Each summer some one -- or group, because I imagine it's young people partying -- builds a cairn at the far end of Long Beach, a nature reserve area where I walk often. It grew in the last two or three days from the small pile of rocks the winter storms had left to this balanced arrangement which I predict will not remain as is very long although each summer the cairn has grown fairly large.
I call them Yankee Druids. Although I doubt they think of their building activities as archetypal, they certainly seem so to me. It was not only the North European Druids [or others?] who build stone artifacts. I have seen cairns on passes in the Himalayas and on the steepes of Mongolia [where stones are not plentiful and may have to be brought from a distance]. I don't know if cairns were built by New World people, like the Incans. Certainly there are the amazing desert rock figures in Peru.
Besides the cairn usually I find smaller constructions like the circle below with a big white stone in the middle and a few chair-like [or Stonehenge-like] arrangements. I shall continue taking my camera on my walks because I found last year that the structures change, probably at the hands of various groups who may or may not know each other and may or may not have a competition going.
The new header is not where I live but is fairly typical of the large oceanside homes where people have landscape companies keep the grounds looking wonderful. It's hydrangea season-- also rose season.
