Cairns of Chautauqua

For me, hiking has always been a form of meditation in motion. Breathing in the fresh air, stretching my legs, decompressing my thoughts, letting go of stress, taking in the gifts of nature. On a hike back in 2018 in the Chautauqua Park, outside of Boulder, Colorado, I enjoyed all of these benefits of my hike. This park is particularly beautiful when looking up and out at its ragged mountain ranges, open vistas, and towering trees. Yet, I discovered a new curiosity while looking down: cairns.

Cairns are rock formations used as guideposts, trail markers, or burial markers. The word cairns is a Gaelic word for (you guessed it) “pile of stones.” There are examples of historic uses of cairns all over the world going back thousands of years. In American history, Indigenous people used cairns to mark game lanes for hunting buffalo or marking hidden cliffs. In The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx, cairns are used on the shoreline to warn ships of danger—a kind of rocky lighthouse.

I passed several cairns on my hike in Chautauqua Park, but this particular one was my favorite because of the pinecone on top—an organic “cherry on top.” Aside from any utilitarian use, I find these sculptures to be a curious reminder of how simply art can be constructed from what lay around us. This trail was a rocky one, so it was nice to see these rocks being put to an artful use rather than as obstacles for me to slip on and twist my ankle. (A very real danger for my amateur boots.)

I imagine cairns being built by those expert hikers who need to kill time while waiting for their weaker hiking partners to catch up. Or by kids who have extra energy while their parents take a hiking pause. Or by those, like me, who completely lose their ability to breath in the higher altitude (that’s the excuse I’m going with!) and need to pause without losing all sense of pride so they mark their accomplishment with whatever they can get their hands on then turn for a quick descent. My husband believes it’s a burial marker for some poor chap who actually didn’t make it down the mountain!

Cairns by definition are an experiment in balance, larger rocks balanced on smaller ones and then the reverse, repeated, up and up. The more gravity-defying, the better. I like the idea that these sculptures represent balance in life, something I struggle with on a daily basis. But I also appreciate them as mile markers for a significant turn in the trail or an important accomplishment.

Some weeks after taking this hike, I hit a significant milestone in my writing life: completing a full revision of my novel. So, I bought a glass cairn sculpture to mark the occasion. Fast forward several years, I’m only several weeks away from completing another, full (and even better!) revision and typing those magical words, again: The End. Maybe it’s time for another cairn for my collection.