Can you see the Other Horned Serpent?? (Watertown CT)

 

From Bronsonson's History of Waterbury:

   “Fences were the primary boundary markers that defined property lines and distinguished “improved” from “unimproved” land, and early legislation frequently required the fencing of landholdings. Fences also marked divisions within a property owner’s estate, such as those between field, meadow, pasture, orchard, and yard; and, within the garden itself, fences separated areas such as the flower garden, kitchen garden, and nursery [Fig. 9]. The form of the fence often reflected its position or function. For example, post-and-rail fences would mark the boundaries and the divisions of the fields, while a palisaded brick wall served as a retaining wall along a slope, and a picket fence delineated the geometrically regular garden adjacent to the house. Not surprisingly, the public view of the property was often framed by more ornamented fence types, and aspiring owners could draw from pattern books, such as that by William and John Halfpenny (1755), for inspiration [Fig. 10]. Numerous images, including Caroline Betts’s painting of Lorenzo on Lake Cazenovia [Fig. 11], show a more elaborate treatment given to the fences in front of houses in contrast to the pale or post-and-rail fences that lined roads and enclosed meadows. William Cobbett (1819), in this vein, described a hierarchy of fences from the “rudest barriers” to the “grandest” and “noblest,” along with “every degree of gradation” in between (view text), and Asher Benjamin (1830) recommended that the size of front fences be suited to the scale of the house." -  Brissot de Warville, J. P., August 9, 1788, describing the journey from Boston to New York, NY (1792: 127–28)[18]

    “But the uncleared lands are all located, and the proprietors have inclosed them with fences of different sorts. These several kinds of fences are composed of different materials, which announce the different degrees of culture in the country. Some are composed of the light branches of trees; others, of the trunks of trees laid one upon the other; a third sort is made of long pieces of wood, supporting each other by making angles at the end; a fourth kind is made of long pieces of hewn timber, supported at the ends by passing into holes made in an upright post; a fifth is like the garden fences in England; the last kind is made of stones thrown together to the height of three feet. This last is most durable, and is common in Massachusetts.”

https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php?title=Fence&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile

Can you see the Horned Serpent?? (Watertown CT)

  Between the road and the parking lot, there's a lesson to be learned,

using the Parsimony Principle which translates as:

 "It's easiest to leave a row of boulders and smaller stones alone, rather than move them."

     A segment of what we all seem to call a "stone wall," actually seems to be laid down to resemble a Great Snake, by the "Indian footpath" that became a road named for a pond, shows a boulder head followed by a thick body, with a diamond shaped stone recalls a marking on a rattlesnake and the 7th Scale of the Snake Being called the Uktena, where the heart of the "Strong Looker" can be found, where the Uktena could be wounded and killed:

    Just behind the head is another stone sometimes found in other Snake Rows of Stones, spanning the width of the "stone wall," a flat surface facing forward, perhaps a place to rest a set of horns on its head..."

I'm sure it was "topped" with wooden rails, to turn the stones into Farmer Smith's "legal fence" around his "improved property" a little over 300 years ago:

In the "Big Picture, that Qusukqaniyutôk may have been there for thousands of years:

"Several years ago, samples were taken locally in the Lehigh Valley for luminescence sampling. After waiting 18 months for the luminescence dating results of stone and sediment samples taken from eight ambiguous stone constructions in eastern PA in April 2021, the results are finally in!

And with just one exception, all the results predate colonial contact. They range in dates from about BC 2610 to about AD 1740"

https://watershedcoalitionlv.org/ceremonial-stone-landscapes/?fbclid=IwAR0t0rbK3zqX0di9O5aSDCIAy8vOPrL1AnSwCePntRpMbBcT5uVoafykS1Y

If I could find my calculator, 

I could tell you how much 

2023 AD years plus 2160 BC years is in people years... 

Reworking an old post:

 https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2017/01/along-alertnate-route-to-watertown-ct.html

A Big Tree Fall by the Big "Stone Wall"

   (A Big Stone Snake of the Squamation Variation)

I was headed to my sister's house,

to work on one of our cars with my friend Robbie:

There's a "pretty big stone wall" down by that culvert 

that I can't tell you how many times I've glanced at

over the last 60 years.

