The Tamarack Spot

 Something I began in November of 2021...

Snake Capstones

@

Happiness Farm

aka

The Petruzzi and then the Murtagh/MacSweeney Community Training Home

The Samuel Atwood House, The Tamarack House,

 The Buell Baby Farm, 

and the Old Haunted House on

Nonnewaug Road, Woodbury CT

Quite possibly built as

John Minor's Watch House at the Nonnewaug Wigwams

    My mother-in-law once told me that there was an old Tamarack tree in front of the house, but all I know of it is a stump that has slowly deteriorated away during the entire time that I’ve lived here. It’s a messy spot alright, the stone retaining wall damaged by tree growth as well as the effects of an ill-fated attempt at a repair involving Portland cement mortar in the 1960s that resulted in more water damage. I should be embarrassed to even show you, but here you go, fresh photos from September 12, 2024:

I'd always assumed that this was simply "European Stonework" because of all the obvious steel tool marks. I've conjectured it was the original central chimney, but these days I'm convinced that it's original to the house, and probably made using the same "Indigenous Iconography" that occurs in other older stonework in the area... 

I pulled some weeds, mostly jewelweed,

and I'll put some gloves on before I go back for the blackberries and poison ivy...

Just as the capstone on the opposite end is a recognizable rattlesnake head,

so is this capstone. 

An overlay to "make it come alive:"

An older photo (2021):

Another overlay:

I took a closer look, down lower, where there is a sort of rhomboidal or diamond shaped stone:

Where there are some "chinking stones" under one of the larger stones,

 a distinguishing characteristic of Indigenous Stonework,

a "supporting turtle:"

Another, just above it, a little to the left:

I guess that back in 11/2021 recognizing a "supporting turtle"

and a similarity in the shaping of certain stones distracted me:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2021/11/some-more-cellar-steps-nonnewaug.html

Waking Up on Turtle Island (Again)

 Shadows on the Stone At Just the Right Moment

As Norman Muller once wrote, "There might be peculiar characteristics to certain boulders or cliffs that may evoke the image of an animal if seen in a certain light or at a particular angle. This is called simulacra. We may sometimes pass by something and say it looks like such-and-such animal, be it a turtle, bear, or whatever. To me, this is similar to a Rorschach test, in that everyone may see something different in a particular configuration of lines or forms, and because of this we must be careful in declaring that what we see, and what the ancients must have seen in the same boulder, must be a bear, for example. We do not know what the Indians saw in certain shapes, and if a shape evokes different responses in different people, we need to be careful what we say. If the form is very distinctive, however, as, for example, a clear turtle effigy (in Killingworth CT) that I was shown in Connecticut, we can be less hesitant in expressing our views..."

https://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2006/04/one-thing-we-need-to-keep-in-mind-when.html

(Simulacrum is a Latin word that means "likeness," a representation or imitation of a person or a thing, like a marble statue of someone, like a wax figure in a wax museum, or a plastic apple in a bowl. A simulacrum can either be a realistic representation or a caricature with exaggerated features.)

  Another example Norman uses on this post as well as another post is of a “large glacial erratic in Rochester, VT, which from one side looks like an upraised turtle head.” 

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/possible-turtle-rocks.html

I very much agree with Norman about that Vermont boulder - and I'll show you a stone "icon" or "simularacum" incorporated into a stone retaining wall here at home that very much resembles that much larger stone in Rochester, as well as including a photo of a snapping turtle that I lifted from somewhere:

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/another-quick-comparison.html

And I'll show you a photo of the shadows and sunlight striking the stones at just the right time of day which clearly shows the tool marks of the European masonry tools used to create this quite realistic Snapping Turtle Effigy:

Norman noted the presence of a culturally stacked stone feature on the opposite side of that big stone:

(And I have to say I didn't catch the "turtle head-like" boulder in this mound before just now, very reminiscent of that Killingworth Turtle Effigy identified as such by Doug Harris in numerous places, including the National Park Service training video this image is stolen from:)

On the terrace above the effigy at my house, there is a grouping of "stone mounds" that feature many different forms of making stone turtle effigies, "Stone Prayers" perhaps the better designation. It includes the second turtle effigy (as well as the first snapping turtle effigy) I became aware in the Nonnewaug or Connecticut Cluster #3 as Dr. Curtiss Hoffman calls it in "Stone Prayers":

Going back to this boulder that young Jay photographed, I have to tell you that I have walked by it numerous times and never saw the sun and shadows highlight the eye neither on any previous visit to the remarkable place where it sits (including one with Curtiss and another with Peter and Barbara Waksman). In fact when I first saw the photo, I didn't comprehend those marks in the stone behind the head stone on the larger shell stone as an intentional simulation (from the Latin simularacum) of, what to me seem to be, the marginal scutes of an actual box turtle carapace or upper shell until yesterday morning:

Are those marks made with the "stone/bone/horn/wooden Indigenous tools" from pre contact times, or were they made with post contact European steel stone masonry tools?

  

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

Special thanks to Jay Wolkoff for capturing the image and allowing me to use it here!

Other views of this same stone have appeared on this blog before and at least for now can be found here:

Big Rhomboidal Boulder

...and a nearby possibly cup-marked boulder, possibly Anthropomorphic or Human (Spirit)-like...

that is also a remarkable Turtle Effigy in a remarkable place...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157658907773529/