This is the continuation of a journey interrupted. I was first brought to the "Indian grinding stone" over thirty years ago, as part of a twenty mile hike to earn a merit badge in Boy Scouts. As I recall it was part of a required series of hikes. Ten ten mile hikes and a twenty miler. The promise of seeing the stone was the treat, the carrot at the end of the stick. What young boy could resist the thought of seeing an honest-to-goodness Indian relic hidden among New England's hills.

The man who brought us there that day knew the woods in those parts like the tiles on his kitchen floor. On a previous hike he lead us to a forsaken stretch of railroad tracks that stretched through the New Hampshire wilds. There, in a ditch, were four unmarked stones set next to each other. He explained long ago there was a cholera epidemic and a family had died en route from Montreal to Boston. The train had stopped and the family was buried alongside the railroad bed, their final resting place. We stood there and stared for awhile and moved on. It was a desolate place. I must someday write more about the man who brought us there. He was a good friend of my father. They both died around the time the millennium turned. We often visited his farm where he lived alone.

His papers and journals, if they remain, would be a treasure trove of information. He was a true student of all that was around him.  I had no desire to visit the lonely gravesite ever again, but over the years the thought of the Indian site often crossed my mind. It was a magnificent stone. The thought of Indian maidens gathered around and dutifully grinding corn maize was a romantic one. To stand in the spot were these natives surely stood was something I wanted to do again and to share. Though the site was remote I remembered clearly where it was to within a quarter mile or so and I had the picture you see here as a clue to its size and possible orientation.


      Native American Grinding Stone at Site "X"

My first attempt to relocate the stone was perhaps 20 years ago. I was certain I could find it, but failed. I recalled it not being far off an abandoned cart path. There was some evidence of logging in the area and I wondered if the stone had been dug out and carried away by skidder. It was certainly possible for someone to have done that in such a remote area, unnoticed. It also could be the trick of mind and age that betrayed me. Was it a left or right off the cart path? Was the stone really just a few feet from a rock wall we followed into the woods, and if so, did I have the right rock wall? 20 years ago I had to be satisfied with exploring old colonial cellar holes that dotted the cart path, the stone was not to be found.

 

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