Monday, April 27, 2015

Townsend Hill, Pepperell

Not easy getting over in here. Lots of woods but agressive "No Tresspassing" signs blocked my plan:
I have been over here once before, parking on Warner Rd. This time I gave up on my first parking place and drove around looking for somewhere I could get into the woods. Found a "Nature Preserve" down the road a bit (Locke Rd) and got in from there.
Saw this and it looked like something - a little crater surrounded by surface rocks:
Aside from that, I just followed the brooks uphill and northwest. Kept going till I ran out of brook, and then went all the way up to the top. This area is full of deep north-south valleys and steep ridges; rising 50 or so feet about the valley. In this case, "top" means the top of that next ridge.
You see lots of stone walls doing interesting things but not much else. Here the wall ends, and a solitary rock pile occurs at the same place:
After 20 yards or so, there is another rock pile in line with the wall, and then more wall resumes.
At the top, I sat down on the backbone of the ridge and looked around wondering what I might notice.
First I notice someone built up some loose rocks on one side of the bedrock (left side in this picture). Then I noticed more loose rock trailing off from this "spine" and ending in a shapeless mound with a hollow on top:
It is too bad my pictures are not clearer as this was the most interesting (almost the only) feature I saw on the walk. Other views:
 Note it came to a sharp corner - at some time in the past.
(Another shapeless view).
So a mound with hollow that was more triangular than otherwise. This tells me that, at least in this part of Pepperell, the interesting things are on top of the ridges. There was little of note along the brook. So after this I explored other ridges for a while before giving up and heading out. The first ridge with the rock pile had this at its southern end:
A different ridge had this on top:
Also saw this somewhere in there:
There were a few other signs of activity but nothing fresh. This part of Pepperell, like much of the town, had a kind of darkness and gloom. It does not seem as if much ever happened in these woods.

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