You’ve probably seen a rock cairn somewhere in your travels. People with an artistic bent often leave little stacks of rock in or alongside riverbeds, a tribute to their balancing abilities.
Just don’t. Artistic as your stones may be, they are a distraction from the natural beauty people have come to see. Moving rocks around disturbs micro-ecosystems, often killing creepy crawly critters that might not be on anyone’s list of favorite animals, but are an important part of nature. If you must stack, do it in your yard. End of editorial.
Stone cairns are common on all continents. Stacking rocks is an ancient way to mark things. They may be memorial markers, markers to locate caches, and in later years, property markers on the corner of lots.
In Idaho, Basque sheepherders made stone cairns to mark trails or just to pass the time. They are called “harrimutilak’ or stone boys. They could be over six feet tall. I remember one at the top of Garden Creek Peak in Bingham County when I was a kid. It may not have been a Basque cairn, since it was on the Forth Hall Reservation, but I remember my dad calling it a “sheepherders monument.” You could see it for miles around.
Post Office Creek, which runs into the Lochsa, got its name from a misunderstanding about Nez Perce cairns in the area. Meriwether Lewis wrote about them in his June 27, 1806 journal entry: “…on this eminence the nativs have raised a conic mound of Stons of 6 or 8 feet high and erected a pine pole of 15 feet long.” According to Borg Hendrickson and Linwood Laughy’s 1989 book, Clearwater Country!, two such mounds were at the head of the creek. They became known as Indian Post Office because people believed the Nez Perce left messages for one another on or in the cairns. Lewis had been told they were markers for trails and fishing sites, which seems more likely.
Just don’t. Artistic as your stones may be, they are a distraction from the natural beauty people have come to see. Moving rocks around disturbs micro-ecosystems, often killing creepy crawly critters that might not be on anyone’s list of favorite animals, but are an important part of nature. If you must stack, do it in your yard. End of editorial.
Stone cairns are common on all continents. Stacking rocks is an ancient way to mark things. They may be memorial markers, markers to locate caches, and in later years, property markers on the corner of lots.
In Idaho, Basque sheepherders made stone cairns to mark trails or just to pass the time. They are called “harrimutilak’ or stone boys. They could be over six feet tall. I remember one at the top of Garden Creek Peak in Bingham County when I was a kid. It may not have been a Basque cairn, since it was on the Forth Hall Reservation, but I remember my dad calling it a “sheepherders monument.” You could see it for miles around.
Post Office Creek, which runs into the Lochsa, got its name from a misunderstanding about Nez Perce cairns in the area. Meriwether Lewis wrote about them in his June 27, 1806 journal entry: “…on this eminence the nativs have raised a conic mound of Stons of 6 or 8 feet high and erected a pine pole of 15 feet long.” According to Borg Hendrickson and Linwood Laughy’s 1989 book, Clearwater Country!, two such mounds were at the head of the creek. They became known as Indian Post Office because people believed the Nez Perce left messages for one another on or in the cairns. Lewis had been told they were markers for trails and fishing sites, which seems more likely.
Here a hiker is resting on a stone chair built into the base of a large rock cairn on the top of Granite Peak in the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District. Nearby were additional rock chairs constructed Adirondack-style, with views of a mountain lake at the base of the peak. Photo Courtesy of the US Forest Service.
Second photo, Indian Post Office, courtesy of Dr. Ed Brenegar
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