Vacation Stones, Part 3: More Piles, Same Hike
Here I include the rest of the rockpile pictures I took on the hike, excepting the modern one. I post them all because I know that some practiced eyes may see more in them than I do.
The one below was espcially nice in some hard-to-define way.
There was a chipmunk chipping at me from this one.
Note the structure of this whole formation:
What is a site like this? It ended at a stream just before the trail started uphill again. Would each pile have been built by someone during or at the end of a vision quest? Are effigies attempts at portraying some aspect of the experience?
As you approach the stonepile field, you pass this:
And as you go up a hill from the stream that marks the boundary of the stone pile area, you pass this:
Both may be pure chance. I don't like to be guilty of that schizophrenic hallmark, "inappropriate salience attribution," but I also don't like to overlook possible place marks. So I just put them here without further comment. But comments on any of this are welcome.
I'll post the modern stuff tomorrow, Sunday, or Monday. Uploading is horribly slow when you have dial-up. By Thanksgiving we will have moved on to DSL, but for now it's all I've got.
I'll post the modern stuff tomorrow, Sunday, or Monday. Uploading is horribly slow when you have dial-up. By Thanksgiving we will have moved on to DSL, but for now it's all I've got.
posted by Geophile @ 9:46 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I cannot make out much about these piles. The one you said you liked a lot, looked like a pile with a pointer rock, which is a sign of the site being what I call a "marker pile" site. But that also implies the piles might occasionally be in lines of 3 or more. Were there any such lines of piles?
I didn't notice piles in lines. They seemed to be scattered pretty randomly. I would say there were 30 to 40 piles in the area, but I can't say I traversed the full extent of the cairn field.
These small piles of seemingly randomly placed stones remind me very much of a site right by McDaniel Road on Mead's Mountain in Woodstock NY. So close to the road in fact probably nobody gives it a second thought anymore.
John,
Just found your comment nw. I go up to Woodstck on vacation sometimes and would love to know more about that site. The Woodstcok area has several, I've heard.
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