- by Mitch Lee
I have been making stone Cairns for most of my life. As a young boy, I didn’t know there was a name for those piles of stones I assembled to mark my favorite trails or places.
In late August, as I was enjoying my final free days before starting fourth grade, I built a lot of those stone piles.
I’m not sure what drove my interest in collecting and stacking rocks into teetering towers, but the activity seemed to feed my artistic and exploratory needs.
One morning following a cool and foggy night, my dog Mutt and I decided to go out and search for spider webs.
They were easy to find when the dew hung to them.
We walked a while down the sandy road until we spied some great webs hanging between some tall Spruce tree branches.
I counted 23 of them as Mutt sniffed around a ditch in search of a stick.
I crossed into the deep weeds and wildflowers that surrounded the ditch to look for some good flat stones to make a pile and mark the spot of the many cool webs.
When Mutt saw me gathering stones she joined in the search by scratching at the ground with her paws.
I fashioned a pouch with the front of my shirt to store the stones as Mutt used her nose to inch a rock my way.
When I went to pick up a stone I came face-to-face with a large shimmering spider web.
I poked it with my finger. Droplets of water fled to the ground and the web sprang back into place.
All of a sudden Mutt came barreling through and in an instant the spider’s work was gone.
I figured I had gathered enough material when I noticed my shirt had stretched to the point of ripping.
I dumped my find in a pile and sorted through each rock, stone and pebble.
I nestled a big flat rock in the sand at the side of the road and began the stacking process.
The stones were cold to the touch. Some fit perfectly atop the previous stone while others refused to cooperate.
To this day I will build a cairn as a marker of a happy place in the woods. It is my way of offering a standing ovation to our many gifts of nature.
The stone towers may stand in silence, but to me they shout the message, “I have been here and appreciate this wonderful spot!”
Perhaps you should take the time to stop and appreciate them as well.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Big Moose Lake.ltmitch3rdny@aol.com
