Wednesday, April 29, 2009

More from the last site and some comparisons

I didn't get out hiking last weekend, so here are some additional photos from two weeks ago. First, some pictures of the same mountaintop from this post.

First, this stacking (or maybe it's a wedge)...
...which reminds me of a couple of rock structures at this site which look similar to the first picture. The wedge near the creek, just downhill on on the opposite (west) side of the mountain:

Then this, which is also around the "ring" of the mountaintop, a little further to the south than the first picture. I captioned it "a single rock pile" in the last post, but now I'm wondering about the intent of that middle stone:

Also on the mountaintop, near the ridge, this single rock covering a crack in a boulder. In this first picture, I reduced the shadow to enhance the picture:

The opposite side from the photo above:
The dog seems to add something to that photo.

And this is a distant view, with a rock pile in the foreground. There were a few rock piles near there and some made it hard to distinguish between the crude stone row or single (or stretched out) rock pile:

Then, back down to the creek area, I found another rock pile not far from a short stone row:

Here are some standing stones from two weeks ago. Two in the area of the runoff, the first one I wondered about because I thought it is in a runoff area, based on the rocks all around.

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, it gives a better view of how the long axis of this standing stone is parallel to something like a runoff area.
The second appeared a bit more deliberate. It seems to have a shoulder to the right in this photo, which is a little blurry (half meter stick is in the photo):
Then this distant view which shows the stone's location at this site. It is right in the shadow of a tree. There is a swamp behind me in this picture. The swamp is a straight walk north about a quarter of a mile or so.

Then this last standing stone is at a different site, but it is not far from the prior pictures. I would say the two sites are about a half mile apart (maybe less) and they are separated by a seasonal dirt road.


Monday, April 20, 2009

Above a creek, below a road

Here is a small part of something I found this weekend. The video is of this little bit of stone wall that is mostly destroyed because of the road. The road is a recent construction, as it is not on the 1965 USGS map and/or ACME mapper. It is a seasonal, limited use road. The video starts at a small bit of stone wall and ends looking upstream, toward a larger section of somewhat intact stone wall:



In the video, when I was talking about some of the rocks having been brought in to construct the road, my belief is that the red shale on the bank was used as part of the road bed and tumbled down.

Also, of the sites I mentioned in the video, where I was pointing, the first one is a site downstream that I have yet to post about. The second one (upstream and above where two creeks meet), I posted about here and here. I'm starting to consider that this site is not as small as I originally thought, if the quartz rocks, rock piles, wedged rocks, bits of stone wall that don't connect to anything, crude stone row around the majority of the circumference of the mountaintop, and other things I've been finding over there are somehow connected.

I walked over to that second stretch of stone wall, a bit further upstream, and found a nice sized quartz rock in the stone wall:



Just a little further upstream, this pair of rock piles that gave a sense of pile gap pile, with my back to the stream and the bits of stone wall that remained, just uphill near where the truck is parked.



But, I couldn't stick around for a closer look because a hen turkey had just flown off her nest that was just a bit to the right in the last photo. I didn't look to see if she had eggs yet, I just left as fast as I could so she would come back.

I'm going to post some more photos of both the upstream and downstream sites later this week.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Fort Stanwix Treaty Line - 1768

The internet link to this document does not exist any longer, so first a reference to the title and authors:

Then, the "Historical Background Information" section:









Here's a link to additional information on the Fort Stanwix Treaty Line: Early Recognized Treaties with American Indian Nations

There is reference to "carrying place" in this document (you can search the document with that term and it comes up 7 times).

Here is another good link, with a map of the Treaty Line: Treaty of Fort Stanwix - Wikipedia

If you click on the map in the Wikipedia article, to enlarge it, notice the very straight portion of the treaty line that connects the West Branch of the Delaware River at Cookose (Deposit, NY) to the junction of the Susquehanna and Unadilla Rivers at "Old Unadilla" (Unadilla/Sidney, NY) on the map, and then the line continues north following the Unadilla River. Compare that line to this map:



The area where I spend most of my time exploring lies to both the east and west of the Treaty Line. There is no major river connecting the two "carrying places". So, I have to ask myself, is it no surprise that there is so much to find here, between the rivers?