Cairns, stones that have been stacked up or piled together, are found the world over. They have been used for a multitude of purposes such as to mark burial sites, mountain tops and paths, but more often they are simply expressions of the human spirit, an art form from nature herself.

I first became aware of cairns, when early one Saturday morning I was walking around the shoreline of Greenwich Point in Connecticut with my two children. It was a beautiful summer weekend and the area, Greenwich Point Park, was already filling with beach goers, only a few of which, though, were to be found on the outer reaches of the point a bit far from the sand beach and the developed areas.

There scrambling over the rugged, rocky shoreline we came across a stacked up a pile of stones, balanced on a boulder overlooking the Long Island Sound. There was a quiet majesty about it and shortly thereafter and without a word passing between us, we began making our own cairns, although we had no idea at the time that the process had a name.

Returning the next day, to see if our stone sculptures had withstood the forces of nature, we were surprised to see that this lonely shoreline was no full of dozens of cairns, some quite tall and some simple and some intricate.

Stone Sculpture on Drunk Bay

Drunk Bay Stone Sculpture

Cairns on St. John
On a visit to Drunk Bay with Habiba and our friend Margarita, we came across more cairns. They were all over the rocky beach.

Balanced Rocks by Phillip A Long
A man named Phillip A Long, who has elevated the construction of cairns to a high art form as well as a business, has honored St. John by choosing our little island in the Caribbean as one of the venues for his art. His work can be seen on his website vineyardrocks.com

These examples of his work once proudly stood on Frank Bay. Other examples of his balanced rock sculptures on St. John, now returned to their natural settings, but captured as digital images, were constructed on Denis Bay and Caneel Hawksnest Bays.

Test your skill at identifying St. John beaches; go to Mr. Longs website and see if you can identify the beaches where the cairns were built.

Balanced Rock Cairn on Frank Bay, by Phillip A Long

Balanced Rock Cairn on Frank Bay by Phillip A Long