Walls and Cairns

Towels, Jedis, quartz and something intriguing

2007-05-25T08:33:00.000-04:00

Greetings to all for Towel Day and the Universal Day of the Jedi. I know they seem unrelated to the topic at hand, but nothing really is. It's my son Jonas's 20th birthday as well. Great time of year!
In the wood near where I live, there's lots of quartz and jasper. The above is an example of the kind of thing that's strewn all around there.

I brought home some white stones after a long walk picking them up in several areas. Next day when I washed them, I noticed this one. The pictures above and below are the back and front. It's unlikely, I know, but I keep thinking it could be a tool, a kind of scraper. It has a nice edge, and it fits perfectly in my hand.

If it is a tool, it could be ceremonial. I had to photograph the whiter side in the shade because it is very shiny. The bluer-looking parts are clear quartz. And a point toward the bottom in the picture is actually a clear crystal, although it doesn't show in this light. Whether or not it's a tool, it's a pretty and unusual thing. Needless to say, it didn't go out in the garden like the rest of the stones. I just wish I knew which area I picked it up in. I wasn't expecting tools or anything, so I wasn't keeping track.

Any input is welcome.

Ringing Rocks, Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania

2007-05-07T19:35:00.000-04:00

This post is made up of photos of just one formation, a roughly sphere-shaped stone that we couldn't help but notice from the trail. I make no claims about it being man made or placed. I just took the pictures because after years of noticing rocks I would have to say this was one of the most extraordinary rocks I've ever seen.
In the above picture, you can see a flat stone lodged in the ground, edge-up. It was one of two.

These pictures are from all sides of this boulder and you can see it is round from every angle.

There were places where it almost looked as if chips had been knocked off it in order to shape it, as in the above if you click on and enlarge it. But that could be natural action happening. The type of rock at Ringing Rocks is completely different from any I've run across at stone sites in eastern PA and New Jersey. Completely different consistency from sandstone, quartz, shale, limestone, even the gneiss at the Oley Hills site. Funny stuff, really, and it seemed lighter than most per volume.

How large was this boulder? I probably came up to the flake or close to it, on its lowest side, and I'm 5' 3".

I mention this formation because I don't think anyone could come here, regarding this as a special or sacred place, and not notice this boulder. Even if it was in no way formed artificially, which is likely, I am certain that it was noticed. There are a number of extraordinary-looking boulders at Ringing Rocks, but this stood out.

Bucks County, PA

2007-04-23T06:11:00.000-04:00

There were several perched boulders here. This one has small stones arranged behind it on the boulder it was perched on.

This boulder sat on another, which was hidden by leaves and debris. What looks like a hole here is really a hollow.

A flat rock leaned on a sort of moon-shaped boulder, with two flat ones buried edge up beside it. What is this?

The same flat rock from the front.

One of many rock piles.

Lining of a stream bed. I've seen this before, more than once.

Well, a person wiser than myself had been telling me for some time that I should go there. But meaning to do something and doing it are two different things, and many months had passed without my making my way to the Bucks County woods. Finally my long-suffering spouse agreed to try it and off we went.

Using Google maps, we had gotten directions, but unfinished road repairs required an unmarked detour and we didn't know our way around. A man and a young girl were doing some kind of cleanup or work at the side of the road, so we stopped and I walked back to ask the way. I mentioned I'd read the place was good for wildflowers. The fellow smiled and said, "It's good for hiking and wildflowers and . . . other things."

There was something in his tone of voice that I didn't ponder at the time. We followed his directions and were soon at our destination.

There were big patches of wildflowers before we even started on the trail. And we weren't far along the main trail before we turned off, first to stand on top of a huge flat boulder, then to investigate other stones and boulder, walls and perched boulders, not to mention the wildflowers: blooodroot, hepatica, both white and piercing blue, wood anemone, rue anemone, spring beauties, sprouts of bellworts and bugbane. One interesting thing led to another delight. I soon slowed up on taking pictures, for fear of running out of room on the picture card. Why hadn't I brought more?

