Following The Inuksuk

My great, great, grandfather, Peter McGlyn(n) was born in County Sligo, Ireland.  Sometime early in his life, Peter emigrated to England.  He met and married Margaret Barron and had 5 sons.   One of the sons, Alphonsus, my great grandfather, emigrated to Canada when he was a young man.  He married Mary Jane Kelly and had 7 children.  One of the sons, Peter, my grandfather, was the only one of his siblings who emigrated to the States.

I have had a wonderful time tracing my ancestral heritage back to Ireland.  Searching for dates and hints here and there has been an adventure to be sure.  During the search, I began to wonder about the impact of those who have gone before me.  What traits had they left for me to follow?  How much of what I am today has been impacted by the generations before me?

One of my friends, +Clao Wue told me about the Inuksuk. She built one in the Scottish Highlands at a fantastic place she had fallen in love with.

Wikipedia explains, “An inuksuk (plural inuksuit) ^[1] (from the Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᒃᓱᒃ, plural ᐃᓄᒃᓱᐃᑦ) is a stone landmark or cairn built by humans, used by the Inuit, Inupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America.

The inuksuk may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps, hunting grounds, places of veneration, drift fences used in hunting ^[4] or to mark a food cache.^[5] The Inupiat in northern Alaska used inuksuit to assist in the herding of caribou into contained areas for slaughter.^[6] Varying in shape and size, the inuksuit have longtime roots in the Inuit culture.

Historically, the most common type of inuksuk is a single stone positioned in an upright manner.^[7] There is some debate as to whether the appearance of human- or cross-shaped cairns developed in the Inuit culture before the arrival of European missionaries and explorers. ^[7] The size of some innaguait suggest that the construction was often a communal effort.^[4]”

The Inuksuk is a type of cairn. A cairn helps travelers keep heading in the right direction.  It is unlike a road map or GPS which prescribes a specific route.  Cairns allow for variation in the path on the way to the next cairn.  Sometime, when a view, or interesting plant, or animal has caused me to deviate from the path for a closer look, I have had to back track to the last cairn to regain my bearings.  The beauty of this is getting to experience the same path twice,  but from two different perspectives.

What I find fascinating about the Inuksuk is its tendency to be human in its shape.  Unlike an amorphous pile of rocks, it’s like having someone there pointing the way, encouraging you to keep moving forward.

I think the generations of our families point us to things.  They are our Inuksuk.  They point to things within ourselves and things around us.  When I look into the face of my father, I see some of the characteristics of my grandfather.  When I look at my father’s life, I see bits and pieces of my grandfather’s life, and so on.

In a time when we were less mobile as a society, each generation were impacted by the previous one or two possibly three generations which preceded it, because they lived next door or even upstairs.  Now days, it is a different story.  My parents are in New York.  I am in Michigan. While some of my kids are in Colorado and California. Thousands of miles separate our daily lives and significant life events.  While we might catch these events in flickering pixels, they are better seen in the flesh and blood of family faces.

I think we need inuksuit throughout our lives.  We need a “human form” reminding us about where we came from and at the same time, pointing us forward to the future.  Maybe your family hasn’t been so connected.  But there are inuksuit, people who are willing to guide, to friend, to experience life and be the witness to your journey.