Nuclear Lake (NY)

 Suddenly a Serpent

  I saw some recent photos from Nuclear Lake 

    and then I went looking for this old blog post:

https://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2015/02/nuclear-lake-ny.html

Below is the original photo that I lifted:

https://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2014/12/nuclear-lake.html

Interesting shadow (where a snake eye might be?):

 "At the north end of the lake," writes Mr. Geologist, "there are a bunch of stone walls in the woods.  Not normal stone walls like I'm familiar with - the straight walls that once lined farmer's fields but now lie in the woods as some hardscrabble farms were abandoned a century ago.  No, these stone walls ran up and down hills in curved paths.  Not marking farmer's fields either since no one could farm anything on the steep, stony hillsides around this part of the lake...

  Who the hell builds a rock wall that zig-zags up the hill?  It's certainly not marking anyone's property line.  Another ran parallel the shoreline.  Why do that?"

(I'll interrupt to say that I suppose these are some choices to consider:)

 

An overlay:

 

The blog is still active:

https://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/

Asking for A Favor

 Please do whatever you can

    My friend writes, “These photos recently came to me in a query.  It looks like leaves and duff were stripped away and maybe some of the stones were moved. 

 This really hurts my heart when I see this. Whatever recent prayers that may have been left are disturbed. Evidence about the feature that can tell us some things about when it was made and who has visited are gone.  

But the worst part is that the spirits

 that remained in that space and that path between worlds

 have been disrupted.

Usually when I visit places where this kind of thing has been done,

 there is no spirit speaking there anymore.

 I know folks at _____ do this a lot.  Some others also do.  Please do whatever you can to discourage any touching of stone prayers, especially by persons who have not smudged, brought a gift, said the right words and keeps their mind still. 

To me, these are not things but more like persons,

and I think preserving the peace of spirits is more important

than anything we can learn from studying them or anything else.

In the end, I don't see the point of anything

if we lose the spirits and the path to them.

 Honestly, I was horrified when I saw someone strip away

around what they thought was a stone prayer. 

 Thank heaven it wasn't.

 To back me up, I point to the Sacred Stones and Red Cedar tradition, (In which Seven gifted "prophets" or apoplendoak, transform themselves first into stones, then into 'evergreens' or 'pines,' and then into stars.)  where they keep saying the Apoplendwak kept leaving because of people bothering them too much (transforming first into stones, then into trees, and finally into the sky as the constellation also known as the Pleiades). That's not the only recorded tradition that says people should be restrained around sacred places, for sure. 

 Thanks for hearing this and thinking about it.

       I think it's really important."

 

 Nohham writes: "I think these are photos of a pichisauonk, a portal.  This is the last thing you want to mess with unless you think you are a badass medicine person. That and cleaved boulders that are wedged closed.

  There are two of these that I know of on Sannakomuk Ridge, one facing southeast and the other facing northeast.  Happens to be where Venus is at Sikwannakizos, beginning of May, and where Pleiades is at Nunnaumunnemehquanhomom, at August 12th.  Pleiades - Anishquttauaog - features in the Sacred Stones and Red Cedar narrative.

The one facing northeast appears in Hidden Landscapes.

This one also appears near the end of a video on stone prayers, Sacred Sites of Shutesbury.

https://youtu.be/cYMdc6ABVsQ?si=kdJLE-uSpPSR0lWt

Both have recent offerings...

In time, leaves and loam have completely covered some stone prayers,

  where the prayers are now sealed in for all time,

 and no one will bother the spirit there. 

Those ceremonies have ceased and would remain as they were

 if we left it up to the forest and the spirits.

    So, I respect their path. 

 If new ceremony is made, 

there is plenty room in this world to do so

 and plenty stones to make new.  

Waking Up On Turtle Island (PA)

 

View from the Watch House

 

Colonialist fence lawfare 

Beginning in 1620s:  Acquiring use of “abandoned” cornfields and village sites by treaties, early settler colonists began writing fence laws and making wooden rail fences. Common fields and crops at first, extending into uplands for pastures and firewood etc. later.

From 1673 and up to about 1740, the people living at the Nonnewaug Wigwams were planting in these "Indian cornfields" while south of there the early settler colonists were also planting:

A preexisting low stone “big snake effigy” fuel break of unknown age might enclose or border “something for something” (a road, a stream, places not to be burned, or multiple patches of blueberries to be burnt over on a staggered 4 year schedule etc.) but it’s not a legal 4 and a half foot high fence...

In 1740, when the Nonnewaug Wigwams were "abandoned" by the Pootatuck in the eyes of the colonists, the wooden rail fences appeared as the area became divided into "Home Lotts."

