Why stack rocks

Navigational rock cairns have been used for thousands of years to guide hikers and travelers in rocky mountainous regions. Photo credit: Brendan Wiltse. One purpose of a rock cairn is for guiding people. They are used in mountain and desert regions around the world to help guide hikers along paths and trails. Another use of cairn building is for rituals, burials, and memorials. In places of the world where soils are too hard to dig graves, people use rock piles to bury their dead.

Recently, visitors to the Adirondacks have taken to stacking rocks along our Adirondack trails or waterways as creative art form or for meditation. Often, they build the rock stack, snap a few photos for Instagram, and leave. To some, these signs left upon the landscape are the same as graffiti carved into a tree. Stacking rocks for art and personal pleasure and then leaving them to mark the landscape does not meet with Leave No Trace ethics.

Rock stacking in forests and on mountains could mislead hikers off trail and lead to dangerous results. Rock stacks are stacking up across the Ausable watershed and the Adirondacks. Photo credit: By Daniel Case. Rock stacking can be detrimental to the sensitive ecosystems of rivers and streams. Moving rocks from the river displaces important ecosystem structure for fish and aquatic invertebrates. Many of our Ausable River fish species lay eggs in crevices between rocks, and moving them can result in altered flows, which could wash away the eggs or expose the fry to predators.

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Travel My Hometown In L. Subscriber Exclusive Content. Why are people so dang obsessed with Mars? If it feels like art, that's because it is art — numerous rock-stackers have become Internet-famous over the last few years for their skill in unlikely, or unusual projects. But now everyone is doing the stone-stacking thing, and it's not as harmless as it seems. You're now confusing that with personal statements that really mean nothing. Stacked rocks in the shape of cairns have long been used as path-indicators, but when it's done for fun, it can confuse other hikers, causing them to veer off the trail.

That's just dangerous, the wilderness equivalent of stealing a triangular Yield sign to hang in your room. And in some places, as Hourston points out, cairns have historical significance, so creating new ones amounts to defacing a piece of history. Also, it's kind of rude: As Nick of Wicked Wildlife points out in the video above, most of us go to natural spaces to leave the human-dominated world behind. Stacking rocks and leaving them for others to see is a kind of environmental graffiti.

And then there's the impact rock-stacking has on life in and near water, especially our already threatened freshwater ecosystems, which is where you often find rocks stacked willy-nilly.

Not everyone knows how freshwater ecology works, so here's your heads-up: rocks in streams are really important for a number of types of life, especially young insects and amphibians; between and underneath rocks are nurseries for all kinds of forest life that begin in streams.

Even worse, if rocks are removed from a stream bank, it can lead to more and faster erosion of what may already be a fragile place. Depending on where on a saltwater beach you pull your rocks for stacking, it could impact life there, too: Various insects and small crustaceans, like crabs, depend on rocks for shelter, and rocks create pockets of water that they wait in until the next tide comes in. Or, in the worst-case scenario, threaten an endangered species.

Some rock-stacking fans note they're being responsible by returning rocks to the spots where they found them after creating, then disassembling, their artwork. However, the minute you move rocks, you may compromise a species' habitat in an unrecoverable manner.

In addition, moving rocks in any fashion contributes to soil erosion , as the dirt once protectively tucked under them is now prone to washing away. Should you come upon stacked rocks, especially in national parks, leave them alone. And if you're hiking, don't automatically follow them. The National Park Service recommends checking with park officials before setting out on a hike, as every park has different rules about cairns.

You don't want to remove those intentionally set as navigational aids, nor do you want to follow those that may have been randomly assembled by visitors. These structures have been found in Greenland, northern Canada and Alaska and were built for specific purposes such as navigation, to indicate a food source or to warn of danger.