Wyalusing

Eldest son kept having butterflies (the tabby kind about 3 cm long) land on him and probe for water/ whatever (puddling, I think it is called). He wore a hummingbird-red shirt and had sprayed insect repellant on himself. Do butterflies like Deet?

The wind was strong enough to make my bottle sing its note if I held it just so. After a while youngest son figured out how to make his sing too.

I'd strained my Achilles tendon at the heel, and had an excellent excuse for not climbing bluffs. Unfortunately even the milder walks seem to have had ill effects.

I wonder where the Mound Builders went? There were some substantial migrations when the Iroquois started moving west--I recall reading that the Sioux were originally from the Iowa/Wisconsin neck of the woods.

For that matter, why do the bears and panthers have such round heads? Is that stylization or erosion? I tried to think up reasons for effigy mounds. Everybody thinks "totem," but it could be something like emblem: a memorial built when a leader from the bear clan or porcupine clan or clamshell clan (my idea--you'd get a conical mound that way :-)) was in charge.

It might make an interesting Boy Scout project for them to learn about and try to build their own mound. If it was 20' by 10' by 3' high and rounded, I'd guesstimate 300 cubic feet of dirt. Carrying the dirt isn't that big a deal, especially if you cheat and use inventions like wheelbarrows or the shoulder pole--digging is the hard part. If every boy moved 2 cubic feet of dirt in a day, that'd be 150 boy-days. If several groups got together (I suppose they'd have to, since you'd only build something like this on Scout property), they could build a fairly respectable mound in a couple of days without too many blisters.