The place abounded with springs and little rills. A ruby-crowned kinglet kept us rapt for five minutes--is it a warbler?

The springs, swamp, and small streams were probably the key to the place as a stone site. The huge boulders of unusual shapes and textures add to the mystique of the site on the landscape. Many of the boulders had flat or concave tops, some of which supported perched rocks or groupings of small rocks, and some of which had accumulated enough soil to host small gardens of wildflowers and ferns.

Further along the path were cairn fields, first on the right as we went in and then another on the left. Off to one side I spotted a low wall, and upon investigation discovered it to be a wiggling serpentine wall. I couldn't determine which end was the head, though, without disturbing a lot of the winter leaf litter, which I did not want to do.

Somewhere along the line as we went from one kind of stone feature to another, Eric said, I guess this is what he meant by hiking and wildflowers and "other things." It hadn't occurred to me that the fellow along the road might know about the stonework, but maybe he did. You don't have to look hard to find it.

We didn't stay long enough to really explore: the Phillies were on at 1:00, and one of us was uninterested in giving that up for a better look at the site. Still, by the time we left, I had a lot of pictures and a good chance of returning late in May, this time with more than one photo card and with a young person just home from college to help me scout around. I'm looking forward to it!

Vacation Stones, Part 4: Modern Rocks and Rockpiles

2006-10-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

On the same mountain, not far away, but in a very different-looking section, we found some modern stone construction. This was some way off the trail, where I was lured (as the builders probably were) by the odd trees and interestingly-shaped boulders. I know nothing about who did these things. There was a circle of small stones set into the ground, and some rocks not far away placed for a campfire. The nicest thing was this obviously recent pile on a boulder:

These stones were part of the same complex. Someone was having a good time. But what leads people to build with stones in these places? I wonder sometimes whether the impulse arises in ways not yet fully understood, a subconscious impulse, you might say, triggered by something we're barely aware of.

Elsewhere in Ulster County is a different scale of drystone construction. The builder in this case is known--artist and professor Harvey Fite. He worked alone for 37 years, using only his hands and traditional quarrymen's tools to create this extraordinary work of art and landscape called Opus 40.

Rising out of the bedrock, it covers more than six acres. He created statuary for it, too, and topped it off with a standing megalith such as you might see in Europe. At the site, they explain how he stood the thing up and set it in there.
The only unfortunate aspect is the great numbers of mosquitoes that breed in the ponds created by the sculpture, but the place is beautiful, the product of one of those eccentric and driven artists who add so much interest to the world.
It's all set, as is just about everything in Ulster County, against the backdrop of the Catskill Mountains. [The white spot in the picture, by the way, is not a 'plasma ball' or mystic entity, but a mosquito caught in the flash--I saw it through the lens when I took it.]
The place is worth a visit. There's a Quarrymen's Museum containing many quarrymen's tools such as Flite used. It's another facet of mankind's impulse to build in stone.

What's that about?

Vacation Stones, Part 3: More Piles, Same Hike

2006-10-06T21:46:00.000-04:00

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.

Vacation Stones, Part 2: The Hike

2006-10-06T20:48:00.000-04:00

We went for a hike, one of those where you get to drive part way up the mountain before starting so it won't take all day to get to the lookout. Age has taken its toll on my vigor.
We were on the second part of the hike, from the main trail toward Huckleberry Point, when I noticed a gathering of stones set into the trail. They were flattened, but it still didn't look like a natural formation and I thought of pictures I'd seen on Peter Waksman's site. This could be a rock pile. It was a less distinct pile than the one in the picture above, but it got me looking around.
I found many piles all around us. A wall or two, too, but mostly piles, in varying states, some knocked over and some laid out to suggest effigies. The picture above doesn't do the pile justice, but if you click on it and enlarge it, you'll see a crecent-shaped rock on the ground on the right, near the crotch of that branch. The pile has several intriguing features. Note the two rocks at the top, set on a third that may have been chosen for its shape. But who knows--it could have looked different before the branch fell on it--or was it lain there?

