Wednesday, March 31, 2021

The Grinning Shape-shifting Great Stone Serpent's Tail Preview (Nonnewaug CT)

(Fanciful Overlay on Old Painting by Someone from the "Lyme School of Impressionists" I think.)

   I haven't been walking much in the last couple years, but in the last few weeks I've finally felt well enough to walk just a little too much, hunting for Easter Egg Hunt posters with my wife Roberta and my granddaughter Clover. The last four posters just happened to be at the town park closest to home. 



   If you have followed this blog, you have seen many photos from this place that became a town park, a place I have wandered about in for, I just realized, fifty years. Often referred  to as a place where Native Americans were known to "camp," it is actually the site of a Late Woodland/Contact Period Village known to be occupied by Indigenous People from the town's founding as the Pomperaug Plantation in 1673, up to about 1740 when settler colonists began dividing the land into private properties, fencing in "homelotts" with wooden rail fences, often on top of existing "stone walls" of many sizes, types and shapes to establish legal ownership.

  Over those fifty years, I've seen many "stone fences" and other stone constructions disappear after intense thunder storms that caused flooding - including stone work that zigzagged along the river and tributary brooks, but nothing as intense and destructive as the most recent activity by the electric power company in the last few years, in a place noted to be "Archaeologically Sensitive."

   Have there been an Archaeological investigations into the path of this powerline path?

    I can answer that very quickly: "I don't know."  

   Here's the latest photos of the most recent of "changes," brush clearing under the powerlines that has recently occurred, sometime between my last visit and yesterday. Once the remnants of a Serpent or Great Snake Effigy's bifurcated tail, in "pretty good condition," I'll have to return when I'm feeling up to it and see just how badly this effigy of undetermined age has been disturbed...




"Grinning Great" in the blog search field gets you this result:

Power lines: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=power+lines

(Powerlines:) https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=powerlines



  

   

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Southeastern PA Horned Serpent

 



Early Afternoon and The Late in the Day Effigies (Woodbury CT)

 

A boulder at the park, where three rivers meet,
Modernly placed by a Modern machine in Modern times,
Looking very Testudinate in an ancient place...
Plowed into practically flat and level since 1670 something,
These were once planting fields dimpled with corn mounds,
Maybe long houses and wigwams, long before that.
An ancient tree hides behind a barn, a silent witness...

Snake head-like from the other side,
Perhaps just a coincidence...









Later, at home in Nonnewaug,
Effigies in stone,
Just before sunset,
Perhaps another turtle,
Perhaps another snake,
Perhaps something else I'm still unsure of...

















Thursday, March 25, 2021

Of Undetermined Age ("Preacher's Preserve" - Bethlehem CT)

I walked by this wide gateway a few times this week:

On the way back:
Looking at the "other side:"
Another Gateway at the Same Place:
Add some imagination (two eyes and four horns):
Looking for some realistic rattlesnake imagery:






 

Monday, March 22, 2021

New To Me (Nonnewaug CT)

Full sun, this morning about half past 8, then yesterday about noon...
That's a "new to me" rattlesnake-like feature near where some stones had been disturbed by a large tree:
Early in the day, it can barely be seen:
I had already been aware of the North Facing Snake-like feature of this capstone-like quarried stone for just a few recent years - it seems to show quite well in the bright early spring morning:

But the eye feature "comes alive" around noon:

Very much like the stone just to the left of the stone steps at the entrance of the house:
And I was surprised just a little to see a tiny shadow that resembles,
 to the imaginative investigator, a closed eye...
And I'll just have to remember to capture an image around noon...

And think about this diamond shaped stone I hadn't noticed before for a while...
See how these two look later on: