The stones show the way

A cairn is not a monument. Not in the traditional sense. Nobody builds one to be admired. It goes up because a person stood at a confusing place, worked out where the next step went, and spent a minute stacking stones so the next person wouldn’t have to solve it alone. It’s not a map either: an abstraction in miniature, from above, and already out of date the moment it’s drawn.

A cairn is different in kind. It was placed by someone standing exactly where you are, saying:

I was here… this way… keep going.

I’ve been thinking about how little of that we do with what we learn. Not the school stuff, there’s reams on that. I mean the street stuff: the painful lessons, the gotchas, and the discernment that comes with being burned. We reach a hard-won clearing, feel the relief of it, and walk on without leaving a mark for anyone else to follow. The knowledge stays in us and fades with time.

A cairn is the opposite instinct. Turn around, look at the fork that nearly lost you, and leave something small and deliberate for whoever comes after.

I trust cairns. They don’t show more… in fact, they show almost nothing. But what they do show is priceless.

It was verified by a living being present right here in a moment they labeled right now.

And that’s a kinship which a glass lens mindlessly panning the earth feeding a microscopic image sensor and an algorithm can never understand, let alone share.