If you want to squabble over something other than politics on social media, post a picture of a cairn.
You know what that is, right?
A cairn is a decorative little tower of rocks and pebbles that some people like to make when they walk on a beach or hike through the woods. Cairns are usually small, but if you come across one, the fact that it was made by the human hand will be unmistakable. At our old house, one of our neighbors had an ever-changing sculpture garden of cairns in her front yard. If they signified something, I never knew what, but I loved strolling by and admiring them. Which is part of why I was so surprised to find out how deeply some people hate a good cairn.
Years ago I came across a thread blazing with fury under a photo of a cairn that one of the park systems posted on its Facebook page. A few of the haters attempted to justify their anger by invoking the environmental impact of cairns — something about disturbing insect habitat. Really? Many interactions with insects over the years tell me that the bugs abide, dude.
No, the anger wasn't really about the bugs. A cairn is a Rorschach test, and when cairn haters come across one, what they see is an egregious display of human ego. They imagine a person who, surrounded by nature's gifts, has to declare, "I was here." A shocking number of people on that Facebook thread said as much, and they described the glee they felt at kicking down a cairn for just that reason — to erase the signature.
Me, I love cairns. I thought about them last weekend, when I visited the arboretum to take in the beauty of prepubescent spring. The daffodils had awakened, and the ornamental trees had started to think seriously about bursting. A wood frog chorus rose and fell, rose and fell. Chatty cardinals and red-winged blackbirds sang to their friends. At one point, as I was sitting on a bench drawing a tree in my sketchbook, sunlight kissing a gentle rise in the land in the background, all I could think was how happy I was to be surrounded by nature. And then I remembered: This nature is mitigated by human effort. I can be here only because others protect and nurture these acres and then invite me in to appreciate it.
And then I was happier still.
It is so easy to notice the opposite — the ways that people injure the planet. Right now I am assembling a list of examples of humanity's ill treatment of Earth, but you don't need them, do you? To bear reverence for the miracle of nature is to keep a sad accounting of its desecration. Noticing is truly the least we can do.
But if we're not careful, noticing the harm becomes a habit that crowds out the other stories — boundless examples of people putting their reverence for nature to work by interacting with it for the good.
Blessed are the arboretums, the land conservancies, the wildlife rescue workers, and the woman who takes along a trash bag when she goes for a walk, just in case. Blessed are those whose efforts to improve water quality allowed the return of river otters to the Cuyahoga River. Blessed are the neighbors who plant wildflower gardens or keep beehives or build bluebird boxes. Blessed are the hikers who return to the canyon over and over, because they just can never get too much of the awesome.
And blessed are the cairn makers, too.
I have never made a cairn, but I imagine it takes a little time. Gathering the right stones, arranging them in a kind of reverse Jenga maneuver, perhaps laughing with a friend when the little pile topples. Starting over. When I make a cairn in my imagination, I feel the wonder of the sculptural beauty of a simple stone, and notice my own pleasure at how the stones look when they become a tower.
No, I have never made a cairn, but whenever I have come across one, what I have seen was the tower and the hands behind the tower. I saw evidence of people having played in nature, the way we did when we were kids. And I feel a light, soft breeze of love. I don't mind if the cairn makers say, "We were here." After all, they are nature, too. Just like the stones and the bugs beneath the stones.
We are all part of nature — loving it, harming it, using it, helping it along. Making gardens, making messes, making trouble and making magic. Sometimes all at once.
And I think the more intentional we are about noticing the human hands that work to protect and serve and honor the natural world, the more likely we are to do the same.
Carry on.