Carrying the Cairn

For those of you who go hiking or hill-walking, as my Irish friends call it (+Nicky McBride), you will be familiar with the concept of a cairn.  A trail marker can be just about anything from a painted “blaze” on a tree (Appalachian Trail), or stick shaped arrows on the ground.  But a cairn is more traditionally understood to be a pile of rocks.  But not just any pile of rocks.

Wikipedia tells us, “a cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones. It comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn). 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. Today, cairns are built for many purposes. The most common use in North America and Northern Europe is to mark mountain bike and hiking trails and other cross-country trail blazing, especially in mountain regions at or above the tree line.”

While the most common usage of a cairn is a trail marker, stone piles have been used for millennia to mark boundaries, religious ceremonial places, and to commemorate events.    When a significant event had taken place, stones were piled up in a unique way as a memorial marker or a reminder of the event.  

Commemoration is great reason for making a cairn.

Almost 20 years ago, I first heard of a place called Isle Royale.  It is a remote island out in the middle of Lake Superior, the biggest of the 5 Great Lakes in the US.  It is a true archipelago formed by glacial movements long ago.  It is accessible by ferry, but can only be explored on foot.  What started as a thought slowly became a dream to hike thru the wilderness that is Isle Royale.

The dream remained just a dream for 13 years.  I had been cleaning out some files and found my Isle Royale folder.  I lovingly leaved through the collection of papers.  Each article, every magazine, all my handwritten notes were examined carefully.  I thought I would share my long lost treasure with our children when they came for Thanksgiving.

Surprisingly, my sons (which include son-in-laws) said, “Let’s do it, Dad!”  So the planning began for a week on Isle Royale the following August.  Video conferences, emails, the creation of a Facebook page, designing of tee-shirts and numerous phone calls kept us all connected for the following months as we prepared for our journey.

Men of the Dream

In the middle of all this planning, I realized what a big deal this was for me and for my boys.  My sons were making my dream a reality.  They were giving me a gift, an opportunity to experience my dream.  My dream had become their dream.  That was very special indeed.  I needed to do something.  They needed, I needed, a tangible reminder, a memorial marker for this dream.  We needed a cairn to remind of this dream, this trip.  Have you ever given someone a bag of rocks as a gift?  Unless they’re diamonds, or some other precious gem, don’t bother.  For some reason, people don’t see the value in a bag of plain old rocks.

So I searched and found the next best thing to a bag of rocks.  I found a “cairn” necklace, the outline of a pile of rocks stamped on a small piece of metal.  Just before we boarded the ferry for the island, I gave each of my boys their “cairn”.  We all put them on and to this day, some 3 years later, we all still wearing them.

For that first trip (and the 3 subsequent), we made a cairn somewhere on the Island and placed our “personal cairns” on it.  Here is the picture from our first trip.

Fiontar Tine 2010

By the way, this past year, 2012, my oldest grandson (14 years) and my father (81 years) came to the island with us.  Each one got their “portable” cairn as well. There were 4 generations of “cairn wearing” McGlynns on the island.  The island was very happy; so was I.

Do you have a cairn?  It can be of the portable or permanent type.  They are important for our lives.  More than memories, they are tangible evidence that something significant has happened.  When we take the time to build or make or find a physical object that represents the event, it adds weight to the memory.  It becomes a silent witness to the event.  There is also an added benefit.  It will cause people to ask, “What is that for?”  I have had literally hundreds of people ask me what my necklace means.  Imagine my joy, when I get to tell them about my dream, about my adventure and about my boys.

So every day, I carry the cairn.