Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Geology.com

Just one more link about Marcellus Shale is here at geology.com. I will also put a link on the right to their web page.

Gas drilling

Something very alarming is going on in upstate NY right now. Yes, it's the gas drilling issue. Companies are paying up to $2500 an acre to lease land for gas drilling. It is not just private land, but public, state land is also being leased.

Click here for the Trenton-Black River activity map by the DEC.

This is coming fast for land that is in the Marcellus Shale area, the area that I have been photographing for less than a year. Current well spacing limits are one per 40 acres. That does not include additional land that will be needed to run roads and pipelines to the wells.

Other areas in NY are currently being reviewed for variances to decreasing spacing between wells. Click here for the link to the DEC website section on the Whitesville Field which includes an additional link to the "map of the proposed Whitesville Field and potential spacing units".

So as not to continue to bore readers looking for information on Native American rock piles, I will include a link to the right of a simple website I found that has lots of links to different groups and news articles keeping track of the gas drilling issue. A link to that site can also be found here. For the next month or two, I will probably not do much blogging about rock piles, due to the amount of leaf cover and my attention being shifted to gas drilling.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Marcellus Shale

Those two small words are going to change the landscape around here forever. Click here for a link to today's article in the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin about drilling for natural gas. I wonder if anyone has considered the possible archaeological consequences?

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Just off the trail

These pictures are from my last hike in June. Due to the amount of leaf cover and underbrush right now, trail hiking is much easier than bushwhacking. It's hard to see anything in the woods lately, unless it's two feet in front of you.

I managed to find one cairn right off the trail, at an altitude over 2000 feet. It was in a line of cairns that may or may not have served as fence rail holders. The line ended at a corner of a stone wall that ran perpendicular to the line of cairns.

Here are a few of the cairns:




A bit further down the hill, a small spot of rocks all around, which didn't photograph well because of all the green:

But, nearby, a boulder with an interesting arrangement and a large boulder on top that appeared to have been split and pulled forward, similar to another I saw in June in Catskill Park.

A view of the top of the boulder:

A close up of the arrangement in front of the split:

This is a close up of one of the few rocks on the top that is near the tip, or the edge, of the boulder that was split and pulled forward. You can see some of the rocks on all around in the background, which was typical at this little site.