It was one of those sites where some piles were close to one another and some were more spread out. I would have liked to spend more time looking around, as I didn't see them all, but one of us was only there for the hike. I didn't want things to get unpleasant that early in our long-awaited vacation.
Note the mix of flat and round stones here.

The above photograph was taken further on, away from the rockpile site but before the lookout. The rock on top looked unmistakeably snakelike to me. Even the big one up behind it had a reptilian air.

At the lookout, I noticed this rock, first from the underside which you can't see here. It is propped under that side, too, and the cavity formed is blackened, seemingly from human action, since I saw no other rock blackened in that way there.
The lookout--From the biggest flat rock, where my husband is seated in this picture, you face the high points seen here, from which the altitude falls to the Hudson Valley. You are looking at the point where the Catskills rise from the valley. They then go off to your right, hump after hump.
And to your left, you can see for many miles. That ribbon of lighter color in the distance is the Hudson River. We were so high up that we could see redtail hawks and turkey vultures soaring far below us. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the place made my heart tremble. It's not surprising that such a place would have a ritual site connected with it. More in the next post.

Vacation Stones, Part 1: The Rental Property

2006-10-06T19:47:00.000-04:00

The view a short walk away:

The mountains are the Catskills.

We stayed, as I said, in Ulster County, New York, part of the territory of the Munsee or Minsi Lenape, whose name famously means 'the place where the stones are gathered together.' We lived in this area for a few years about 15 years ago, and I know that stone walls abound there. The property around the place we rented was no exception. However, the story of the landscape around this particular property is unusual for the area because we were just by the Ashokan Reservoir which was built in the early 1900's, a tremendous engineering feat at the time, inundating as many as seven villages. The creation of the Ashokan Reservoir radically altered the landscape, making it difficult to relate any stonework to what the hills, streams and sites might once have been like. Whole temporary towns were built to house the workers, and those sites, too, altered things. It's hard to say whether any stonework near there is the kind of thing of interest to readers of rockpile blogs. With that said, I will present some photos. In Part 2 I'll show some rockpiles more likely to be native.

This wall ran downhill, interrupted by the house we stayed in.
I took this picture of it standing with my back against the house, looking uphill.
That wall is the one entering from the right in this picture. Walls went in several directions from this pile. Possibly these were accumulated during construction of the buildings on the property.
However, across the driveway from there, in the woods, was this large split rock. When I took this photo, I thought I was getting a great picture of the split rock and the low short walls that trailed from it on either end. But this is what I got, so it's all I can show you. None of the walls from the other side seemed to have connected to this. This is the most likely example of ritual stonework on this section of the property.

Further down the hill, on what is really protected land belonging to New York City, the wall that was interrupted by the house continued to a place where the land fell off abruptly, but not very deeply, a bank marked by large exposed stones, several yards from a small stream. It was getting dark (and do you know what mosquito populations can be like in a place where all pesticides are completely and permanently banned?!) so I couldn't get many more pictures of the walls and rock-on-rocks there. Maybe you can see the small group of stones on this boulder.

The proliferation of biting insects was equalled by a proliferation of frogs. The small creek, you might almost say rill, was full of frogs in a way creeks never are in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania anymore. I couldn't take a step along it without hearing the plunk! of frog bellies hitting water. I looked up to see a meadow of tall grasses some distance away and for a moment I thought I saw white egrets jumping--then I realized it was a herd of deer, only their tails visible in the grasses.

There's something to be said for leaving things in a natural state.

Vacation in 'the place where the stones are gathered together'

2006-10-01T21:42:00.000-04:00

We were on vacation this past week in Ulster County, New York, with a hike into Greene County. Lots of stones, especially walls, in the Ulster woods I was able to visit, but there is no way for me to know if they were ritual sites. On the hike to Huckleberry Point, however, I came across a large cairn or rockpile field, full of nice piles, some very nice. Further up the mountain, I also found a modern ritual site, with little 'new age' rock piles on top of rocks and a small stone circle.

