A million Dogtown pictures

[urbpan]

Dogtown was a village in the town of Gloucester that was deserted after the Revolutionary War. Later, after the forest has swallowed the ruins of the village, stonecutters were commissioned by noted rich weirdo Roger Babson, to cut inspirational sayings in many of the huge boulders scattered across the landscape. It once was hard to find information about the place, but now Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on both Dogtown and Babson. There was also a good piece of historical fiction called The Last Days of Dogtown recently published.

We like to hike there with the dogs, exploring both the natural points of interest, and the stone relics. cottonmanifesto, belen1974, rockbalancer, and the two dogs who make up chaggie and I went there today. For some reason on this visit we encountered more of the inscribed boulders (16 out of 23) than ever before. They get to be a little redundant in a series of photos, but hopefully there is enough of interest here that you go look at the others' journal to see their pictures, too.




It's so hard to get a single picture that captures the feeling of a forest full of boulders, so I tried to put a panorama together.


Some of last years bracket mushrooms. One of the turkey tail lookalikes.


The first inscribed boulder we found. cottonmanifesto uses a photo of herself in front of this boulder (that I took a few years ago) as one of her lj icons.


Charlie is still so cold from an earlier swim that his ears and tail are down, in a posture that does not resonate with courage.


This boulder indicates the proximity to the neighboring town of Rockport (Dogtown is apparently composed of land in both towns).


That's better!














Can anyone read the lower writing?


In between boulders we found an ant nest, in a place where someone had moved a big rock. They were as large as carpenter ants, but were reddish yellow in color. I'd never seen anything like them. They were very sluggish because of the cold, but this one began to perk up after a little while in my hand. When she opened her mandibles up wide, I carefully put her back.


I like the full sentence inscriptions (there are others we didn't find this time).


This is one of the cellar holes from the old village.


This boulder identifies the nature of the rock features of the area, rather than suggesting routes to success.


rockbalancer here is photographing a clump of black knot


This is usually the first boulder we encounter, identifying Dogtown Square, but this time we found it on our way out.


At the exit gates (sort of--where the town compost heap is) I tried a rock balance. Not too shabby!

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

you know, i started out trying to write from their POV but i just didn't have the heart ... or whatever organ is required to do that.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just went back and re-read his...I am a total dork!!

http://ezra-the-dog.livejournal.com/

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

ha ha! those are cute! my entries are all just pictures - people can feel free to make inferences about what the dogs are thinking.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Mine is the opposite - they know what he's thinking (and I use that term lightly), but must make a mental picture of him, unless they know him. Huh. I'd like to know what people would think he looked like!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

my first impression was that he most likely looks like a barrel. :)

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Ha ha!! That's awesome! He's a greyhound, though. They may look all graceful and all, but it's all a sham. ;)