Melting Snow And Stone Snake

Washing a paint brush, 

     I looked out the window

And saw something I'd never noticed before.

   As the light, and the rain I suppose, caught the shadows just right, 

I catch a glimpse of

The Closed Eye of a Dreaming Stone Serpent.

And the Serpent Opens an Eye:

One Eye Opens

  I’m looking at the eye of one Great Stone Serpent

              And another suddenly opens one eye...

     Uktena-like, the Great Horned Serpent twists its head to the side,

“Strong Looker” knows your thoughts and intentions...

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Uktena

There’s Manitou in Every Stone

Some More Rows of Stones by the Grocery Store

   Maybe I was in the third grade the first time I walked around these rows of stones, up behind the car dealership my friend’s grandfather owned. That's the old building, just touching the number 3 in the photo below taken right around that time in the mid-sixties:

   These days there’s a big box grocery store up there and the car dealership expanded.

   There’s three or four roads that were not there in the old days, lined with houses – and the part we hung out in the most had already been touched by bulldozers and backhoes making it the ideal place to wear our helmets and drink from canteens carrying plastic automatic rifles so realistic that we’d be either a news story or dead if it happened today...

   These days I look at the rows of stones in a different way from what I had previously learned about New England Stone Walls in the first half of my life, but I still don’t forget that the earliest of fences around here were wooden rail fences. 

   These tossed stones are assumed to have been a linear dump for unwanted stones under a Cross and Rail Fence in the case of these stones. I look at stone walls and I wonder, in the second half of my life, if I’m looking at a far older humanized landscape maintained for who knows how long with Ceremonies of Renewal, prayers and fires...

   Tossed Stones or Indigenous Iconography of Turtle Island?

   Sometimes adding an eye can bring an Icon alive – which is kinda silly, because I know:

There’s Manitou in Every Stone...

Circular or oval or something sort of roundish:

    At a "Very Narrow Little Gateway" or breach in this particular segment of this row of stones, my impression is that there's a Guarding Serpent or two or more suggested by the choice and placement of the stones, another field observation of Serpent Stacking, perhaps not a stone wall as such, but a fuel break that may be a larger Stone Serpent with a body composed of "Entwined Serpents," and, well, who knows what else... 

On the other side of the big grocery store, looking at the car dealership:

That photo was used here:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/03/hamburger-edge-of-watertown-ct-again.html

Variations on a Theme/Eric Sloane Illustrations

Above: Eric Sloane Illustrations Lifted from World Wide Internet.

Below: Variations on a Theme.

Used here:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/06/stonewalling.html

Added 01/02/2023:

Along an Old Paugussett Trail (CT)

I’m just making another observation

Just to see what I can see,

Asking myself the same old question:

Is that Indigenous Artwork?

Is this a Ceremonial Stone Landscape Feature? 

??

I park at an entrance to Cranberry – Swamp? Pond? Garden?

At the first break in the segment on the opposite side of the stone-lined road (probably an Old Paugussett Trail that connected the coastline to the Berkshire Mountains, turned stagecoach route and modern state highway):

Looking back toward that gateway, suddenly the triangular stone stands out:

- and there's a suggestion of a "sideways looking Uktena" sort of thing going on as well:

 Could be: WPA work, on the Estate of ______ who made it a Wildlife Sanctuary. Maybe they just tidied up an older wall (the Old Spring Water Place that was somewhere around here?),  maybe modified the older field-stones, leveled it off, placed those quarried capstones on it...

But then, why a turtle, here and there?

And take into consideration that I've already been to other segments of these roadside constructions, found some other examples of this type of Testudinate Effigy Inclusion. The one below is up at the peak of the little hill I was climbing that day: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157648611640309/with/15472757820/

So, looking for rhomboidal "Healing Diamonds" as well, I'm looking for more obvious turtles - and waiting for some snake imagery to suddenly become obvious - when this catches my attention:

A wider view:

I can imagine a snake or two:

This one has some jaws: 

Farther along, that quartz inclusion looks rhomboidal from this perspective as it catches my attention - as does that circle of quartz toward the interior as well: 

But a different perspective of the same inclusion creates the impression of roundness:

And as far as "Serpent Stacking" goes, I just can't make up my mind about where one ends and the other begins. It's like I can almost see how the stones were laid down, how other stones were added as this segment of stone feature was maintained over time:

The conclusion is that I don't really know and that, of course, further study is needed...

...perhaps with a Turtle Island perspective in mind, rather than the usual assumptions.