I recently hiked the blue-blazed Nipmuck Trail to Mansfield’s Wolf Rock, an enormous, roughly egg-shaped boulder that seems to sit precariously at the top of a forty-footcliff. From this vantage I 
peered into the wooded Sawmill Brook Valley and at a few quilted squares of cultivated ground beyond which were low ridges faded blue-gray. But while the view was spectacular, something about the Sisyphean stone was mesmerizing. Positioned on the highest point around, it seemed out of place even as it defined the place.
Few natural objects are as fascinating and impressive as the giant rock fragments that randomly dot our landscape. Found at roadside,
deep in the woods, along watercourses, and perched on hilltops, some are as big as cars or even houses. Known as glacial boulders because these rounded, elephantine stones were shaped and transported by an ice sheet more than a mile thick that covered the state thousands of years ago, their provenance was largely a mystery until 1825 when a Connecticut manufacturer put forth a theory that tied their willy-nilly distribution to movement by ice.
As Vernon industrialist Peter Dobson constructed a cotton mill in Talcott Ravine along the Tankerhoosen River, he noticed his workmen digging up many boulders haphazardly mixed with clay and sand. At the time, accepted theory was that the big rocks had probably drifted with the strong currents of Noah’s biblical flood. But Dobson conjectured that icebergs floating on the deluge had dropped the rocks as the frozen islands melted while drifting south. His observations were published but largely ignored and another generation passed before something resembling modern glacial theory arose.
Glacial boulders are emblematic of our region. Often seeming to rise out of nowhere and suggestive of
potent energies dwarfing humanity, the largest have become enchanting local landmarks that capture the imagination. By their sheer size and bewitching beauty they have a presence that draws people and has transformed them from mere natural objects into cultural phenomena.
Charismatic leaders have long recognized the power of these boulders and the legendary Mohegan Chief Uncas is said to have conducted meetings atop Cochegan Rock in Montville, a 7,000 ton giant of boulders that is said to be fifty-four feet high and fifty-eight feet wide. It’s so large that when approaching it from a relatively flat path in the woods off I-395, it cannot be seen in a single glance.
Colonial ministers recognized that standing on boulders conferred authority, and they preached from several rocky rostrums around the state. Woodstock has two within a stone’s throw of each other. Eliot Rock is an awkwardly rectangular boulder about six feet tall sitting in a small field and approached by two steps through a stone wall. From here, Indian missionary John Eliot supposedly preached in 1674. Around the corner, Pulpit Rock lies in a swale at the edge of its unpaved namesake road. The flat topped, roughly oval boulder was the site of the town’s first religious service and bears the inscription: “Pulpit Rock, Sacred Forevermore, 1686-1886.” There are also pulpit rocks in Roxbury, Higganum, and Fairfield, though the latter has a Civil War story and is more ledge than boulder.
Perhaps the most historically significant glacial boulders comprise Judges’ Cave high atop New Haven’s West Rock. The largest of these giant rounded stones cracked long ago creating a cave-like space. In
1661 it was the hideout of fugitives Edward Whalley and William Goffe. The two were among the judges who sentenced England’s Charles I to death in 1649. They fled under threat of execution following the monarchy’s restoration. Likely dragged by the ice from Meriden’s hanging hills, the boulders have carved thirty-foot-long grooves on the ledge where they sit.
Boulders are natural works of art and I often wonder what images artists might find in them. Although there are several instances of human imagination superimposed on these natural wonders, perhaps the best known is Frog Rock alongside U.S. Route 44 in Eastford. Painted by a state legislator in the image of a rather dour looking amphibian during the late nineteenth century, the creature remains a beloved local monument though it now sits faded in an abandoned picnic area.
It’s hard to account for the affection we have for glacial boulders as demonstrated by the frequency with which they appear on the lawns of homes and businesses. Of course there are limits. Carl Andre’s Stone Field sculpture at the corner of Hartford’s Main and Gold Streets has long been controversial. Glacial boulders planted in orderly rows on a lawn next to the Ancient Burying Ground, they represent a confluence of nature and culture.
Stolid and silent, glacial boulders are nevertheless captivating. Their suggestion of force, mystery, and deep time has left as much of an impression on the human psyche as on the landscape.
From the Hartford Courant, September 11, 2011
