Monday, October 14, 2013

Cairns...messengers in stone

Cairns, rock piles that are man made,
have always fascinated me.
While visiting Looking Glass Falls in North Carolina,
I turned to look downstream,
and saw this.....

It was standing there,
put together like children's building blocks.
About 6-8 ft. tall, it stood there,
a silent sentinal for my imagination.

One person, or many,
may have contributed to this flat rock pile.

David Williams, acclained nature writer,
has a book called....
Cairns, Messengers in Stone.

Cairns usually have some sort of purpose,
but some are just there for beauty and artistic reasons.
A few years back, I saw the very large cairn at
Henry David Thoreau's home site at Waldon Pond.
I contributed my stone, as I have to many other cairns.
Cairns have an ancient history,
at one time being built for protective energy.

There is a traditional
Scottish blessing, Cuiridh mi clach air do charn,
which means....
I will put a stone on your cairn.

Savor the Day!
Yvonne

9 comments:

Unknown said...

How cool! I haven't ever seen a cairn in person .... And you would think it would be a common enough thing here in this wooded wonderland. Maybe it's time to pause and build one of my own while out in the trail. I love the scottish saying.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

One of our most important Canadian symbols are the Inuit cairns called inukshuks.

Magpie's Mumblings said...

Interesting! Here we find inukshuks cropping up all over...similar in thought I guess.

Caterina Giglio said...

wow... 6-8 feet... oh my! yes saw these in Hawaii too, just wonderful sculptures...

Halle said...

Love it. I've seen a couple of these along Lake Superior toward the end of a hiking trail. Certainly not that tall though. Maybe a foot or two...but those rocks are rounded. :)

Kris said...

That is seriously an awesome photo!
We did a bike ride while in Alaska a while back. We came upon someone's property and their landscape was entirely cairns.
Now I wish I had taken a photo of it to share with you....

Healing Woman said...

I would have been thrilled to happen upon the stone column. Magical! Thanks for sharing this amazing picture.

Nancy said...

Love the name of that book :)
We saw many, many stones in Scotland--the most plentiful thing there, besides the beautiful heather--and all put to good use.

David Williams said...

Yvonne, thanks kindly for mentioning my book on cairns. I hope you enjoyed it. Wishing you many more discoveries of fine cairns. All best, David Williams