Interesting how the impulse to build in stone arises in people when they're in certain places, without their even knowing why. A great example of this was a spectacular modern site built in a drystone method by one man in the Twentieth Century. The site, also in Ulster County, is called Opus 40. I've seen other examples where people seemed to have been moved by some spirit of stone building, putting up small modern circles of standing stones near a rock ledge in an obscure place I'd hiked to, or similar things. Curious.

At any rate, the photos will go to the developer tomorrow, and I should have some to post by next week. Ulster County, by the way, is incredibly beautiful. It feels as if the earth is alive there instead of dormant the way it feels in so many places. My son would say that feeling and the stonework are connected. He claims to be able to feel when he's near native stonework. His Spidey sense would have been tingling up there!

More soon.

Sacred Landscape on the Web

2006-09-10T18:31:00.003-04:00

Here's a website for anyone interested in native stonework and related subjects--the website of the Hanwakan Center , full name: the Hanwakan Center for Prehistoric Astronomy, Cosmology, and Cultural Landscape Studies. Herman Bender, the president of the center, has also been elected to the advisory board of Time & Mind, The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture.

The summary for Time & Mind reads as follows:

Time & Mind will provide an international and interdisciplinary forum for new perspectives on landscape, monuments, people and culture. A lively peer-reviewed journal, it will encourage “frontier thinking” that addresses the formative role of “cognition” (to use a portmanteau term) in shaping our understanding of archaeological sites, landscapes and pre-modern worldviews.

Topics will include (among many others):

the phenomenology of landscape and skyscape plus the effect on monument building and placement;
transpersonal anthropology;
the prehistory of mind;
the effect of ritual trance consciousness on monumental engineering, rock art, and social structuring;
ancient and pre-industrial symbolic landscapes deriving from religious and mythological beliefs;
the involvement of light and sound in monumental structures;
the multi-sensory properties of natural places venerated in antiquity;
archaeoastronomy
religious and social symbolism in tribal art;
the cognition and memory of place and landscapes;
the neurophysiology of ritual.

As readers may know, I think that Western society is headed in the direction of incorporating traditions of sacred landscape and traditions about 'spirits' just as we have incorporated aspects of indigenous use of herbs into medicine and shamanic healing into psychology. New sources of information like the Hanwakan Center and Time & Mind can help bring about the change in our world view that will happen over time.

I won't editorialize at length now. I'll just suggest that we don't require the lead of our forebearers in order to establish a relationship with the landscape on which we live. Even where any and all ancient structures have been destroyed, we can still notice the hills, the rocks, the springs, the streams, and their interaction with movements of objects in the skies. We can find places that look or feel different, notice stones and plants and animals. If you pursue a relationship with the landscape around you, there comes a point where you become possessed of a growing conviction that something is responding, sometimes in ways that seem obvious if hard to believe, or in ways that seem real but hard to put a mental finger on.

It is always worth remembering that every inch of the earth is as ancient as the land at Giza, at Stonehenge, at Newgrange. We're still these small, ephemeral beings passing over the surface of this huge and ancient planet. There are secrets hidden in plain sight.

Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty

2006-07-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

This book is of special interest to stone-heads of the northeast because the authors include some of our sites in their research along with sites in other parts of the world like Carnac, Giza, Tikal and Avebury. While the authors are not archaeologists, their inclusion of places like Gungywamp, Putnam County New York stone chambers and the Balanced Rock at North Salem, New York indicate the increased recognition these sites are getting.

The premise of the book is that many megalithic sites were built as electromagnetic magnifiers in order to focus energy on seeds to make them grow better. One author had worked in a lab researching the enhancement of seed viability and yield by exposing them to controlled streams of electrons and somehow it occurred to him that this could be related to the function of megalithic sites. I would like to know what brought that to mind. Maybe they'll tell us in their next book.

