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What’s the deal with cairns? You’ve probably walked right past them without noticing. Other times you may have noticed them and wondered who took the time to balance a pile of rocks. If you spend any amount of time outside in nature you will come across at least one cairn. Cairns, derived from the Scottish word càrn (pronounced like the name Karen), are people-made stacks of balanced rocks built to designate a place.
Imagine you are walking along a nature trail that borders an idyllic stream and you find the perfect spot to dwell and write in your field journal. Along the edges of the stream are several cairns. In this beautiful natural setting people made their presence known with a humble pile of rocks. Perhaps they were designating the area as a safe place to cross the stream, or as a remembrance to a lost loved one, or a border line.
Then again, maybe they were just enjoying sitting quietly in a natural setting and balancing rocks in a stream. That’s okay, right? Actually, the National Park Service and other outdoor organizations politely ask that visitors refrain from building cairns. But, why?
In this post, I’ll explain where cairns came from, what they’re for, and when and where you can settle in for a moment of mindfulness to build your own.
Resourceful Rocks
Earth is the third rock from the sun. We are all living our lives on a rock that is flying at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun. It just makes sense that we learned to use one of our most common resources, rocks, for a variety of things. If you took a short walk most anywhere outside you would quickly come upon a rock. Depending on your need, you could use that rock as a landmark for a significant place, a sign to mark the trail, a building material, a weapon, or as a tool. Stacking rocks takes very little training and time. Hence cairns began to appear as a means to fulfill some of these needs.
Rocks for Remembrance
The practice of using a pile of stones as a landmark has been around since prehistoric times. Early cultures utilized stone stacking to mark grave sites and burial grounds. Some of these sites are large, house-like mounds of stones that were carefully stacked to create an open chamber below where the dead would be laid to rest. In other sites, stone stacks marked an individual grave. Community members would add stones to the pile in remembrance. From Africa to Asia to Europe, early human cultures mourned the dead by building artistic spaces and monuments of stones simply by stacking rocks.
Rocks for Navigation
We have always loved to wander. We have managed to walk across most parts of the world, and in prehistoric times we needed some way to navigate. In most places rocks are a plentiful resource just lying around. Early wanderers realized they could create unnatural piles of rocks to mark key navigational points. Cairns were carefully placed to provide waypoints for travelers that were crossing lands without maps and modern navigational aids.
Cairns are still used as trail markers today. This is because in places like the desert southwest, there are few or no trees or other stable vegetation to mark the trail. For example, in Canyonlands National Park and Zion National Park rangers maintain cairns to help visitors stay on track because in these rocky environments trails disappear quickly.
Rocks for Designating Sacred Places
People have always been thoughtful about setting a path for others to build a sense of community. Cairns served to guide groups to food and water sources, hunting grounds, and sacred places used for ceremonies. In fact, sacred places were often designated by unique cairns or rock formations. The rock stacks helped communicate the value and importance of that place to the people. Places like the highest point in an area or a sacred peak were donned with a carefully formed cairn that would become part of its story shared over the ages.
As cairns were built regional cultures emerged. And people found a way to ensure their survival by deeply connecting with the land. However, times have changed. We no longer do the ceremonies, need to mark the sites of our dead, or create waypoints for others to follow.
It’s time we rethink the building of cairns.
Why You Shouldn’t Build Cairns on the Trail
We all want to leave our mark and remember special places. Afterall, you have allocated time and money to visit some of the world’s most beautiful and wild places. You want to remember and say “I was here!”. Moreover, cairns seem to be the most economical and least damaging way to designate your visitation to a natural, wild place. Unfortunately, building cairns in wild settings can create a number of unforeseen issues like:
- Destroying sensitive habitats and fragile wildlife,
- Dismantling of historic and archaeological sites,
- Misguiding other visitors and leading them off trail.
