Photograph of Cairns Along False Creek, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

I recently made a post on Graffiti Near Me about a mural that featured an inuksuk. This reminded me about a photograph I took of some cairns that someone was building along False Creek in Vancouver, BC, Canada (map). I took the photograph while on a walk with a friend in October 2009. I unfortunately didn’t talk to the person building the cairns and so didn’t catch his name:

Cairns along False Creek, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photographed October 2009. Please click the photograph to see a larger version.

According to Wikipedia:

A cairn (carn in Irish, carnedd in Welsh, càrn in Scots Gaelic) is a manmade pile of stones, often in a conical form. They are usually found in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops or near waterways. [...] In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient times they were erected as sepulchral monuments, or used for practical and astronomical uses.¹

So now you know! I haven’t been back to the spot where I took the photograph. I assume that people have probably knocked them down — many people are probably unable to find anything to appreciate about the patiently and carefully built stone piles pictured above. In any case, the efforts of the person I saw building the cairns hasn’t gone totally to waste: it provided me with something interesting to photograph, think and write about

References

1. Cairn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn Accessed November 25, 2009.

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