People Are Stacking Too Many Stones

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/people-are-stacking-too-many-stones

by gk1 • 8 years ago

37 34 8 years ago

s0rce• 8 years ago

My "rule" for these kinds of activities is to ask myself, if every visitor to the area did this would it cause a problem? If so, for the most part, I refrain from doing whatever the thing is. I think this applies well to the rock stacking.

Unless you are marking an off trail route or a faint trail please don't stack rocks, its confusing or just vandalism.

iratewizard2• 8 years ago

You can easily take that to ad absurdum levels and every activity you do is destroying the world. There's a balance, and stone stacking happens to balance the line between posturing one's virtue and respecting an ecosystem.

downer596• 8 years ago

  can cause erosion and damage ecosystems

Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

If anything, it's an argument for the sake of arguing. It's almost perfectly illustrative of the perils of trying to get humans to cooperate and agree at all.

First of all, you have brick buildings. Second of all, you have open pit mining. Third, you have mountaintop removal. Fourth, highways. All of which are literally millions, if not billions or perhaps even trillions of times worse.

For reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-pit_mining

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining

I mean, hey, maybe we shouldn't throw pennies in wishing wells, or Old Faithful for that matter, but seriously, if you're worried about this, I have another anxiety: shoes. The durable rubber soles of shoes actually leave imprints in sand, when people wear them while walking. Don't believe me? Try it yourself!

And what's worse? Astronauts used these appliances on the surface of the moon itself, forever contaminating the lunar landscape, previously pristine, and unfettered by human influence. A tragedy of the commons.

justinator2• 8 years ago

Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

I guess it should say, "locally". I don't disagree there's far worse things damaging the ecosystems of the world, but if there's a trail, and people keep hiking off trail to make rock stacks, that area will get damaged, locally.

It's like if someone built a path through your backyard. Great, there's a path you don't want, used by people you don't want in your back yard. But everyone likes it, as it provides a nice shortcut. Are the local authorities to shrug and say, "well, there's worse things", and cite its popularity, then point to your car? Or, should something be done?

downer596• 8 years ago

Yes. Yes they will. They will shrug. The local authorities will shrug at you. All the time.

They will tell you to deal with it, and pay for your own fence. In fact, they'd be more likely to intervene, if you build a fence that's too big. A fence made out of stones, even. Stacking too many stones to make an excessively large fence, to prevent people from stacking stones.

Imagine.

froindt• 8 years ago

>can cause erosion and damage ecosystems
Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

It is causing noticeable impact though. I recently went to Iceland which has had rapid tourism growth since about 2008. There is a place along Ring Road (the road around the whole island) where long ago, a rock was placed on a stack for good luck in their travels. [1] There's essentially one place where it's "tolerated" on the island for a reason that goes back hundreds of years. Even driving 20+ miles beyond the location, there were stacks of rocks off ~100 feet off the road. It really ruined the natural look.

Iceland has moss covering large chunks of the island. It takes something like 30 years for the moss to grow back. Simply stepping on moss can kill it, justifying the MANY messages about staying on the paths. Someone walked over 100+ feet of mossy rocks to stack rocks.

The rocks slow down the water flow rate and prevent the dirt from getting scooped up.

I don't know how else to say it, but it is a big deal.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/laufskalavarda

downer596• 8 years ago

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

iratewizard2• 8 years ago

Iceland has a population of 300k and brought in more than 2m visitors last year. 10% of its GDP and 30% of export revenue. The vast majority of tourists in Iceland are very respectful, but Iceland's hasty decision to bootstrap its economy after 2008 with tourism despite a lack of infrastructure has its costs. The way I see it, Iceland is lucky to have attracted so many higher quality guests.

gumby3• 8 years ago

Indeed, open pit mining does ruin the landscape, but we make a collective calculation that it's worth the cost in some locations‡, just as we designate other locations to be left as pristine as possible. In natural habitat let's make the impact as low as possible -- ideally leaving no trace.

‡ Almost nobody is at the extrema of "mine all the things!" or "do no mining at all" -- clearly some is needed -- so I consider that your position a straw man.

downer596• 8 years ago

My new year's resolution for 2019: stack lots of stones everywhere I go. At all times.

2bitencryption• 8 years ago

The article states:

"The calamity of the stone stack, in our anxious times, seems admittedly minor. But it’s a prominent example of how social media can generate scale, transforming an activity that would be mostly harmless in isolation into something with planetary impact."

