Are We There Yet?

Sometimes inanimate objects take on a life of their own. This construction probably began life as a trail guide of some sort. We had been following little rock cairns (OilMan calls them "ducks"--a remnant of Boy Scout camping days?) toward a body of water that we once called a lake. There are still ducks in it (the real kind) and water, but not much. The access to it is through a regional park, but not in it, and signage is scarce. OilMan usually has an unerring sense of direction and trail memory, but even he was a bit uncertain. The little rock piles did the trick, and this larger construction announced that we had arrived.

What started as a workmanlike way of marking a trail ended up as an objet d'art, a sort of cumulative group effort. Making a useful trail marker requires a bit of thought. In the Alps, blue and red stripes painted on the rocks replaced notches in the trees, which could be caused by any number of things. In the Canadian Rockies, the stripes were changed from orange, when it turned out that the orange exactly matched a kind of lichen that grew naturally over all the rocks. In the Sierra, rock piles were the norm. There had to be several rocks, and they had to be combined in a way not naturally occurring in nature.

I can remember parties where a number of us sat around creating a story--each person adding to the story as it made its way around the circle. This trail marker is the visual version of that. Each person passing by adds a bit to it. Who decides to progress beyond a simple pile of rocks? Who decides when it is finished? What stories does it tell other than, You Are Here? Is it art? I think so….

Ozzie needed no rock cairns, ducks or art installations--he took off when his nose told him we were there--long before we rounded the corner. He was in in the water before OilMan and I caught up with him. He was the only thing in the landscape that wasn't grey, brown or tan.

On the way back to the parking lot, we gave directions to a man who told us he was lost….