Ancient stones, dark skies, and an archaeoastronomy park

This summer marks nearly a year since LeTerrain became a Dark Sky Preserve, designated by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada on 30 July 2025 and the first in the National Capital Region. Protecting the darkness has turned out to be only half of what is here.

Not long ago we hosted a retreat for members of NEARA, the New England Antiquities Research Association, one of the leading groups studying ancient stone structures in New England. They walked several of our stone sites. Their reading was that the constructs here are consistent with the same ancient stone-building traditions found throughout New England.

For years I have been working on two things at once: protecting the sky above, and trying to understand the stones below. Those two paths are beginning to converge.

This fall we plan to open what may become Canada’s first archaeoastronomy park: one protected landscape where ancient stone sites, wilderness, dark skies, astronomy and human history sit together. It is hard to describe what it is like to stand at one of these monuments with the whole sky over it.

The tours keep astounding the people who take them. I lead every one myself, an hour and a half walking from mound to mound on the land’s own trails, telling you at each site what the measuring has actually turned up.

The land is as beautiful as it gets right now. Six peaks, the valleys between them, two rivers and their wetlands, four hundred acres of it all breathing at once. If you would rather find your own way through, the georeferenced trail map works on your phone without a signal.

Thank you for being part of this. Every visitor, member, supporter, volunteer and villager helps keep this place protected by sharing it.