Last time I stopped to take a photo,

I surprised a Peregrine Falcon, just standing there

down below the road.

I can't find those photos.

And I noticed that a big tree had fallen,

away from the "stone wall."

The "Treefall Side:"

2016 Aerial:

The LiDar reveals the "swampy" wetland and the little stream,

as well as all sorts of interesting details:

It's a "gateway" or "entrance," I was thinking:

The "riparian zone side:"

Maybe, that may be a Snake Effigy, I'm starting to think...

Former Big Row of Boulders (Part 3)

 Thanks to Matt Adams and Derek Gunn for permission to use your photos!

And to Rochelle Prunty as well for an enlightening variation of serpent stacking!

  So it was back around December ‎(Friday the13th) ‎2022 when I just happened upon some photos at the Facey Book page of the North East's Historical Stone Sites Investigations and Explorations Group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/nehssie/permalink/1112730032615474/

   Group administrator Matt Adams wrote: "A few of us went to site yesterday before the bad weather rolled in. The site has been called an “Indian Fort.” There we saw the absolute largest stones any of us have ever seen making up a stone wall. This fact alone had us skeptical that it was an “Indian fort”, the stones were essentially large boulders. So large in fact that we doubted even a team of the largest oxen could have moved them all into place. We figured heavy machinery MUST have been involved."

       The photos immediately reminded me of a spot I hadn't visited in years, a little over two and a half miles from home, up in a nearby Nature Center and Land Trust. Especially so, it seems, when Mr. Adams let me know that the boulders were "a second layer on top of an older wall (or row of stones). The huge boulders near where I live were also placed on a low row of stones as well, in this land trust where many Indigenous rows of stones and other features still remain "hidden in plain sight" where they were placed at some undetermined time in the past:

And yes, after searching around I found this photo above is my only surviving image.

Well unless you count this version of the same, but with an attempt to convey that it may be a snake petroform or effigy:

  The boulders on top of the row of stones could be said to be the uppermost course of stones, laid down as a snake effigy, very similar to this fine image by Rochelle Prunty that is a variation in which the stones don't grow gradually smaller behind the head - much like a big lump in the body of a snake that has swallowed something larger than it's head:

Note well that neither the row of stones in MA nor CT show scars from being moved by the steel blades of a bulldozer or any of those other machines people moved stones around with in the 20th century.

 The two posts previous to this one sum up my attempt to return to this Ceremonial Stone Landscape site feature which I figured would be a good way to compare the two sites with the large boulders on top of the smaller cobbles and smaller boulders. I assumed I would be easily able to do this, but instead I found there were no longer any stones remaining on the Land Trust landscape (unless there are some in the tangle of briars growing over the push pile created since at least 2016, judging from images from Google Earth):

     Speaking of "push piles," Dr. Harry O. Holstein writes about a similar lack of modern heavy machinery (such as bulldozers) evidence in undisturbed sections of the snake effigy - an action that leaves a distinct imprint that even Mr. Tom Wessels would agree with - missing in both MA at the alleged Indian Fort site, as well as in Woodbury CT before the stones were removed, but apparent at the site in Alabama where the effigy had been disturbed in the recent past:

"Since the linear stone wall is located directly on the edge of the ridge crest and directly behind the bulldozed area, it is unlikely this feature is the result of recent earth-moving activity. However, in most areas adjacent to this linear feature, there is no evidence of machine tracks or push piles. Also, the wall is constructed of loose stone quartz cobbles similar to the serpentine pavement and does not contain any quartz pebbles or intermixed soil typical of the recent push piles. This wall appears to be comparable to the linear stone wall features found at other stone structure sites throughout northeast Alabama, thus lending credence to the possibility that it may be of prehistoric origin..."

