Thick nature and history in tiny 'Scratch Flat'

“The place is infused with time; everywhere you look, east or west, north or south, there is history; there are stories, and ghosts, and bear spirits.’’

— From Ceremonial Time, Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile, by John Hanson Mitchell.

In it, he explores a single square mile in a section of Littleton, Mass., nicknamed “Scratch Flat’’ in the 19th Century, looking at history from the last Ice Age and the years of human settlement since then, including Native Americans and their bear shamans, early and later white colonists, witches, farmers (it’s a famous apple country) and later industrial “parks’’ The idea is to perceive past, present and future simultaneously.