Sunday, April 17, 2022

Barrel Cairns - I saw some in Cahoonzie, NY

By "barrel cairn" I mean a solid, vertical, cylinder of stacked rocks.

Having seen a video with "barrel cairns" from this place, I thought it a worthwhile destination. So we were driving around Cahoonzie (named after a Lenape chief who was 7 feet tall) and could not get into the woods. I saw some from the car on the way up Boehmler Street. Took some photos:

These are lined up. In some of the online photos, I noticed they were in lines like this and it makes me suspicious. Could these, in fact, be used like a stone wall, to define a boundary? The idea is further re-enforced by seeing another example, lined up with some orange plastic streamers, tied to trees in the same line as the piles:
I also spotted a couple examples where the landowners had left the "cairn" in their yard:
So, I guess I got to see this "barrel cairn" type of rock pile. But I did not get a sense that they were ceremonial.
The footing was loose broken rock. It's almost lucky we didn't get a chance to hike on it.

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