The authors go from site to site measuring electromagnetic energy and looking for geological magnetic anomalies. As they address each site, they give interesting and mostly relevant background for it. Often, they describe their experience at the site, allowing us to live vicariously through these people who are fortunate enough to visit so many interesting places.

I have no background in geological electromagnetic flow, and I don't know how meaningful their measurements actually are, but unsurprisingly they find electromagnetic anomalies at the places they cite. They also make a case for their theory about the seeds by tracing the history of the societies that built the constructions they visit. Tangentially, they also make a case for a scientific basis for dowsing.

It's as megalomaniacal as it is megalithic to assert that so many world stonework sites are linked by a theory that only you have thought of. However it takes a little megalomania to break new ground, and in this case the research done may be leading us in a direction in which we need to go. These people aren't the first to haul a magnetometer to a sacred site, but they are the first to publish results of such a broad survey in a popular book. I hope this will only be the beginning of a surge of interest in electromagnetism and the landscape.

As these writers point out in Chapter Three, the effects they measure can cause changes not only in seeds but also in states of consciousness. While I believe their theory about seed enhancement is important and warrants further research and corroboration by the archaeological community, I have thought for some time that a discussion of the mind-altering qualities of the landscape is long overdue. I hope this book reaches enough people to push the dialogue among those studying sacred sites in that direction.

Interviews with some indigenous people and shamans indicate that some people can detect things on the landscape that most Western people don't notice. While I don't believe that a concept as broad and varied as 'spirits' has some single explanation that can be boiled down and detected by science, I do believe there are aspects of shamanism and spirit communication that will eventually be understood by the general populace in terms of scientific concepts, and the study of the earth's magnetism in relation to human cognition will be part of that advance.

We are past the point where it's reasonable, if it ever was, to understand shamanic and other indigenous cultures as purely superstitious. Just as it has come out that many of their uses for plants stand up to scientific scrutiny and can contribute to our medicine, so eventually we will find that other aspects of their cultures once seen as foolishness or mumbo jumbo are just kinds of technology that are invisible to us because of the blinders created by our limited understandings of the world.

Our education, reading and writing, shopping and television and other technological devices have rendered us insensible to some things we are, in our native state, able to perceive. Some things we think of as mystical are actually as real as other things you need background for, like understanding what you're seeing when you look through a microscope or knowing what you're looking at when you open the hood of a car. The research in this book is the kind of thing that will bring us closer to learning more of what we are capable of as human beings.

The authors discuss Bear Butte in North Dakota, pre-Inca ruins in Peru, Olmec/Mayan ruins in Central America, Stonehenge, and the pyramids at Giza, all sites that are often included in books about Atlantis, but they make no assertions about a common master culture, which is refreshing. I enjoyed following their travels as well as their thinking as they explore these places.

Some things I found less than helpful are--a map from Salvatore Trento's In Search of Lost America was printed with no key, leaving the reader without a clue about the meaning of the markings there. Photographs showing white spots and arcs, while they may look like light balls and electromagnetic effects to them, just look like dustmotes to the average reader. Many people will be uneasy with their interpretation of the electrical sensitivity map of Stonehenge, too, where they interpret dark areas as meaning there's more natural current in the ground. They explain why, but I think it's a jump that some people will find hard to make. And the claims for the sites in Egypt come off as so wild that they require more and not less measurements made in the field.

If you read this book with the mental preconception that one or two shaky propositions render the whole thing out-to-lunch, then it won't have much to offer you. I found, however, that reading it to gain a new perspective on sites and to find a new basis for speculation and research can be fruitful. I am now convinced that sooner or later, readings of electromagnetism will be as significant and common in descriptions of sites as astronomical alignments.

This book represents a step in the broadening of our knowledge of sacred and ancient sites. It also may indicate a path to take toward claiming more of what we are as human beings.

Sacred Stones of the Inca

2006-06-27T12:02:00.000-04:00

I've come across some interesting material about Inca (Inka?) views of sacred landscape, rocks in particular. The first part is from a piece entitled Dialogue with Sacred Landscape: Inka Framing Expressions by Ruth Anne Phillips. It's a little long, but facinating.

