Onondaga Park Summit Avenue, southwest Syracuse SURVEYS: April 17 — May 15 Onondaga Park is one of Syracuse's oldest parks, located south of Onondaga Lake, down the west side of Onondaga Valley, where Onondaga Creek makes a sharp bend west from its path down the center of the valley. At the park's western edge, along Roberts Avenue, is Hiawatha Lake; along its east end is this sharp westward meander of Onondaga Creek. Over 150 feet of elevation separates these two waterways.
The park is divided between the level bottom of Onondaga Valley along this westward meander, and the plateau at the top of the valley, around Hiawatha Lake. Between these two flat areas, the land makes an abrupt, steep 150 foot ascent up the valley wall. At the top of this nearly vertical slope, midway between the creek bend and Hiawatha Lake, perched at the very edge of the valley, sits a modest, low earth mound.
When I first discovered this earth mound in autumn 1989, it was hidden from casual view by many fair-sized trees with full crowns—both hardwood and evergreen. A passing motorist would never notice this slight rise of land, or sense how it is out of place in the immediate topography. On Labor Day 1998 a violent windstorm ripped down many trees around this modest mount of earth, making it much more visible and obvious.
Still, even now, exposed to plain view, hardly a single person would ever question if such a slight swell of land at the crest of the valley wall had any special purpose at all. The idea this might be a man-made landform was unthinkable, nearly unimaginable. Yet, from the first time I visited this site, I have had extra-ordinary perceptions about its placement and purpose.
What first drew my attention to this site in September 1988 was a patch of unusual vegetation growing in the park lawn north of this mound. Between this modest mound and the park entrance at the intersection of Summit Av. and Crosset St., an oddly textured and off-color swatch of plants are growing so thickly in the park lawn, this intruding plant has crowded out all the grass. More astonishing, this visibly distinct patch of vegetation is over 100 feet across—large enough to be plainly visible in the one-meter resolution aerial photo.
My 15 years as a dowser taught me these patches of wild thyme grow in distinct areas defined by a special field of high frequency, short wave energy. Where a circle of wild thyme appears amid the vegetation consistently marks a vertical vortex of flux in the web of subtle energies linking earth and sky. This matrix of earth energies is not like conventional electric charge, but more like a strand of flux in a basket of geomagnetic flux. The plant's tiny, compact, minute architecture, plus its bright magenta blossoms mark this thyme's high frequency morphic resonance. And the stimulating, uplifting effect of its scent when this fragrant mint is inhaled also identifies its energizing effects on nerves, nervous systems and awareness.
These circles of thyme are quite common on mountains, ridges and islands. However, this swath of wild thyme in Onondaga Park is many times larger than any I had seen elsewhere, except the highest mountain tops. This was not a single strand, or even a few threads. This dense and broad patch of wild thyme indicated a very large, tightly coiled, multi-stranded cable of earth flux was steaming from sky into the ground.
And in recent years, this already huge swatch of wild thyme has grown outwards, expanding in wide waves to the east, west and especially the south. As of 2004, the thyme is ten times more total square footage then in 1988. Along the east edge, the dense thyme abruptly changes to dense growths of yarrow, another plant that occupies these high frequency energy nodes in the landscape. The soft, fuzzy, feathers of yarrow enclosing the expanding expanse of thyme is no longer unusual. This botanical explosion leaves me dumbstruck as extra-ordinary beyond the third magnitude! I can only watch and learn from whatever process is driving the changes in this vegetation community.
My first inspection of this slightly elevated perch at the edge of the valley was in November 1988. Standing at the mound's centerpoint, my attention focused on the horizon visible east across the valley incompletely through breaks in the trees. This horizon was nearly level across a range of 60 degrees. It was obvious this perch allowed an observer to track the appearance of celestial objects. The first heavenly body to track is the sun, since tracking the annual movement of the sunrise point from northeast (summer) to southeast (winter) permits an accurate calendar to designate the time for important ceremonies such as planting and harvest.
Three leys lines cross at the summit of this modest mound in Onondaga Park. One is aligned slightly west of north, and runs directly down Summit Avenue; in winter and early spring, this alignment clearly runs directly to the southeast corner of Onondaga Lake to the site of Kaneenda, currently the Carousel Center shopping mall. Another ley line is aligned west-to-east, and seems to cross the Valley to intersect Morningside Hll on its eastern side. The third ley line is several degrees north of west and has no easy-to-identify algnment; my best guess after the May 15, 2004 survey is this third ley links Camillus Forest with a Jewish Cemetery on an obvious mound at Jamesville & Thurber Avs. in southeast Syracuse.
My earliest dowsing survey of this mound in 1989 revealed a water dome rising under the crown of the mound. This rising water column crests at 250 feet and fans outwards as nine water veins. One vein that departs westward toward Hiawatha Lake splits into three veins within a few feet of leaving the water dome. I made no attempt to thoroughly mark and map all these veins, or any deeper waterflow systems to determine any orderly geometry unites these features.
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David Yarrow
The Green Dragon
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