No narration or music on this — simply a 20 minute walk-along. This is the raw field footage as shot, with added fade ins and fade outs to stitch the clips together.
Vermont is still snow covered, but I was able to get out while visiting Massachusetts this past weekend in search of some stonework and came across this stone row I hadn't seen before in a familiar area, in Berlin near Gates Pond - once better known as Kequasagansett.
I love happy coincidences… Walking in down the trail towards a couple of other old stone rows I thought I might revisit, the question arose in my brain — did I lock the car? I usually do… but couldn’t be sure. So, I turned around to walk back to the car… and saw this stone row off to the right. Hadn’t noticed it before.
As it led in the general direction of the parking lot, I decided to follow the stone row, and capture it on video, as I made my way back.
When close enough, I used the remote to be sure the car was locked. Beep!
There’s not a lot to the stone row at first, mostly boulders. I believe many of the smaller stones from this section were removed and ended up in the WPA-built, 1930’s era mortared stone walls nearby. You can see some of that work in the video.
Although this area was farmed, many of the stone rows in the vicinity appear older, possessing characteristics we often see in potential Indigenous Stone Rows — organic coursework, arcs and dips (or undulations), surrounded stones, serpent iconography, and the like. Some of the stone rows appear to have been adapted, leveled or “repaired” and put into possible agricultural use, with the older work still evident underneath.
Though now heavily degraded in places, intact stretches of this old stone row remain, and these display some of these designs, with additional embellishments like portals and a possible Serpent’s Horn.
There’s more stonework to share from this trip. More to come.
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