The Cliffs of Pareidolia

and the "J. Trail Manitou"

     I didn’t plan on stopping, but as I was driving home from the DMV, I was about where the car is in the photo when the stone row – boulders on some bedrock – caught my eye. I'd driven by a million times, stopped here before, but the light hit it just right and I thought, "That's the beginning of a Stone Serpent." 

   I didn’t recreate the image, the view from the road – too many trees blocking the illusion of a stone snake to capture it properly. It’s the way it happens sometimes, your brain putting together images you can’t get a photograph to show. It’s like you have an image of an impression that really is blocked by trees but your mind sees around them to put together a picture or something like that.

   But as I pulled over, I looked up on the outcrops just beyond this spot and thought I saw some stones stacked up on one of them. Interesting, I thought, maybe I should take a closer look at that...

    I couldn’t scramble up this obvious cut into the bedrock, all steep and wet with water dripping from a vein in the rock, so I walked on past.

    That’s when the Pareidolia hit me. In this obviously newly exposed bedrock (within the last couple years), I came face to face with, well, a face:

    I know – Pure Pareidolia – unless some State Highway worker or sub-contractor did this on purpose, of course. Maybe a wandering stone artist happened by and thought it might be a good spot for this - but probably not...

   I got closer to the boulder row suspected serpent to take this one:

     Imaginative Overlay: an eye and some antlers nestled into the stone behind the head stone:

     A few views of the beginning of this “wall” that snakes its way down the valley (shown in some older photos and a post I can’t recall the names of right now), a web of stonework that continues for hundreds of feet, interconnecting with other rows of stacked stone of all sizes:

 Above: maybe a rattlesnake fang; below maybe some turtle imagery (a bird even?).

   I saw one boulder that rose up higher than the average height of the “boulder row.” Some call this Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape Feature a "Manitou Stone."

   But I had to go up to that stack I thought I saw, eventually stood up close and thought “Just a natural formation.”

But then again, here and there were some rhomboidal stones...

Just like there was one by the Big Manitou Stone by a smaller Manitou Stone:

Maybe it was someone's pareidolia, seeing "something" in the natural stones that inspired the deliberate stacking of certain chosen stones in a certain way...

Maybe human hands long ago chipped and pecked and polished some "details" into the already suggestive stones, now weathered and encrusted with lichens, almost forgotten but not quite, since I'm feeling a bit of mystery as my imagination dances between pareidolia and purposeful intentions... 

Just Another Row of Stones Behind a Store (Bethlehem CT)

Circular- sort-of spot in a sort terrace-like row of stones...

...it's as if there's a lower wall in spots - and that's where water seems to flow from still.

But back up on the other side, at that circular sort of spot observe a detail or two:

Serpent Stacking?

Like an Eastern Timber Rattlesnake live birthing Baby Snakes??

Are smaller snakes made by smaller people???

Imagine eyes to make the snakes come alive:

And then I spot this, just a few steps away:

Looking to the left, I think I'm identifying Something Serpentine:

And, speaking of multiple images - effigies that are part of a larger effigy made up of effigies made of of effigies that seem to change before your eyes into other effigies -  I don't recall ever seeing a possible or probable Deer Effigy with a big stone for a body:

Go back to that first photo again:

Grey Fox Serpent

Imagining Firelight 

    And Moonlight

      Dancing on Stone Serpent Scales

This Stone Serpent is hundreds of feet long, close to a thousand maybe.

It crosses the little stream in the bowl of a valley... 

There's a place along the edge of an outcrop,

Stones stacked along it's edge...

This rhomboidal stone might catch your attention...

If you turn around, facing east,

You'll notice (perhaps) a zigzag line of small stones,

And perhaps you'll notice that as the ten foot segments continue,

That the size of the stones grows larger and larger... 

Perhaps you'll notice there are boulders as well in the row of stones,

Sometimes quite triangular...

Here and there are small gaps,

Little breaches in the zigzags...

(You can see the rhomboidal stone on the stone-lined edge of the outcrop in the top left of this photo above, catch a glimpse of the stone zigzag that begins up there...)

Some gaps are larger,

And the boulders are slightly larger... 

You may notice that on the opposite incline,

Glimpsed through the trees,

That the zigzag turns into a linear or straight line row of stones...

And if you are me, writing this as the morning birds start calling,

You'll still see this photo below as "a smaller Serpent that makes up the larger Great Serpent,"

But you will also recognize that it may have two solid stone eyes,

And you will wonder, "How did I ever miss that?"

You might look back up the hill,

And as you turn around you might see

Something Serpentine about that zigzag stone feature,

That your field guide says is a rare thing

And evidence of field clearing stones tossed haphazardly against a wooden rail fence,

A Snake Fence, as it is sometimes called...

You might have your imagination with you.

I carry mine with me at all times, where ever I go...

As well as what's left of my memory,

So that I can compare a stone to

a Ceremonial Mask,

Placed just so along a stone row...

Where the stones crossed the water,

I found tangles of those multiflora roses and barberry.

Nobody is taking care of this place,

As far as fires of Renewal Ceremonies goes.

No one tends the garden this landscape was and I wove my way around all the thorns,

Until I could see the other end of the Great Grey Fox Serpent...

I really do have to revisit to confirm what I think I may find there,

That this Great Serpent has, instead of a boulder, a head that is made of stacked stones,

The stones chosen and placed as if to resemble the scales found on the head of 

An Eastern Timber Rattlesnake...

So, as I said, I started to imagine a wigwam on the flat piece of ground by the head of the Serpent,

A fire circle nearby

- and now that I think of it -

Maybe more fires  all along the length of this stone snake-like "stone wall."- and are there some signs of hearth stones in circles still sitting there? 

Would it seem to be moving, as the fire light flicked on those stacked stones?

Wouldn't that be interesting, seeing this in the distance under a full moon's light??