Hiking is Fantastic
Okay, so Hiking.
When I think about hiking this is what comes to mind: Trying to balance with my pants around my ankles, peeing on my legs as I squat behind a stickery bush that pokes me in the butt while an ant bites my ankle. Or is that camping? Hm, no its both. Hiking was synonymous with Camping for me. I didn't do either one because you have to pee outside.
I started to explore hiking in the desert a few years ago. I did this mainly because my cool friends did "The Bump and Grind" and raved about its "workout" quality. A few years later "The Cross" became a cool hike; I tried that one too.
Hiking is Fun
It turns out that hiking is pretty fun.
Just remember to pee before you go.
We have now started doing family hikes. They are awesome! Strength and cardio for the me and the kids as well as a deeper appreciation for the desert where we live?! I couldn't ask for a better family outing.
As we were in the midst of our first hike with the kiddos I lost the trail. I can't lie; it made me mad. I was thinking "Great. I'm out in the desert with three little kids, were going to have to climb ROCKS now to get back to the car AND there are a TON of Stickery Bushes!!!
A moment, and a pause and deep breath later I saw it. That happened a few more times. At the point when I was just LOST I looked up & saw on my horizon a stack of rocks. I looked down from that point and saw the path again.
What are those stacked rocks? Why are they there? Who did that?
ACTUALLY, I remembered once seeing a man at the beach balancing rocks for tips. His rock stacks looked similar to these. I thought to myself, "Must be a bunch of pot smoking hippies trekking around up here. Well, I AM hiking the La Quinta Cove..."
Yet
A still, small voice spoke to me in the rhetorical and inherent answer. "Lesley, someone stacked those stones there because the trail is hard to see here. They are leaving a sign for following travelers of this path. They are there so you can find your way, so you don't get lost."
At that moment it struck me rather deep. The stacks are very unique, very human, the word I was searching for was Primal. I began to wonder how many people had traveled on this trail. Were they old? How long has this trail even been here?! What if Indians traveled this trail in a migration?
I started to imagine Indians leaving trail markers for their tribes, or Lewis and Clark, or Hansel and Gretel. I thought about bees and their pheromones and dances and ants and how they all follow a trail. Each one that comes before leaves something behind for the next... to show them the way to follow the path.
It so intrigued me, that the moment I got home from the hike I Googled "rock stacks." It turns out that I am not the only person to find this fascinating or even think these thoughts. Shoot, maybe I'm the only student that didn't learn this in Ancient History in High School... or College...
Here is an interesting excerpt from an article I found on-line called,
Stacking stones is an old business. Trail builders in the Northeast picked up the tradition from ancient cultures. The Scots may be best known for it; after all, the word cairn originates from a Gaelic term for “heap of stones.” But the rather prosaic definition does little justice to a tradition stretching back millennia and across continents. The early Norse used stones as precursors to lighthouses, marking important navigational sites in the maze-like Norwegian fjords. Vikings blazed routes across Iceland with varda (Icelandic for cairn) more than a thousand years ago. Cairns cross deserts on three continents and dot the Tibetan Plateau, the Mongolian steppe, and the Inca Road system of the Andes. Erected for navigation, spiritual offering, or as monuments of remembrance, heaps of stone occur in just about every treeless landscape in which one finds loose rock.
When European explorers began plying the arctic coast, they concealed messages (often their last) describing their discoveries in prominent cairns. They also dismantled many indigenous cairns thinking a comrade had hidden a message within.
Across the North American Arctic, Inuit people construct stone monuments called Inuksuk. Meaning “to act in the capacity of a human,” an inuksuk, like a cairn, can relay a variety of messages: memorial, resource site, or safe passage. The 2010 Vancouver Olympic logo portrayed an innunguaq—an inuksuk with a human-like form.
By Michael Gaige AMC Outdoors, March/April 2013
Stacked rocks.
Rock Balancing.
Carin.
Carin.
A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn. Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose, conical rock piles to delicately balanced sculptures and elaborate feats of megalithic engineering. Cairns may be painted or otherwise decorated, e.g. for increased visibility or for religious reasons.
In modern times, cairns are often erected as landmarks, a use they have had since ancient times. Since prehistory, they have also been built as sepulchral monuments, or used for defensive, hunting, ceremonial, astronomical and other purposes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn
Hiking is Fabulous
So here I am in the desert experiencing this epiphany and I suddenly notice that my kids have left the trail and scaled a small peak. Great. My little Mountain Goats are way up there. I was worried they were going to initiate an avalanche.
Suddenly Taylor yells out "ECHO." In silence we all stared at her. Then we heard her voice again "echoo, echoo, echo. Cool. I mean really cool. It gave me chills to see that my kids were experiencing something so natural.
We sat there in the supreme stillness and silence with the ants, stickery bushes, and the cairn.
Listen to the still small voice, if the path is unclear take a deep breath and look around for help. It is there if only you seek it and move in that direction. If you find yourself in uncharted territory, appreciate the beauty that you have discovered; take something away and leave something behind for whomever may be there in the future.
