A cellar hole from last year

I've been thinking about this cellar hole a lot lately, especially in light of the conversation taking place at the Rock Piles blog about cellar holes.
It bothered me when I found it, enough to take several pictures, many of which came out blurry and dark. The stick in the pictures is my 4 foot hiking stick. The hole is not very large, for a cellar hole. However, there is one gigantic stone in the center of the hole that looked to me like it was a doorstep or mantle. Yet, this flat stone is in the center, like it could have been a roof, instead of to one side as you would expect with a doorstep. It is also mounded up on at least one side of the cellar hole, or it might be better to describe it by saying the cellar hole was not built in an area that is flat all around.

I'm going to go back out here and look around some more, but if you're interested in what I posted about other features at this site in September of 2008, the link to that post is here. There are colonial features in this area, but what explains this strange cellar hole?

Scarlet Tanager

He stuck around long enough for me to get a couple of pictures, one with the zoom and one without (but I cropped it to get a close up of the bird). There are quite a few very large oak trees in this area, as well as a nice break out zone.

Three stone walls near a spring

Here is a wall I've driven by a few times and have been amazed at how steep it is here and why anyone would want to build a stone wall on such a steep grade.

This is taken from the dirt road, looking down. It doesn't do the grade justice. It's very steep here:

The first wall is not very long and ends here, just a short distance from the road. The second wall starts, attached to a boulder that is half underground. You can just see the beginning of the second wall off to the right in this photo:

This is a picture of where the second wall attaches to the half underground boulder:

And this is the end of the second wall.

The third wall starts just off of the second wall, making the opening between the two look something like a cart path.

Here is a picture of the end of the third wall. There is a spring runoff in the foreground, right where this wall ends.

This is a close up of the end stone on the last wall:


This video is 4.5 minutes long and is of my walk back up toward the road, past the two lower walls and around the boulder:



A couple of things. First, I did pick up the tire. Second, in the video I referred to the stones under the boulder to the right of the "boulder attached to the wall" as a split, but I'm not certain if that is truly a split rock under there or two separate stones. I have to go back with a flashlight and have a better look under that boulder. This site is on the south eastern end of a mountain (near the base), just above Steam Mill Branch (creek).

Also, I was kind of disappointed when I found this. Disappointed that the second wall appears to be attached to the boulder so as to make something like a pathway between the first and second walls (colonial looking). Disappointed that the boulder attached to the wall appears to be more than half buried by the bank. I kept thinking it would look so much more impressive if the boulder was exposed. But as I've been thinking about this since I found it, and mentally digesting it, what makes that middle wall interesting is that it looks like a serpent going underground.

Stone wall, Johnny Brook

A long ride up a one lane dirt trail to the top, and I was disappointed with what I found. First, because I've heard there are cairns somewhere in Johnny Brook. Second, on the west side of the trail, there is a small area to hike and it was thoroughly logged before it was sold to the city, so there was not much to see, although the area looked promising on the map. Here is one rock pile that I found on the west side of the trail (my 4 ft hiking stick in the photo, to keep the seedling out of the way to show that crack in the bottom rock):
Over to the east side, there is a stone wall going east-west. Although the ends of the wall are not connected to any other wall, there are two walls going north-south, connected near the middle. That, along with the barbed wire, gave the area a very agrarian look.

So, rather than post nothing this week, I thought I'd post some pictures of this very nice wall and area.
(Half meter stick in photo below)
Two spots where the north-south walls meet this east-west wall (this photo and the next):
If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see something very artistic here. The semi-upright rocks along the top of the wall lean toward the junction of the two walls.
Where the wall goes uphill, just off to the side of this outcrop (next 2 pictures):


The eastern end of the wall.
I couldn't follow the north-south walls because that land is posted. Here are a few things just off the wall.

My favorite (notice the outcrop in the background):