Arrowhead Thread

[footfootfoot]

I'm gonna put my arrowheads here for now.

Since getting all paleolithic I remembered something from 1979, when I was 19 and bicycling through Vermont with my pal, Alan. We were headed from Brattleboro to Bennington across Rt. 9 and we'd made it almost to Searsburg Mountain when we ran into a friend of Alan's who told us Bennington kind of sucked and not to bother biking up the mountain, but to head back to the infinitely more groovy B'boro.

So we turned around and headed back over Hogsback Mountain where we stopped to check out the view. which really hasn't changed much in 30 something years.

Being cheeky teens, we held contempt for tourists and their vistas, and souvenir stores, especially if they drove to them. We were quite special and held ourselves in high regard.

We pull up to the mountain top gift shop at just about where the truck is parked in this photo I found on the internets. (It really looked just like this)

Being an obnoxious card I started shouting excitedly in my tourist-child mocking voice, "Daddy, Daddy, LOOK! I found an arrowhead!" I bent over and snatched a stone from the ground without looking at it and held my prize up. Alan looked over and laughed, knowing the ironic absurdity of the thought of arrowheads, here on top of Hogsback mountain, one of the most heavily traveled roads in Vermont at the time. (Arrows? I didn't even see the Indians) It would be as incongruous as buying maple syrup in a little log cabin shaped bottle in a tourist shop in Tucson. Silly. While enjoying the moment I noticed that the stone felt unusual. I looked at it for the first time and saw that I had picked up an arrowhead.

I can think of several simple explanations for how it got there. And why I chose to say "arrowhead" instead of "geode" or "civil war musket ball"? Perhaps I subconsciously saw it? Most likely.

Whatever, it was pretty cool. Here is a scan of the arrowhead along with my first glass arrowhead.

Flint knapping may happen tomorrow.