The latter are currently twisted 90 degrees from their functional position as feet to hold up the whole structure.
That is a good assessment and makes sense. Except for that fact that all of the segments of wood had been bolted together with rather large bolts and couldn't be twisted in any direction.
The same as Texassbb came to mind but I did spot that at least one of the braces shows it is bolted in that position , I could not make my mind up on the other even enlarging the photo. Then I thought of the possibility that they were bolted by mistake but who jknows... I had a look at the runes but could not find anything like it as a full stracture rather that some elements, like the letter algiz
I thought my comments were off tangent to your questions.
I didn't think it was off tangent because there were some rune similarities. Not just the one you showed. I started looking at other designs within the over all structure and did notice a couple of rune letter patterns. I was thinking the entire design may be a series of rune letters that, somehow, composed a word or sentence if it could be deciphered in the right order. But, I couldn't put it together.
The same as Texassbb came to mind but I did spot that at least one of the braces shows it is bolted in that position , I could not make my mind up on the other even enlarging the photo.
I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that each piece of the structure was bolted to the other pieces it touched. I looked it over pretty good while I was there.
The same as Texassbb came to mind but I did spot that at least one of the braces shows it is bolted in that position , I could not make my mind up on the other even enlarging the photo.
I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that each piece of the structure was bolted to the other pieces it touched. I looked it over pretty good while I was there.
I didn't doubt your word, what I meant was that BEFORE you posted that subsequent clarification it looked like that to me but could not verify it was so.
The same as Texassbb came to mind but I did spot that at least one of the braces shows it is bolted in that position , I could not make my mind up on the other even enlarging the photo.
I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that each piece of the structure was bolted to the other pieces it touched. I looked it over pretty good while I was there.
They don't look old enough to have been the work of anyone attempting a 'direction tree deformation'
The rest of you seem much more interested in the bolted 'Wiccan" structure in pictures #1 and #2. However, my previous comment was in reference to pictures #3 and #4. Although I think the "knot" in the tree in #3 and #4 is too young to be something original in the sense I was suggesting, and even what I know about that was, IIRC, in reference to lore from the east coast of the continent, not the west.
Anyway. <gabby takes deep breath, then proceeds to pontificate wildly on subjects about which he knows little>
Some years ago (2 or 3 years), I developed an interest in the 'history of wilderness navigation' as practiced before the advent of maps & compasses. I read a few books on the subject and found a reference in one that mentioned how eastern US Indians would deform trees and tree branches as "road signs"/"trail markers". (Harold Gatty, Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass, Dover Publications, 1958, Chapter 5, “Walking in a Straight Line”) I was going to put a quote from the book here, as well as a drawing that looks a lot like your picture's knot, though much larger, but I'm being conservative about potentially violating copyrighted material.
At any rate, the notion is most likely spurious in this case because 1) the 'knot' in desert dweller 's picture is far too small and young to actually be an example of something sufficiently old enough to be "real" in this sense, 2) the information I have read on this tends to restrict this sort of phenomenon to the wooded east coast forest tribes and 3) there is some contention about whether or not this is actually "a real thing" or not.
Lest we go too far astray on this, there are in fact many "natural" processes that could also account for this sort of distortion, including heavy snow (though perhaps not in desert dweller 's case - Is there sufficient occurrence of snow on this ridge often enough to cause distortion in saplings?), downslope "soil creep" and shift, as well as other geotropic, and, especially, phototropic effects.
The latter - phototropic effects - contribute to yet another "natural navigation" technique: judging direction by tree "crown tilt" in a given latitude. Explanation: Trees tend to bend their crowns in the direction from which the sun most likely shines, like most other plants. So, in the northern hemisphere of earth, trees' crowns most likely bend southward, toward the equator.
Diagram from Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator
But this "tilt" is subtle at best, and varies by region, density of tree growth and location/latitude, slope of the ground, etc.. It's probably also obvious that such a subtle indicator could be modified or negated by the effects of prevailing winds and other natural factors.
Given that desert dweller's tree knot is located on a ridge, it may be a weather (or other) effect from a while back.
Rare living Trail Marker Tree in White County, IN known as 'Grandfather', Wikipedia, 'Trail Trees'
Note that there are a lot of other potential influences, other than direct human interference in the context of 'trail marking' by indigenous folk.
In the article below, the strangely twisted trees of Poland are considered. Various theories about the trees depicted there range from heavy snow and enemy tanks in WWII running over saplings to locals purposely bending the trunks to produce the characteristic bow shape they could mill into keels for the prows of ships. Let your imaginations run wild.
Bushcraft books going back decades show various similar structures.
The thing about this structure was that it was an area that one could drive to and next to a remote camp. Unless it was for practice, it wouldn't really be useful bushcraft.
There is nothing about bushcraft that restricts its use to primitive or survival situations. It can also be combined with modern tools in an automobile-accessible camp. Why would someone at a remote campsite drive all the way back to town for lumber when the raw materials are right in that vicinity?
While the name"bushcraft" derives from Australia, my homesteader grandparents used the same sort of structures to build garages for their first automobiles. With powerful rechargeable drills these days, anyone at that campsite could construct such a framework with minimal work. Just take a few bolts along on the drive.
Novice question: wouldn't bolts of an inch diameter suggest it was prepared for heavy use, more than a tent would require?
I also don't understand why someone would go to the trouble of making a firm structure only to leave it in the forest, unless something prevented the person from completing and removing it.
There's another noncamping use that could easily apply to the structure: a trellis for heavy climbers, such as multiple climbing roses, or silver lace vine. Some trellis plans I've seen are quite similar, with one large crossbeam at the base b/c of the eventual weight of the vine's growth.
It's also the same configuration as my clothes line poles.