A natural and social history of cairns
By Michael Gaige
AMC Outdoors,
March/April 2013
“Stacking
stones is an old business. Trail builders in the Northeast picked up the
tradition from ancient cultures. The Scots may be best known for it; after all,
the word cairn originates from a Gaelic term for “heap of stones.” But the
rather prosaic definition does little justice to a tradition stretching back
millennia and across continents. The early Norse used stones as precursors to
lighthouses, marking important navigational sites in the maze-like Norwegian
fjords. Vikings blazed routes across Iceland with varda (Icelandic for cairn) more than a
thousand years ago. Cairns cross deserts on three continents and dot the
Tibetan Plateau, the Mongolian steppe, and the Inca Road system of the Andes.
Erected for navigation, spiritual offering, or as monuments of remembrance,
heaps of stone occur in just about every treeless landscape in which one finds
loose rock.
When
European explorers began plying the arctic coast, they concealed messages
(often their last) describing their discoveries in prominent cairns. They also
dismantled many indigenous cairns thinking a comrade had hidden a message
within.
Across
the North American Arctic, Inuit people construct stone monuments called
Inuksuk. Meaning “to act in the capacity of a human,” an inuksuk, like a cairn,
can relay a variety of messages: memorial, resource site, or safe passage. The
2010 Vancouver Olympic logo portrayed an innunguaq—an inuksuk with a human-like
form.
The
extent to which American Indians in the Northeast constructed cairns is
unknown. A scattering of evidence suggests they stacked stones for burials and
memorials. A cluster of cairns atop a prominent peak in southern Vermont could
predate European exploration. But because there is no reliable way to date the
structures the architect remains a mystery.”
Michael Gaige
became fascinated with the stone-stacking tradition after following cairns
hundreds of miles on foot in mountain landscapes throughout the world. He is a
freelance conservation biologist and educator based in Saratoga Lake, N.Y.
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