A few years ago, it might have been in the Summer of either 2000 or 2001, I was housesitting for a friend of mine who had gotten a good job in the Boston area. At the time I was out of work, and there was an extensive wooded area across the street, it was bounded on the other side by a highway. So in the interests of curiousity, one dull overcast early summer day I decided to go for a hike through it by myself, I don't know if you're familiar with the lay of the land in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, but it's characterized by low lying undulating hills, rocks, swamp, and the foliage is a unique combination of trees with leaves, and a lot of gnarly black spruce that takes a really long time to grow. Most of the wooded areas around Dartmouth are up to about 75-80 years old or somewhere around that ballbark. Anyways, I was hiking through these woods, which were amazingly untouched looking, not much sign of human pressure at all. I did get turned around and quickly became lost in the classical sense, I got panicky and all that. I finally decided to calm down was the best way out of the conundrum, I decided to follow the noise of the cars which I could hear speeding along the highway in the distance, by and by, I came upon this small clearing in the forest, the woods were thick right up to the edge of the clearing, the clearing was about 20 -15 feet in diamater from memory, and I noticed these granite boulders sticking up out of the ground, from memory again, they seemed arranged in a rough circle about 10 feet in diameter, what was stranger was that there was no usual vegitation in this clearing, but what vegetation there was, was in the form of a thick layer of reindeer moss(don't know if you have that in the States). I sat down in the clearing for a while before continuing on to the side of the highway, from where I was able to make it back home. I sometimes think of this clearing and whether it was just natural or was at one point made by men for some unknown purpose. I suppose it could have been a well made by the settlers, but if you made a well lined with rock, they usually are about 4 feet in diameter. If it was a well, I guess I am lucky I didn't fall in, as I'm told a lot of old wells develop this 'plug' over time. Any Ideas? I don't think I could find this clearing again with out a lot of exploring.