Preliminary investigations at the Skeleton Mountain site, 1CA157, Calhoun county, Alabama

Author: Harry O. Holstein

Date: Jan. 2009

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A200132376&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=507a7772

This one boulder (in MA) has at least three distinguishing characteristics shared by other Turtle Effigies:

In Woodbury CT, this is only one of several turtle effigies that make up the larger snake effigy: 

Note the shape of that turtle shell above and Mr. Gunn's photo below:

So:

     I may have some other images on a DVD/CD or even Floppy Disc and if I (or my heirs) ever do locate them, I will certainly be happy to post them up (or leave instructions to do so in my Will and Last Testament)...

     In the meantime, I lifted a few more Adams/Gunn photos of yet another third site that may be familiar to those students (or critics) of the Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape, as the phenomena  is becoming known as, which the astute observer may note some similarities as well as some differences of variation in these three sites that are most likely Indigenous creations...

And of course, the most photographed stone of the bunch, the one which Diane Dix pointed out had a bird-like figure pecked into it, back when the book Manitou was "in the works:"

 

Jump to the next part of this little story:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/02/prequel-to-finding-big-lost-stones.html

Former Row of Big Boulders (Part Two)

  As if one had horns or antlers growing out of one's head...

   “It’s a blessing and a curse,” just like Mr. Monk says, this business of learning to recognize Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape features that most people are just not aware of, here in what has come to be called the New England.  On one hand the observer is struck with a sense of wonder, walking past stonework of unknown age with the feeling that one is in a vast open air cathedral, one of the largest rock gardens ever made in this world, here on this corner of Turtle Island. On the other hand, when one talks about the possibility that the stonework isn’t what we’ve been taught to believe - that it's not evidence of Yankee Farmers taming a wild howling wilderness by tossing stones out of never before plowed fields and more probably is Indigenous Stonework, one is often suspected of being in need of professional mental health services, and, perhaps, medication.

"Patriot Plowing" with an apology to Mr. Hedu for desecrating his fine illustration...

    There’s a cultural bias that nothing happened here, and hardly anyone lived here, before 1620, or more precisely before 1673 in the town I live in.

     There’s a deep cultural bias that often shockingly boils down to “New England Indians were too stupid and lazy to build with stone” that simply is not true – and would make this cultural group unique in the world as the only people who didn’t construct things with the stone available to them.

    Just as my friend Diane Dix says, “Because of this deep cultural bias, the lithic remains of the Native Americans of New England remained hidden in plain view for centuries.  Many of these features are constructed with stone and blend quietly and reverently into the natural surroundings. Yet, once one awakens to their presence they seem to be everywhere. Most were constructed hundreds, even thousands of years ago, when the Indians burned much of the land to control the vegetation and foliage did not obstruct the sightlines. Often these monuments lead the eyes to the place where the earth meets the sky.” 

     Diane Dix’s writing is taken from the Nolumbeka website (a group that was instrumental in having the Turners Falls Sacred Hill site recognized by the Federal government as an Indigenous Sacred Ceremonial Stone Landscape in New England): https://nolumbekaproject.org/sacred-site-preservation/

 

           Recently, I had an unsettling experience at a land trust property (briefly described in the previous post to this one) where the former executive director was interested in Indigenous Ceremonial Landscape features. We had talked quite a bit about it, exchanged emails and photographs, and I was even asked to give a little presentation about the subject back in 2016: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/09/stonewall-visions-at-flanders-nature.html

          Since that time, I underwent treatment for a couple different rather serious health issues -  and all those other “events” that have happened since September 2016 as well that have hindered me from re-establishing a relationship with the land trust and indeed, hindering me from the long walks along rows of stones in the more remote locations where they are more likely to be uncompromised. I did find myself “hooked up” to a couple other groups of people on social media, kind of vicariously continuing to explore through photos (drawings, maps and even 3D models as well) that other people were posting.

 

    So: Recently I found myself discussing a site in Massachusetts (I think) where large boulders featured prominently in photos I’m seeking permission to use…

(To be continued…)

"Delusional:"

As if one had horns or antlers growing out of one's head...