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/10/protective-spirits-guardian-snakes.html

("Great Serpents can be Protective Spirits, Guardian Snakes having control over weather and water – and protection against both the fires caused by lightning shot from the eyes of the Thunder Beings (Thunderbirds) as well as the controlled burning Indigenous Peoples used to maintain Balance and create Abundance," writes Tim MacSweeney)

William Cothren, Woodbury Connecticut's favorite historian, mentions burning and cultural landscape management: “They encamped on Good Hill that night. The next day they proceeded to the valley to examine their possessions. Much of the intervals and plains on the river, throughout the whole extent of the first purchase, had been divested of trees and undergrowth, by the Indian custom of burning over the woods in the autumn, and the natives had for many years raised their slender crops of corn, beans and tobacco, in these pleasant valleys, before the whites set foot in Connecticut. By this method, the forests were cleared of underbrush, so that the hunters could better pursue their game, and could have some open spots for their rude husbandry."

Cothren’s footnotes the passage with a quote from "Hildreth:”

 “While the red men possessed the country, and every autumn set fire to the fallen leaves, the forests presented a most noble and enchanting appearance. The annual firings prevented the growth of shrubs and underbrush, and destroying the lower branches of the trees, the eye roved with delight from ridge to ridge, and from hill to hill; which like the divisions of an immense temple, were crowded with innumerable pillars, the branches of whose shafts interlocking, formed the arch-work of support to that leafy roof, which covered and crowned the whole. But since the white man took possession, the annual fires have been checked, and the woodlands are now filled with shrubs and young trees, obstructing the vision on every side, and converting these once beautiful forests into a rude and tasteless wilderness.”' - Hildreth

"Hildreth" in the footnote turns out to be:

"S.P. Hildreth, (an) early historian of Marietta, Ohio, writing in 1848, said: “The yearly autumnal fires of the Indians…had destroyed all the shrubs and undergrowth of woody plants….and in their place had sprung up the buffalo clover, and the wild pea vine, with various other indigenous plants and grapes, supplying the most luxuriant …pastures to the herds of deer and buffalo….” (Hildreth, 1848, pp.484-485).

I found Hildreth hiding in an article called: References on the American Indian Use of Fire in Ecosystems:

itcnet.org/file_download/5d76d377-8025-4780-8511-4dc8d0596e45

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_000384.pdf

“Evidence for the purposeful use of fire by American Indians – also termed Native Americans, Indigenous People, and First Nations/People – in many ecosystems has been easy to document but difficult to substantiate,” Dr. Possum read aloud, attempting to read a pdf on the tiny screen of his phone.”

“And yet we are surrounded by these snake-like effigies in stone that may well simply be, in some places, fuel breaks for low ground fires set by these “Indians,” Sherlock Stones mused. “Quite the mystery, my dear Possum, quite the mystery.”

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=grinning

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=protective+effigies

"Musical Row of Stones" is a term Norman Muller uses: 

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/03/musical-row-of-stones.html

Indigenous Gardens Cultivate Healing

 BY ROSALYN LAPIER & GRACE MARIA EBERHARDT & ANDY STEC 

NOV 9, 2023

 “The common design was an effort by white settlers to recreate the prestigious Ivy League campuses of Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, Marler says. These kinds of landscapes are “all based on European ideals of what is valuable and beautiful,” she says. This has conditioned Americans to associate places of learning with European landscapes instead of local, Indigenous ones.”

 

 “By dismantling Indigenous landscapes, settler-colonists reimagine them as their own. Environmental historian Traci Brynn Voyles describes the process by which non-white lands are recast as valueless and available for erasure as “wastelanding.”

 "Thanks to the efforts of student advocates over the years, OSU now has Native signage and Indigenous plants on campus, and in the future there will be Indigenous cultural burning. Thinking back over her time at OSU, Eisenberg says, “I would have never imagined that we would get to this point...”

https://www-yesmagazine-org.webpkgcache.com/doc/-/s/www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2023/11/09/college-garden-native-healing

https://www.vespermeadow.org/indigenous-gardens-network

(Happy to be) Waking Up on Turtle Island

 Years ago, a sprinkle of snow

like this might have sent me on a long walk,

Along rows of stones snaking across the landscape,

just to see what I just might see...

This morning I'm just taking a short walk,

Over to some Stone Prayers, some Káhtôquwukansh

Happy to be Alive and Waking Up on Turtle Island...

For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

 

Gary Snyder 

  from: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/12/04/gary-snyder-explains-his-poem-for-all/