Big Boulder Headed Snake Effigy
At a Place Called Orenaug
My first experience with my grandson Xavier at the wheel of a car landed me at a dentist office on Main Street South in Woodbury CT.
I was surprised to see the original "cape' style home behind the larger and newer addition that faces Main Street, over by the Cannon Green as the locals call it, an area where wigwams no doubt once stood, where people gathered to live for the time with a leader known as the Sachem Pomperaug, the "Keeper of the Peace at the Place Called Pomperaug."
From the street one can see the natural landscape feature known as Pomperaug's Castle,
up above a place known today as The Hollow...
I paused to think about just what "Old US Route #6" means for a moment.
And I paused to think about Cothren's History of Ancient Woodbury,
about how the town was laid out along the "Indian Path" that became modern day CT Route 6...
The house is at the base of Orenaug Park, a "trap rock" ridge of bedrock, and as I walked to the edge of the parking lot, I could see the steep cliff that led upwards, and I could see a faint trail to a brush heap, inviting me to take a closer look
for possible Indigenous culturally stacked stonework.
I didn't have to look very hard.
Across the semi-cleared neighbors back yard I could see,
A "Stone Wall" emerging from the bedrock,
Connected to a large boulder by the neighbor's barn...
I can't help but think that this may well be an Indigenous Ceremonial Landscape feature,
A Big Snake Effigy, a "Snake Wall,"
A possible "Skoguonk kodtongquag/Skoguonk Káhtôquwuk," as Noham suggests,
An Algonquian term for
A culturally stacked stone feature that "has been stacked up as a prayer to the Snake
Being"
And I further tested my new Titanium hip replacement and my balance on the slope,
Slipping a bit on the escaped myrtle growing on the talus slope,
Found some deer paths for better footing among the barberry and blossoming witch hazel...
Found some other segments of stacked stone rows that didn't photograph well,
Stones I'll keep thinking about, Hidden in Plain Sight,
At the foot of Orenaug, down on MainStreet in Woodbury CT...
(Too much ground clutter to get a good LiDAR or aerial image either:)
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