Thoreau and the Kinder Mound

There it was, 48 acres for sale, vacant land. A wooden sign and a gate. I couldn't for life of me figure out which farm it actually belonged to. It seemed really to stand alone. Rather than get into trouble and possibly stuck in the muddy pullout I drove to the Walmart that seemed to butt up against the back side of the land. There I parked, rounded the corner past the service bays and up a grassy bank that adjoined an old field.
No less a heretic than old Thoreau himself talked of buying a farm. In his walks he traversed everyone remotely close to him. Surveying each in turn....

"At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it, -- took everything but a deed of it"

"I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk."

And so in vein I sauntered across and empty field. Snow scuttled between the long picked rows and a bitter wind blew. I crossed an old wire fence that was more up than down and struggled thru a thicket.
Deer sign was everywhere. Man sign was nowhere to be found. Finally quartering uphill on game trails I came out into another field. And there on the highest ground for miles there it was. The mound.
What a coincidence, here on back of this farm was a mound I've been longing to see for years. It was a pretty impressive structure tho heavily overgrown, I'm guessing over thirty feet high and from the top you could see for miles.
Which was what I found so intriguing about the place. I'd read that from the top of this mound you could see a light at night atop a mound over ten miles away up the river valley and that if you looked downstream you could see a light atop another mound 12 miles downstream atop another high ridge.
These other mounds were famous, one even had an elaborate park built around it. The theory was that the Adena could set a signal fire atop each mound  and thus communicate for thirty plus miles up and down the river valley. I do not have an opinion on whether or not this was the case. I mean many if not the majority of mounds and earthworks were located on high ridgetops and it might just be coincidence that these are within a line of sight of each other. I just don't know but it had made me aware that this mound existed, here on this ridgetop on the back of an old farm. Which just happens to be for sale. And yes, I'd love to own the place and like Thoreau gave it serious consideration. If I win the lottery anytime soon I'm definitely buying the place....