"Stones played particularly important roles in Inka mythology as they could suddenly be called to action to help their human counterparts, even turning into humans themselves. One story recounts rocks on a battlefield rising up as warriors at a particularly perilous moment in the fight to help the Inka soldiers defeat their enemy. According to Susan Niles, 'Origin myths tell of founding ancestors emerging from the earth, being converted to stone, and remaining for all time as tangible proof of the story.' Rebecca Stone-Miller writes:

'The Inkas felt a special interchangeability with stones, believing them to be alive and able to transform into people and vice versa. . . . Inka stonework seems alive as it dynamically responds to natural formations, creates active surfaces, and dances in the strong light of the high-altitude sun. At the same time, this dynamic Inka feeling of identity with stone led them to manipulate stones, mountains, and streams toward imperial expressive ends. Being one with the earth, they proclaimed themselves able to construct cultural statements with its materials and preexisting forms. To geometricize, enhance, frame, and move people through the environment they subtly changed natural outlines.'

Natural-looking boulders are the most frequent objects set within borders while all extant Inka frames are made of rock. However, it is important to remember that stone does not disintegrate easily or quickly and therefore may reflect what has survived, rather than providing an accurate picture of framing trends. Perhaps there were originally many more frames made of perishable materials that have since decayed. Or in this extreme environment of natural disasters, perhaps many of these frames were destroyed or carried off by people at a later time. One may also wonder if these monuments with their bordering elements were correctly reconstructed in modern times. Still, it is valuable to analyze the framing examples that remain as important clues may emerge that can be corroborated with other material findings or with historical descriptions that further our understanding of Inka world views.

One of the most common types of Inka frames are the low-lying walls that surround boulders, such as with the 'Sacred Rock' at Machu Picchu, Peru located in the southern highlands (Map 1). This site is striking for its location on top of a narrow mountain crag. The Sacred Rock was placed in the Northern corner of Machu Picchu, visually near the taller peak of Huaynu Picchu to the north and the Yanantin mountain “behind” it to the northeast. The “back” of the Sacred Rock faces almost due north, while the front faces south. At first glance it appears to be a large (approx. 12’ x 20’ x 3’) natural boulder surrounded by a low-lying (approx. 3’ x 25’ x 1 1/2’) rectangular wall made of smaller, rough stones. However, the boulder was subtly manipulated as is clear in a line-of-sight comparison with the surrounding mountains. While the Yanantin mountain is almost always cloud-covered, when the clouds lift, one can see that the stone and mountain behind it look strikingly similar."

The second part is from a review of the book "The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco Ceque System" by
Brian S. Bauer.

"Ceque is the Quechua (Inca language) word for line or border, and the ceque system in the region of the Inca capital of Cusco can best be visualized as a series of lines radiating out from Cusco, lines which defined districts, which acted as roads, which tied the region to the center. Like the older Nazca lines, these lines are real; in some cases they can still be traced across the landscape of western South America, and along the lines like knots in a string were situated a series of shrines or huacas.

In the Quechua language, huaca means anything out of the ordinary in the natural world; whether outstandingly beautiful or outstandingly ugly. Mountain tops, funny rock formations, springs; the huacas were named after their characteristics. The translated names of the Cusco huacas are evocative as heck and include Many Colored Hill, Red Town, Small-Frog Spring, Cold Waterfall, Mountain Lion, Watercress Spring, Gold Band, Nettle Spring, Royal Headdress Meadow, Clean Clay. The huacas were used as stopping places along the road, shrines where prayers and offerings of everything from coca leaves to sea shells to gold and silver objects to (in rare cases) children were left. There were probably thousands of these shrines throughout the Inca empire, which at its height stretched nearly the length of South America's Andes mountains, from modern day Columbia to Chile. Each system radiated out from a regional center like a sun and its planets. Many many hundreds of the huacas were destroyed by the Spanish invaders and missionaries who saw the huacas as threats to the emplacement of Catholicism; and indeed, the huacas and what they represented certainly were a real threat."

