audiobiker
Learning...
Love this thread! I am gonna start stacking rocks!
Musical rock stacking,….
You're obviously a very sick puppy, but I LOVE that TT. :thmbsp: :thmbsp: And Redboy, don't come crying to us, if those rocks fall on ya, LOL.
Very interesting and in-depth post, as usual, Arkay. Your point about toppling or altering existing trail markers is a good one. You don't encounter many purpose-built cairns used for trail marking along the Blue Ridge but there are some along the AT - generally on bald mountaintops where the usual blaze markers would be hard to spot in a dense fog. I consider all rock stacks sacrosanct but those especially so.
Your mentioning wartime trail markers reminded me of a story I heard from some of the old-timers down at the river. The far side of the river where I stack rocks is the northern edge of the recently designated 6,000 acre Priest Wilderness in the George Washington National Forest. Having bushwacked up the ridge above the river a number of times, I was curious about the occasional cairns I have encountered on some of the steeper sections of the climb. I had assumed they were the result of the labors of the hardscrabble mountain farmers who once survived off of these mountains - wrestling the rocks from their fields and depositing them in piles along the edges of their pastures and cultivated clearings. However, I have been told that many of the rock piles were built by the 36th Infantry Division (The Texas Division) during the winter of 1943 as they trained for the mountain warfare that they would see in Italy. The cairns apparently represented enemy pillboxes.
This was a "quickie," as I had about five minutes to make it happen.