Stone piles have been built by world cultures from nomadic to agricultural to tribal. “We have been building these things for thousands of years. Williams, who wrote the book Cairns: Messengers in Stone. “As a species, we evolved in rocky landscapes,” says David B. The desire to stack rocks is understandable from a practical, aesthetic, and spiritual perspective.
“I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, because they look pretty and people want to make their own, but.” “Above the tree line as the fog rolls in, a rock stack could be the thing keeping you on the ground,” Ley says. It’s tempting to create your own as you travel, but that’s not always a good idea: misplaced rock stacks can lead hikers off trail endanger fragile ecosystems (like Acadia’s alpine plants) or, if stones are pried loose for cairn-making, promote erosion. They turn up in national parks, balance on graveyard tombstones, and heaped at the feet of statues at religious sites. This includes repairing and restacking cairns, which serve as both guideposts for hikers (the pointer stone points the way) and aesthetically appealing objects.Ĭall them cairns, piled up rocks, or stone johnnies-stacked stones seem to be everywhere. “In the 1900s, he built some of the trails that we still walk on today.” Ley and her team are volunteers who educate park visitors about leave-no-trace practices and help to maintain trails. “The cairns date back to Waldron Bates, one of the original pathfinders on Mount Desert Island,” says Acadia Summit Steward coordinator Steph Ley. You might mistake them for accidental, humble art arranged by kids, but the cairns are actually a big-and purposeful-part of Acadia’s heritage. Known as the Bates Cairns, they’re like miniature stone bridges: two base rock columns, one mantel, and, on top, the smallest rock or pointer. Scramble around Maine’s Acadia National Park long enough, and you’ll spot the distinctively stacked rocks amid the bigger granite boulders.
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