How relevant are these quotations to the topic of the enigmatic stonework of the northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S.? Hard to say. But we can't say we understand what these sites meant and mean to the people who built them if we don't learn to see with different eyes. And maybe these cultures have more in common than we know.

Of Wasps and Snakes

2006-04-27T20:02:00.000-04:00

I do have more material about the relationships between cultures and rocks, but I interrupt this meditation because I found some old photos that aren't good enough to post on the real rock blog, but which should be shared. I took these pictures during my one indiscretion of visiting a privately-owned site without permission, some years ago. This site had been important to my change from skeptic to believer in the concept that there were indeed unexplained stonework sites out there, and I was having difficulty getting anyone with permission to take me back, so I went there with a friend who was curious.

This one indiscretion resulted in my being stung 70 times by yellow jackets and being caught by the irate property owner (after the stings) and being told off in no uncertain terms by the person who first showed me the site. I have never done something like that again.

Along with all that, the pictures turned out kind of peculiar and hardly captured the vision that first arrested me. Nevertheless, here are some of them, photos of a rock ridge running up the side of a hill by the Lehigh River.

It's an odd ridge of rock, narrow and high running straight up a hill that has no similar features.

The rocks that make it up are peculiar and bumpy in some areas, like no other rocks I've seen in our area.

Nearby on the ground, I found this very unusual carved-looking stone. Or maybe it was something else? Cement that looked like stone? I've never seen anything like it.

Here's a view along the top of the rock ridge looking down the hill toward the road and the stream that runs along it.

More of the rock ridge with a gap before the top part . . .

And here's the kicker--at the top end of the rock ridge is the stone below. It is taller than I am (the whole ridge is, all the way up) and it looks startlingly like a reptile head, (turtle? maybe snake because of the long ridge behind it) complete with eye and with the mouth open as if for offerings. The peculiar colors in some of these photos must be a result of the light and shadow in that place on that day. I have more of these odd purplish-blue rock pictures from there, including another of this stone head. It was while walking back down the hill from here that I stepped in the yellow jacket nest, an experience I will always remember.

Another odd thing from that day was this picture. It's just a trick of leaves and light, and I didn't see it as anything but a rock when I took it, but the impression of a face is hard to ignore.

In short, although I am reluctant to attribute to the sites any supernatural qualities of an eerie type, this was one of the days about which I will always have doubts. I guess we all have those, and maybe we all need them.

The circumstances of my first visit there were also memorable, but humorous, and then almost giddy as the site of this rock formation cracked open my head, allowing a new understanding to enter.

A Rock in Australia: Dreamtime Never Stops

2006-04-21T20:07:00.000-04:00

From T. C. McLuhan's The Way of The Earth:

"Johnny Wararrngula Tjupurrula, an accomplished and renowned Papunya Tula artist, is returning home to Tjikarri, the inspiration for some of his most spectacular paintings and an important sacred site in remote central Australia, 480 kilometers west of Alice Springs. His companion and driver tells the story:

The wheels spin over the ridge of the last dune, and we are there. But it is not much--a rocky outcrop much like any other, perhaps even more ordinary than many that we have passed during the long day. The rock holes turn out to be dry and there's effectively nothing in the way of edible plant food; all the animal tracks are old so there will be no fresh meat tonight. And yet the old man is taken away by it; he is crying, he is talking, singing to the rock, he is calling out its names, its stories, and he's clambering over the rock face this way and that way, stroking, rubbing, feeling his country. For the next twenty-four hours, late into the night and all the next day back to Papunya, it is as if he is in another world, ceaselessly telling the stories of the events and creatures that passed through here and forged this landscape. But more than just telling them, he seems to be living them, and actually seeing them still visible in the forms in front of him.

Every atom of that rock represents the embodiment of some great ancestor, and its potential fertility is palpable."

