Echo Lake

Originally known as Ice House Pond on Ice House Road,

I often drive by this little pond called Echo Lake.

I don't know why it's called that.

I've stood silently on its shore for hours and never heard an echo...

There is a rather large boulder there, perhaps twice my height, marked by modern graffiti.

But it's a very testudinate (turtle shell-like) stone if you ask me...

There's a big hump of an outcrop beside it...

"In the past," ice was harvested here.
Before the past, this spot had an Indian place name that described it somehow or other.
Or several names over time, maybe...

On the opposite side of the road

-called "Ice House Road," - although I do know why-

are some more little humps of bedrock with some other much smaller boulders, including this five or six foot long (testudinate?) boulder that might sort of resemble a turtle

- or a tortoise - or, specifically, a Snapping Turtle, perhaps...

I often see as I drive by...

Stone Rows in the Snow

First some ATV track photos:

Some stone rows photograph well with the snow.

Somewhere on this blog, there's a photo of this in summertime, up under the powerlines.

This very large linear row...

...seemed to end here...
...but it didn't...

(Sort of like a rock pile?)

The row continued along the stream, but eventually branched out another way, and led to an opening at a "V" - barely perceptable in the first picture...

Better in this one...

Snowy Stones

Just after the storm yesterday, I captured a few pictures of some stones.

In this first picture you see the oldest house still standing in the left hand corner, the driveway leading to the road. Just above the road you might make out a zigzag row...

You are also seeing, foreground to back, a cornfield at the river's edge (behind me), an old stream bed, a glacial lakeshore, the present "ditched/deverted" present streambed, the road the road and the hillside that leads to the ancient mast forest...

I zoomed in...

Stones in the snow, just after the storm...

End of the drive way...

Walking the firstTerrace

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A terrace may refer to:
Terrace (agriculture), a leveled section of a hilly cultivated area, designed to slow or prevent the rapid run-on of irrigation water
Terrace (building) timm
Terrace deposit, geological term for a flat platform of land
Terrace (gardening), an element where a raised flat paved or gravelled section overlooks a prospect..."

Stream terrace, sediment from an old stream, usually in an elevated aspect relative to the current streamway

A terrace deposit is geological term for a flat platform of land created alongside of a river or sea, where, at some time in the past, the river has cut itself a deeper channel. The former floodplain of the river is therefore at a higher point and is known as a terrace. Rivers can create a sequence of terraces over millennia as they erode away more material.

Terraces are formed by river rejuvenation, when the river gains in gravitational potential energy. The terraces themselves are often made from fluvial material previously dumped by the river to create the earlier floodplain, These terrace deposits are broadly horizontal layers of gravel, sand and finer sediments that can sometimes contain prehistoric archaeological finds."

The floodplain where these stones are was once probably a glacial lake, the first terrace the glacial lake plain.

Hooked beak (like a turtle)?

The last post happened along the turtle's left rear leg. Is that hill another turtle resting it's head on the flat floodplain turtle?

So are you now at the second terrace, up on this turtle's back?

Which definition of terrace would that be?

Follow that stone row that the turtle's backbone and you end up at a rock shelter sort of place...

Back down to where the floodplain meets the first terrace...

...and the one of the streams in the distance.






And looking back toward those stones is an entirely different view: the torn up track of ATVs cutting into the mysterious stone row, destroying something of historic significance, something perhaps even "prehistoric"...

Some Stone Piles

There are sections of fairly intact stone rows, sometimes with testudinte features, that make me think were Indian-made...

...up where I revisited some stone piles, up in the northeast corner of the floodplain...

A bunch of hillside springs make this area a little swampy.

This one is full of leaves...

And I'll leave you with these, farther up the hill...