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
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9 comments:
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.
One of our most important Canadian symbols are the Inuit cairns called inukshuks.
Interesting! Here we find inukshuks cropping up all over...similar in thought I guess.
wow... 6-8 feet... oh my! yes saw these in Hawaii too, just wonderful sculptures...
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. :)
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....
I would have been thrilled to happen upon the stone column. Magical! Thanks for sharing this amazing picture.
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.
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
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