8 years ago
3
Stop the rock-stacking: a call for an end to cairns
Stones: We've built pyramids and castles with them and painstakingly cleared them out of farm fields, using them to build low walls for fencing. We marvel at the rocks in the Grand Canyon, Arches and Grand Teton national parks. Yet a perplexing practice has been gaining ground in our wild spaces: People have begun stacking rocks on top of one another, balancing them carefully and doing this for unknown reasons, though probably as some kind of personal or "spiritual" statement.
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To be honest when I saw the title I was prepared to disagree with the author but after reading the article I have to say I wholeheartedly agree. When hiking I try to stick to trails that I am confident lead to where I want to go but there have been plenty of times that I was hiking somewhere for the first time and let me tell you... it can get extremely confusing when people make "artistic cairns". One time on a road trip I was hiking near Arches National Park and saw a cairn that I assumed signified a trail, ended up bush wacking alone a water-route or animal foot-path for a bit until I decided it was best to turn around. I was younger but I still feel bad since I obviously affected the land in a way the park service does not like.
Yesterday I saw someone building a "cairn shrine" of sorts at a pretty populated beach, and it made me think of the ethics of cairns at populated beaches where the tide will wash it away. In this particular case since there is a constant flurry of people on the beach and the water will quickly wash the cairn away as it would a sand castle I think it is socially acceptable.
Anyways I think that this call for an end to cairns is an idea that is beneficial to spread. Thanks for sharing!
I'm curious: why were you prepared to disagree? I've only ever seen these and thought they were dumb structures made by people looking to leave a mark of themselves. I don't really see it as all that different from taking a pebble or some dirt, and only slightly better than carving your name in a rock/tree.
Now, that isn't to say that I have a problem with someone moving some stones around completely. If you're stopped for a break and you stack a couple stones that seems fairly reasonable to me, but it's the elaborate piles of dozens of stones that I think should absolutely go. The pictures are a great example: a handful of stones you moved? Not a big enough problem to spare energy being upset. Something a foot or more high? now we're starting to have an issue.
I felt exactly the same when starting the read, but got to thinking about it more and realizing that people that are through-hiking off the beaten path are trying to cover 20+ miles a day and at that pace, if you have to look down constantly, it's wasting time and dangerous to boot.
I agree that they are perfectly fine on the beach, but keep it on the beach and stop putting them on the ground where people hike.