The Great Beaver Turned to Stone

Before we climb too far, let me tell you how the people who lived here said these very hills came to be — because they've got a story for it, and it's a good one.

Long ago, when the world was young, this whole valley behind us was a great lake, and in that lake lived a beaver. Not an ordinary beaver — a monster, big as a hill, with teeth like axe blades. The Pocumtuck people called him Ktsi Amiskw, the Great Beaver. And he was a terror. When the fish in his lake ran low, he'd heave himself up out of the water and come ashore and eat whatever he could catch — deer, and worse than deer. The people were being devoured, and they were desperate.

So they cried out for help, and help came — a great spirit-being, a giant the stories call Hobomock. He waded into that lake with a club torn from a whole tree, and he hunted the Great Beaver through the deep water. The beaver ran. He thrashed and dove and tried to dig himself down into the earth to escape — but Hobomock caught him, and with one tremendous blow across the neck, he killed him.

And here's the wonder of it. Where the Great Beaver fell, his huge body turned to stone. It's still lying there. Look south from the valley toward Deerfield sometime and you'll see a long mountain ridge with a high round hill at the north end — that hill, they say, is the beaver's head, and the ridge running back from it is his drowned body, laid out in stone forever. The Pocumtuck looked at these mountains and read the whole story right there in the rock.

Now the scientists will tell you the valley really was a great glacial lake once, and that giant beavers really did roam this land in the Ice Age, big as bears. So maybe the old people remembered something true, and wrapped it in a story worthy of it. Either way — you're driving through the body of the Great Beaver. Mind how you go.