To Protect Wildlife
While it may be easy to forget, rocks are a habitat for diverse wildlife. Insects, microorganisms, and numerous aquatic species rely on rocks for their life cycles. If you are visiting a stream or tide pool and begin selecting rocks to build a cairn you are likely endangering the survival of multiple species. In some cases, slow growing species may take years to recover from such a disturbance.
Aquatic invertebrates and many species of fish lay their eggs in rock crevices. If these rocks are moved or removed the eggs may be exposed to predators or those species would dry out and die from sun exposure. Moss and lichen colonize rocks which creates habitats, filters air pollution, and erodes rocks over time to build soil. Rock stacking can remove these organisms and alter the surrounding micro-ecosystem.
To Preserve Historic Sites
The mission of the National Park Service is to protect and preserve the natural and cultural resources within the park system. Many parks include historic, even prehistoric sites that provide visitors with an understanding of human history. Some of these sites may look to the average visitor like a pell mell pile of rocks. This has prompted a number of folks to set about creating cairns with the “extra” rocks just lying around.
However, moving or removing rocks from these sites significantly reduces our ability to understand what was built at that site, who built it, and why it was built. There are still large gaps in our understanding of human history. This makes each historic site valuable just as it is found.
To Maintain Trails
Rocky and desert landscapes do not yield to the weight of visitors constantly walking across the terrain. So even though your trail map claims you are hiking one of the park’s most popular trails, there may not be any trail to follow. Therefore, cairns serve as primary trail markers for hikers in these landscapes. When hikers build their own cairns this creates confusion for others and may even lead them significantly off trail. Ultimately, this can lead to folks getting lost and to potentially dangerous situations.
What’s more, we head out to visit wild places to see and be surrounded by undisturbed and awe-inspiring landscapes. By building cairns to commemorate your own visit, it takes away the wild experience for others. If you are trying to connect to nature and enjoy the great outdoors then don’t disturb the landscape by rock stacking.
Why You Should Create Your Own Space to Build Cairns
Clearly, there are a number of reasons you should not build cairns in public wild places. And, by refraining from building cairns you are protecting wildlife, preserving historic sites, and maintaining trail safety. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your own special place to build cairns.
Building cairns can be deeply meditative, relaxing, and peaceful. Engaging in the building of a cairn can be play, art, or meditation. The process requires you to think carefully about the shape and characteristics of each individual rock. You have to consider how to balance rock upon rock until they become a cohesive whole. Rock by rock you can set your intentions, build goals, or count your blessings. Your only limit is your imagination!
Stack Responsibly
Cairn building as meditation, play, or art can be done in a personal space like a backyard garden, patio, or porch. In some public parks there are sand and stone gardens, often referred to as Japanese rock gardens, where people can enjoy meditative rock stacking or sand raking. Whether you have a large or small outdoor space, designate an area for building cairns rather than building them while out on the trail.
Do not collect rocks from national and state parks or other public lands for your cairn garden. You will need to gather rocks from personal property or purchase stones made for landscaping. A good stone size to begin building cairns ranges from 3 to 4 inches, like these Natural River Rocks you can purchase on Amazon. Or if you have limited space, a small desk zen garden can provide a mindful moment away from the computer with natural stone and sand.
Keep Nature Wild, Build the Cairns at Home
Long ago humans needed cairns to designate sacred places, to mark final resting places for the dead, and to navigate through wild and open country. We still rely on cairns to navigate through some landscapes, like the rocky formations of the Canyonlands. But, here’s the deal–you should never build your own cairns while out on public lands. Follow the Leave No Trace principles to ensure the protection of wildlife, preservation of historic sites, and safety and experience of other visitors.
If you want to engage in some active meditation then designate a small space at home for cairn building or check out your local parks to see if they have designated sand and rock garden spaces. Doing something like building a cairn allows you to interact with natural materials with intention which can help develop mindfulness. These practices have also been shown to relieve stress and reduce anxiety. So get outside, head to the trail and embark, explore, and enjoy! Just build the cairns at home.
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