viewed in a new tab or window):

A less vivid setting on the camera shows them best - and this may be a bird effigy:

Or is it?:

In the above I'm looking North, below looking south at the same stone "heap," for lack of a better word for such a beautiful and probably very meaningful construction:

There's more stone mounds but since the older photos I'd taken on the April visit aren't as obscured by vegetation, I am going to wait to go back to capture the rest of them.

 I was there in the first place to see if the ridgetop was surrounded or encircled in stones, prompted to do so after seeing these photos of a stone encircled ridgetop, taken by my friend Alyssa Alexandria, up in Northern California:

(Above and below photos: www.AncientPathsofShastina.com )

These, above and below, are views of the ridgetop I walked up to on 9/24/12.

I'd been there once before, April 4, 2012.

(See: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/04/red-eyed-turtle-and.html)

(It's to the SE of this Snake Petroform: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/02/another-stone-snakeserpent-petroform.html )

The view that reminded me of this "high place" in CA is shown in the photos below:

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(Above is looking North in April, below is looking South in September at the eastern cliff edge of the ridge.)

On that second visit, I walked a little bit up hill from the stream stone rows and first found what I now think of as "Medicine Bowlders," much like "Medicine Baskets" of the Yurok, Miwok and other People's in Northern California, where it's been alluded that the Algonquin Language originated:

In direct sight of the "Bowlder" - recorded in ethnologies from N. CA as the "proper" place to burn a "tobacco offering" - was this interesting concentration of stones:

There was a suggestion of the boulder etc being surrounded by an at least partial circle of stones:

 Walking uphill from there, past a spring just below an oak that must be about 2-300 years old, I have to mention that the face-like features of several small boulders attracted my attention:

These next three photos are of the same boulder:

I then spotted some stone piles, in line with others in "short stretches that I followed to the east...

...turns out they run north and south as well. Another visit will reveal more about that.

And there's more photos in the files to fill up some more posts to continue this story...