This evening, when the sun was low in the west, I noticed that the light strikes the "cairn" of stones which you can see just behind the mother bear in the photo below. A very large, Beech Tree grew up tightly behind it..a couple of hundred years ago, and is now dead.
In many of the trail camera photos, a variety of animals are seen standing on top of this cairn. There are two other cairns immediately to the west of this spot.
CLICK HERE TO SEE SOME ANIMALS ON TOP OF THE CAIRN
And HERE to read about CAIRNS
A description of the "Wildcat Hill Cairns" in Ashland, MA matches the description one could make of these Cairns:
"Stone pile sites can be found all over Massachusetts. In some cases, the stones are carefully arranged on top of exposed boulders. In others, they appear loosely piled on the ground. Often, they are found in large clusters of similar appearance. While some may be the result of field clearance, many are found in areas so rocky that “field clearing” would have been futile. There are some early New England accounts of Indians building "donation piles", in which travelers add a stone or stick to a pile to honor an ancestor or local spirit. Elsewhere, stone piles are associated with vision quests. Wildcat Hill, located in Ashland not far from one of John Elliot’s praying villages, may have comprised a ritual landscape with upwards of a hundred devotional cairns, all on the west slope of the hill. If you visit a stone pile site, enjoy the ambience and take care not to disturb any of the rock formations, which contemporary Native Americans believe still carry prayers to Mother Earth."
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