Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
Off in a corner of Afton, on the far side of the snowshoe trail, on a ridge in the woods lies a cairn collection. Someone started stacking rock and either couldn’t stop themselves or started a movement. There are at least a dozen little cairns on the stumps.
I did a little research today on the word cairn. I knew the word, but couldn’t spell it (it’s pronounced like Karen). I tried every variation that I could think of and discovered that there are a lot of rocker chicks who like to misspell Karen (search: Karyn or Caren rock). That’s why I used a descriptive title on the post today in hopes that I can help someone else. Once the true spelling revealed itself, I was delighted to read about them on wikipedia. Now I want to build more of them when I’m out hiking. They have lots of purposes, but one of them is to denote a path. Often a pointed rock is included in the stack that indicates the direction of travel. This kind of cairn is called a duck or duckie (I know!) because the pointed rock indicating the route looks like a beak. How often does someone who uses a duckie as a trademark find something like this!
The Wiki article also includes a neat term: two rocks do not make a duck. Meaning that a lost hiker might think they see a duckie, but it could just be one rock sitting on another rock. I like that. It reminds me of researching on the web — you want to find more than one or two sources. How many rocks does it take? When you five rocks of different origin neatly stacked, you can be pretty sure you have a duck.
So stay the course, enjoy the journey and mind the ducks.
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Good morning, Mitch. This is a lovely shot you have and I also enjoyed the info about Cairn variations. Very funny.
Have a great day.
A very nice shot and the information you gave about the cairn is really interesting!
Whose woods these are, I think I know.
His house is in the village, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
OOPS, wrong state. That’s Massachusetts, not Minnesota. But who could tell the difference?
Gonna be 70 here today. WOO HOO. But, well, I’m stuck in an office.
Great photo! I laughed because I spent some time in Australia, and there Cairns is one of the biggest tourist cities in north Queensland – on the Great Barrier Reef – and is pronounced “Cannes”. They drop their Rs like us Bostonians, though, so maybe it really is the same pronunciation!
Nice shot. I, too – enjoyed your cairn ‘info’. We see a LOT of them around Lake Superior.
I saw a beautiful “cairn” by the beach in Florence, OR. It also contained a piece of what looked like raffia. I took several pictures. I thought the whole thing was beautiful. I will watch for them from now on.
Also throughtout the Bible people were stacking rocks as alters to communicate with God. To “ask” for a blessing or help of some kind. When they received from God and later in life found themselves in great need again they were instructed to return to the place that they asked and received before.They would return to the original alter but if that wasn’t possible they would erect another.It’s a rititual that puts them into a place to communicate with God.I think the old tradition of building an alter helps us feel we are not alone, ever!
Was Googling “stacked rocks meaning” (on my endless search of trivial knowledge, lol) and arrived here. Thanks for posting the cairn info. Will enjoy perusing your colorful site!