Substantial New Video Presentation in the Works
New Work-in-Progress on Eagle Mountain on Lake Champlain in Vermont Nearly Two Hours in Length
If I’ve been a little quiet lately, it’s because I’ve been working on a major new feature on Milton, Vermont’s Eagle Mountain. I think there was a lot going on with this little mountain going back into the distant past. For the last four years, I’ve been visiting the mountain, shooting photos and footage, compiling quite an archive of material to sort through. And for the last month or so, I’ve been writing, illustrating, and selecting and editing footage to create what I hope is an interesting consideration of what we might be seeing there.
My first three visits, in Spring 2021, yielded this early YouTube Presentation on Eagle Mountain:
Even with that video running nearly an hour, there was a great deal of footage left over from those initial explorations.
Made two more trips there in the fall of 2021. There’s a little more material on hand from the first of those visits, though I wasn’t focused on capturing media on the September trip. Fellow Vermont Stone Site Investigator Josh Smart joined me there in for a November outing, and as I was showing him the site there wasn’t opportunity for me to shoot much of anything.
Even when they’re nearby, I don’t believe in visiting special places too often — don’t want to make any part of them feel ordinary. I made only one trip to Eagle Mountain in 2022, in April — yielding some great footage which I’m looking forward to sharing.
2023 brought trips in late May and early September and there was already, and then still, too much greenery present for optimal stone feature photos and footage. Though I shot a bunch of material, it’s not highly usable for pointing out possible features.
This raw 2023 footage won’t be a part of the finished video, but it gives you an idea of what I mean. Luckily, I have clearer coverage of this stone row from another year.
But in the 2023 footage, there is coverage for some gaps in the narrative, if you will, not included in other years’ footage and photos. I made a third trip that year in late September to show former NEARA (New England Antiquities Research Association) President Harvey Buford around to some of my speculative features. Once again, as I was acting as a guide, I didn’t capture very many photos or much footage.
I returned to Eagle Mountain in late fall last year. The early November conditions proved much more optimal for capturing stone features on camera. And the mountain shared more interesting features with me which I’d not found before, including a Split Stone with a Split Tree (shown above), and more.
Again, I’m looking forward to sharing these discoveries with you. Accordingly, I’m going to get back to video editing and assemblage. I’m trying to get this feature out this week. But it’s going to be substantial — I’m at the hour and forty-five minute mark right now, with a little more to go. It might make two hours. And that begins to eat up time just because of its size.
In the meantime, I leave you with this new notebook sketch of mine of what I think Eagle Mountain might have looked like as an Island on the waters of the post-Ice Age, pre-Lake, Champlain Sea…
