Last week I came across this carefully-balanced stack of rocks in a stream at Prince William Forest Park. These rock stacks are often called cairns, a word that comes from the Gaelic for “heap of stones” and can be quite beautiful. However, they can cause serious damage to the delicate river ecosystems and are illegal in most national parks—one of the fundamental policies of the National Park Service is to preserve natural resources in an unaltered state.
The Friends of the Smokies website offered these alternative recommendations for visitors who felt a desire to build a cairn in a posting entitled Don’t Move Rocks.
“If you feel so moved by the natural serenity around you, try a silent prayer.
If you feel the extreme urge to balance things, try balancing a drink can on your head (because apparently there’s a world record for everything).
And if you just want to see a stacks of things, hit up IHOP (International House of Pancakes) on the way home.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Although the rock piles are often interesting, I have never felt the urge, or enjoyed seeing them. Surrounded by nature’s beauty, why must people try to show that they can add something.
One reader on Facebook posted a link to a very thoughtful Washington Post article on this subject that you might enjoy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/rock-stone-stacking-hiking-cairns/2020/08/27/3059a9c8-e70d-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2iJ3xM-0cRwzwbMHdlfOCKx29GPbBLlWUcphXOE62jK_cVyywg1Wt1PA4
Thanks Mike. I’ll look at that later.
That’s a great cairn! Ever heard the song ‘Stacking up the Rocks’ by Balsam Range! GREAT song!
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Thanks, Mitzy, I will have to check out that song.
I love your suggestions for fighting the urge to stack rocks!😀
Thanks, Suzanne. I too like the suggestions that I extracted from the article to which I provided a link. Elsewhere I also saw recommendations to sketch, paint, or take photos to record the beauty without creating something that might interfere with others being able to enjoy the natural beauty.
These have become a shoreline nuisance in CT. At some beaches you can’t walk two feet without encountering a stack of rocks. They are everywhere you look. Such an original, creative expression … not.
Great messages, Mike! Thanks for the important reminder and for the very enlightening link to the post, Don’t Move the Rocks.
It’s a thoughtful article. There is something about balanced rocks that is appealing to the mind, and I enjoyed seeing your picture, but it’s a far cry from one person building one – Andy Goldsworthy for example has made a career out of it – to every passing tourist making one until the whole place is full of them. It was a bit like that at Lindisfarne beach last time I was there.
I understand the impulse and appreciate the creativity, but things can get easily out of hand. When I am out with my camera, I usually like for it to be as wild as possible, with as few traces of human presence as possible. It is one of the reasons why it is rare for there to be a person in my photos. 🙂
Thank you for highlighting this issue, Mike. I want to see nature as nature left it, not with others’ manipulation, be it cairns, decorating trees at the beach (it’s a thing here), or trash!
Thanks, Ellen. I agree with you about leaving nature as intact as possible.
What begins and human whimsy soon becomes nuisance.
Yes. That is the truth. Some folks in Facebook have told me that they have been at places where these kind of stacked rocks have gotten totally out of hand and become an eyesore.
I am glad to see so many supportive people on your blog, Mike. Often when this subject comes up folks just tell you to lighten up, they’re just having fun. I already ranted on FB so won’t repeat myself here. As far as the picture it is well executed. I have a friend who knocks them down whenever he finds them around the Quabbin shoreline. I’ve come to spots where there are dozens of them and it totally ruins the place for anyone else.
Thanks, Steve. I knew the subject would be controversial, but decided to post as I did because I wanted to raise awareness that our actions in nature can have unintended consequences. It is similar to when I raise the issue of hunting. I left the cairn standing, though I must confess that I was tempted for a moment to knock it down. FYI, I think it was erected just in the last week or two.
Happens here in NZ too. There’s a rocky beach on the east coast of the south island that’s close by a highway and the beach is strewn in these darn things. Loathe them. On the other hand I’ve been multi-day hiking on remote inland routes where rock cairns are used as genuine markers and I can’t tell you how glad I’ve been to spot one when we’ve got confused and wondered if we’ve accidentally got off-route!
Same here, Liz. As a trail guide they are sometimes essential and I don’t think most folks have an argument with those.
Amen to that, Steve. My approach is to leave the cairns to the professionals who use them for specific purposes to avoid any confusion.
I totally agree with you, Liz. The fact that cairns are used for trail markers in remote locations makes it potentially dangerous for people to make there own and possibly mislead people from the trails.
An ancient human tendency, the urge to show “I was here.” 😉
Love the cairns as trail markers but agree they have no place in fragile streams and interfere with the habitat of aquatic creatures.
I have never built a cairn in a river or on dry land, but neither have I ever considered the detrimental effects of doing so. Because of your post, I visited the blog you linked to and read the whole post. Thank you for opening my eyes to a problem I was unaware of. And thanks for a lovely image.
Thanks, Nina. When I posted the image in a Nature Lovers of Virginia group in Facebook, I manage to spark a really heated discussion among folks about this issue. The only other time I have gotten such a reaction was when I posted an image related to hunting.
There are some amazing YouTube videos in time lapse showing people building cairns. Those probably inspire others to try it. It’s good to spread the word that it’s a harmful practice.