--T. C. McLuhan

Inyan, his spirit is Wakan Tanka

2006-04-18T06:43:00.000-04:00

James R. Walker's narrative of the Lakota creation story illustrates the importance of rock in understanding the Lakota notion of wakan tanka, the great incomprehensibility. The Rock principle is represented by Inyan, creator of the universe. Inyan, as amorphous rock, is the pure potentiality of everything in creation.

In Lakota tradition, Inyan, or Rock, existed first, and created out of himself everything else. The waters of the earth were his blood. After he sacrificed most of himself to create the earth, he was left hard and still as we see him today. The thunderbirds, Wakinyan, are his messengers. He is wise and his spirit is Wakan Tanka.

Stone People

2006-04-15T21:04:00.000-04:00

O you ancient rocks who are sacred, you have neither ears nor eyes, yet you hear and see all things.

Black Elk

Some see rocks as the original unaltered material left from creation, beings who remember everything that has passed since they were formed, wise and patient beyond all things, of a similar nature to man's and able to communicate with those who are open to it.

Thoreau said, "A hard, insensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

Thunder Stones

2006-04-08T06:56:00.000-04:00

Tatanka-ohitika, Sioux medicine man in 1911, at the age of 73:

“It is significant that certain stones are not found buried in the earth, but are on the top of high buttes. They are round, like the sun and moon, and we know that all things that are round are related to each other. Things which are alike in their nature grow to look like each other, and these stones have lain there a long time, looking at the sun. Many pebbles and stones have been shaped in the current of a stream, but these stones were found far from the water and have been exposed only to the sun and the wind. The earth contains many thousand such stones beneath its surface. The thunderbird is said to be related to these stones, and when a man or animal is to be punished, the thunderbird strikes the person, and if it were possible to follow the course of the lightning, one of these stones would be found embedded in the earth. Some believe that these stones descend with the lightning, but I believe they are on the ground and are projected downward by the bolt. In all my life I have been faithful to the sacred stones. I have lived according to their requirements, and they have helped me in all my troubles. I have tried to qualify myself as well as possible to handle these sacred stones, yet I know that I am not worthy to speak to Wakan tanka. I make my request of the stones and they are my intercessors.”

Talking with Sacred Stones

2006-04-07T12:13:00.000-04:00

A boulder at the Hackettstown site

I think I'll start putting quotes on here, especially those about rocks and stones or certain sites and their spiritual significance in different world views, starting with native American peoples.

This one is part of a longer quotation by a Teton Sioux elder, Okute:

"The stones and minerals are placed in the ground by Wakan Tanka, some stones being more exposed than others. When a medicine man says that he talks with the sacred stones, it is because, of all the substance in the ground, these are the ones which most often appear in dreams and are able to communicate with men."

Nasty suspicion

2006-03-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

I'll post images of two of the kind of rock piles that began my turn from skepticism to curiosity. They were at sites in Berks and Monroe Counties in Pennsylvania. I knew that Berks was settled by Germans and Monroe was not. How, then, would crazy farmers or bored teenagers or whoever it was wind up building such similarly placed piles? A nasty suspicion stole over me--it almost looks like these places were built by the same people. But . . .

Beginning

2006-03-15T19:48:00.000-05:00

This blog is about sharing with others the things I've been lucky to see. I guess Oley Hills is a good place to start.

I don't know how to manage these photos or put them and the text where I want. I'm posting the front and side view of a rock pile that reminded me of a porpoise or fish, as well as one that many people saw as a turtle. These piles, like many at the Oley Hills extravaganza, are very large. Oley Hills is full of rock piles and boulders that look like things. Or maybe after you've been there a while, everything begins to look like something else. I may have reached a point of delerium by the time I decided that boulder in that top picture looked like a duck head. Visiting Oley Hills was mind boggling. I haven't been there for years, but getting the pictures together brought it all back. I'll post more as time goes on.

To start with, however, additions to this blog will be sporadic at best.