#stone-stacking

© Paolo Dala

Stone-stacking

“The cairns date back to Waldron Bates, one of the original pathfinders on Mount Desert Island,” says Acadia Summit Steward coordinator Steph Ley. “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. This includes repairing and restacking cairns, which serve as both guideposts for hikers (the pointer stone points the way) and aesthetically appealing objects.

Call them cairns, piled up rocks, or stone johnnies - stacked stones seem to be everywhere. They turn up in national parks, balance on graveyard tombstones, and heaped at the feet of statues at religious sites.

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.

“Above the tree line as the fog rolls in, a rock stack could be the thing keeping you on the ground,” Ley says. “I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, because they look pretty and people want to make their own, but.”

The desire to stack rocks is understandable from a practical, aesthetic, and spiritual perspective. It seems almost primal. “As a species, we evolved in rocky landscapes,” says David B. Williams, who wrote the book Cairns: Messengers in Stone. “We have been building these things for thousands of years. They’re a way to say: I am here. I have lived.”

In Dunbar today they are stone-stacking in the sun

AMERICAN STONE STACKER TRAVIS WILLIAMS THE FIRST DAY OF A TWO DAY EVENT THE EUROPEAN STONE STACKING COMPETITION 2018 AT LAUDERDALE PARK IN DUNBAR   The European Stone Stacking Championship takes place on 21 and 22 April 2018 in Dunbar. The competition features various categories of competition including; Most Stones Balanced one on top of the other Kids competition Balance against the clock Most…