My previous post was about our camping trip in the Ochoco National Forest. One pastime I hadn’t mentioned was rock stacking, because I wanted to devote a a separate post to it. It’s not at all difficult, provided you have patience and a steady hand. Wherever we find rocks we find time to make a few stacks. The results are entirely satisfactory.
One of the things I like about them is they often look so improbable, even impossible. Perhaps therein lies their intrinsic beauty.But there they stand. Some are more stable than others and will withstand a good wind. Others will topple with a slight breeze. Some of ours did.
Certainly none will stand for long. Even if the wind doesn’t blow it over someone with a taste for destruction will use it for target practice. But that’s the nature of rock stacks. Like everything else, they are impermanent. There is beauty in that, too.
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These are quite wonderful, Paul. We did some stacking at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance camp a few years back, but didn’t have the interesting rock selection you found… ours were often rounded, which makes placement a challenge.
Rounded rocks are more difficult to stack, so they take more patience. The angular ones sometimes go quickly, which encourages haste, so they are just as apt to tumble onto one’s feet.
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