Musing on Burnt Hill Calendar Site

by Peter Champoux

10/2/2000

Over the years there has been much speculation and some scientific inquiry into the significance of the Burnt Hill site in Heath Massachusetts. I must commend Gilbert Colgate for his prodigious work towards documenting, researching, and observing the site over the past years. After spending a good four hours recently on a NEARA ( New England Antiquities Research Association) site visit lead by Gilbert I would like to congratulate him in doing a first rate job, not only on the site itself but the historical perspective he gave the some twenty participants who were along on the site visit. Perhaps the most striking, for me, was not the stone and alignments but the stunning beauty of the site. With its nearly 300 degree view it has to be one of the best in Western Massachusetts.

So taken with the site I thought I'd add my comments on the speculation side as to the site's prominence. I am not a historical or archeological researcher so I can't add much there. What I can contribute to the dialogue focuses on the site's geographical and spiritual features. To my mind that includes everything within eye sight as significant to a Native American sacred site.

In my recent book, Gaia Matrix, Burnt Hill was noted as evidence that the dialogue between nature and humanity has been an ongoing endeavor. Located on the western edge of the Shelburne Dome which for those who have read my book, Gaia Matrix, will recall is the central geologic structure of the North American Tectonic Plate. Burnt Hill is placed on the western upthrust of this Dome containing a fair quantity of quartz intrusions. This is due to the fact that when granite domes cool they allow the low viscous temperature of quartz to fill the space provided by the granite's cooling contraction. The presence of this piezoelectric rock as well as the geologic pressure of the Dome on the surrounding metamorphic rock make for a highly charge zone; ripe conditions for visions, healings, shamanic ritual.

The fact that Burnt Hill is a calendar site in undeniable. What is missing from the dialogue is the significance, to native peoples, of the horizon features that this calendar site brings together into singular spiritual construct.

Typically Calendar sites are located to view the suns seasonal movements to determine the time of the year. This was quite useful for agriculturists without a printed calendar and mechanical time piece to provide such useful information. The sites are generally chosen with relationship to distant horizon lines whose peak and valley configurations provide reference markers for the Calendars sites central observation point. In the case of Burnt Hill the horizon reference features are all Native American "sacred mountains". Directly west of the site is Mount Greylock along whose ridge line the sun's passage can be followed from the Winter Solstice to the Spring Equinox. The west is thought to be a place of death where the sun god's light is extinguished. This mountain's stature in the landscape and late mantle of snow cover, plays right into the old man winter mythology – as greylock this is the face of wisdom and age. Considered a home of the thunder beings and nature spirits it was off limits and not trod upon, according to native lore.

Looking northeast towards the summer solstice sunrise is Mount Monadnock pointing skyward, yet another "sacred peak". Laid out to the south of this "Mountain of the poets" (transcendental naturalists) are a series of points that are a story in themselves.

On the winter solstice the warming rays of the morning sunrise first shine on Burnt Hill across Massaemett Mountain and the cornucopia of the Connecticut River basin. The history and native significance of a mountain is often held in the meaning of its name. A person's name – Massaemett, what clues lie here? This mountain also marks the eastern edge of the Shelburne Granite Dome.

As the sun progresses northward towards its goal of Monadnock it will spark yet another Indian mountain that of Wachusett. Wachusett is honored to this day by native peoples. When the sun reached this point it marks the time of the first stirring of life, waking from its winter sleep and the time of last harvest, Halloween. Placed in reference to Burnt Hill halfway between the winter solstice and equinox sunrises, Wachusett would be considered a cross quarter day marker. To the east, the point of sun balance- the equinox, rises over nearby Pocumtock Mountain. All of these mountains held a special meaning to the builders of Burnt Hill both astronomically and religiously.

It is a rare place that brings together such powerful mountain energetics and natural forces. From this vantage point the local tribe could bring their domain into a unity. From Burnt Hill one would be able to commune with all of these forces at once, enabling the users to make connection to these mountain spirits for the benefit of the tribes whose lands the site overlooks. A shaman from the auspicious heights of Burnt Hill would be able to access the depths of the earth via the granite dome's roots, spread prayers across the land, have the assistance of the land spirit inhabiting the Creators landscape, connecting with the life giving cyclical forces of the sun.

For these reason I speculate that Burnt Hill was in the first a ceremonial/ ritual site that entwined all aspects of local native life into a quantum singularity, the axis mundi around which these natives world spun. Contemporarily these mountain sites are identified as marks of the Arkhom landscape geometry and described in my book Gaia Matrix. The center point of this cathedral of nature and the North American Tectonic plate is the Shelburne Dome. Burnt Hill from the perspective of Gaia Matrix is the central traditional sacred site of Nature's Cathedral and the North American Continent Plate.

One can learn more about in Gaia Matrix, Arkhom and the Geometries of Destiny in the North American Landscape by yours truly. Check it out on http://www.arkhom.com

In closing I want to thank the heroes of this story. If not for their stewardship and protection of this site, there would not have been any study by Gilbert and others. I thank them for allowing us on their property, commend their efforts in historic landscape preservation, and restricting access to those who would misuse this ancient one of a kind site. Burnt Hill is certainly a powerful site to be treated with respect.