Does this mean, if I do not see any other rock stacks in a national park, I can create my own, since there is no real harm unless it is done at scale? Or would that also be wrong, since even if I am doing only one, it might contribute to the next visitor also making one, and so on?

jachee• 8 years ago

The latter, according to park personnel. Just because you don't see one doesn't mean someone hasn't already dismantled them all.

If you compulsively must make stack, then tear back it down and put the stones back before you leave.

empath75• 8 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

Example of the sorites paradox.

One isn’t a problem. Two isn’t a problem. You can keep saying oh one more won’t be a problem until at some point it is.

justinator2• 8 years ago

This is somewhat of a problem on mountain routes, where stack stones are sometimes used as navigational markers (cairns). The ethics of Leave No Trace say not to leave these cairns. Many times, people will put these up to aid others, but their route deviates from what could be a better/safe alternative. Or at least a different opinion on what one is. Then, you have two sets of cairns, each going off in its own way.

Until you get three sets.

This goes on, until no one can realistically understand what the cairns are trying to communicate.

frabbit2• 8 years ago

It gets even better in Canada: not content with merely leaving unsightly traces of their presence for other hikers, the stone stackers go the added mile and make bastardized Inukshuks, thus combining their graffiti with cultural appropriation.

https://capstoneseminarseries.wordpress.com/spring-2015-volu...

pseudolus• 8 years ago

This is an excellent point that a lot of people overlook. In some parks the cairns are so far apart that creating a new "pseudo cairn" can cause some serious navigational inconvenience. There's nothing more annoying than having to constantly double back and recheck against a trail map because some individual has decided to exercise a best neglected artistic flair. They should save it for their own garden.

crispinb• 8 years ago

It's surely unconscionable to write about stone stacking with nary a mention of Andy Goldsworthy!

dmckeon• 8 years ago

On a spectrum of: private land, public land, national park; stones stacking seems: reasonable, regrettable, deeply thoughtless. If one cannot visit a park without visibly changing the landscape, one should simply not enter a park.

Examining this activity without considering the location is simply false equivalence. Any vandalism in a national park, or any nearly untrammeled area of similar protectable value is not defendable. Also, get off our lawn.

AnonymousRider• 8 years ago

With so many real problems in National Parks (including the ASTOUNDING number of mysterious disappearances of park visitors) I find this article a generic case of pearl-clutching stupidity. Humans have been stacking stones atop one another since at least 12,000 BC as in Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. We stack stones for our shelters, our fireplaces, and our workplaces. We stack stones for monuments. So now we are stacking stones for sheer aesthetic beauty. Good. Stack away with the knowledge that you are continuing a human tradition that has been going on for millennia.

istjohn• 8 years ago

This may be a stupid question, but what exactly is the concern with erosion in mountainous terrain? I just don't understand what's at stake. Mountains erode. Why should we worry if human activity hastens the process a little? I'm asking in earnest. What am I missing?

hirundo• 8 years ago

A notable feature of stacks of stones is that they're easy to knock over. So if you don't like them, knock them over. It'll make you feel good, to the extent that you don't like them. So it's a way for stackers to help topplers feel good about themselves. Toppling stones is actually strangely satisfying, like stomping a sand castle, starting a domino avalanche or exploding a death star. Cumulatively the number of stacks will reflect the balance between stackers and topplers, so it's democratic.

Myself, I don't care, but I have other pet peeves that I do care about for very little reason. Stickers that are hard to remove from products, for one. Now that requires urgent action.

JoeAltmaier2• 8 years ago

Yes! Stickers! I bought a cheap cell phone and it had a sticker I couldn't see when it was in the package, that covered the battery compartment so I couldn't even open it. And it wouldn't come off. Picking at it produced a gummy hopeless wad. I resorted to a pocket knive, carved away plastic and paper until it was gone.

purplezooey• 8 years ago

Initially I thought this was some metaphor, like trying to string too many components together, or something, heh.

JoeAltmaier2• 8 years ago

Making a mountain out of a mole hill?

pedrotornado• 8 years ago

I was in WY to summit Gannett peak during the eclipse a couple summers ago. It was windy. Our tent was starting to deteriorate and rip apart. We moved stones. Built a wall. For shelter. I respect nature and it's beauty but never once did "I shouldn't be stacking these stones" cross my mind. There were plenty of stones left!

My only issue with stone stacking would be if people intentionally did this to throw people off a trail route. Even with a good map and compass a rock cairn can be a godsend. Especially when you're in a boulder field.

Anyone doing this for Instagram likes is an idiot.

People Are Stacking Too Many Stones

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