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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Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

From a little earlier in the season, but I like the color of the willows.

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When not picking fights with the geese, I’ve been observing the gradual construction of the new path around Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. It’s been a long slow journey, but stabilizing almost three miles of shoreline and a commensurate path is a lot of work.

There’s just a small stretch of path to go and a lot of grass to replace, but it looks like they will make it before the snow starts blowing.

Speaking of construction, the greenway bridge is supposedly done and there is a Grand Opening party this afternoon. I’ll be heading over at 4pm to join in the festivities and hopefully drag home a few pictures for the blog.

The park system here is really impressive, there are trails all over and with the bridge done, you can take a trail by bike or foot from the mighty Mississippi all the way to the lakes. Other trails circle the city and I often bike from Uptown Minneapolis all the way to Downtown St. Paul on trails the whole way. So head out and enjoy the parks. Keep your chin up, enjoy the view, but watch your step, the geese are everywhere.

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A series that I have been contemplating is called “Finding A Path.” There is something inviting about a path in the woods and I have a few pictures so far. This composition caught my eye because of the clear horizontal color bands and the strong heavy verticals of the trunks. The bases of the trees provide the right edge of the path and are very pleasingly symmetrical.

Another project of mine that has reached a new mile marker is “Those Darn Squirrels.” I’ll write more about them soon, but for those of you who know about them, the fall series of greeting cards is printed and order forms have been sent out to most of the stores on my list. I need to rebuild the website for them before I write more. They are a lesson in persistence. I took the pictures that the cards are based on a long time ago, but the effort and creativity to find a purpose and complete it has been overwhelming.

Finding your own way on a business venture is like walking through the woods without a path. Sometimes I think that I am bushwhacking my way along, unaware that there is a path going my way, only a few feet to my side. So my advice today is, if you find your trail hard to travel, take a break and find something to climb up on and look around. A conversation with a friend or a little quiet time walking by a lake and asking yourself simple questions might point the way to a path near by.

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