” Do you know about ‘cans’?”, the young man asked, his eyes alight with something near to a religious fervor. He had just emerged from a bank of cedar trees, tall, green and said to be 500 years old. He seemed to need to say something to someone, anyone. And as we happened to be there at his emergence, we tried to understand his glowing face and seemingly odd question. 
“You mean, like the film festival?”, I fumbled, trying to make a connection. He shook his head clearly not understanding where I was going with this game of charades. “You know, like the rocks, stacked on top of one another! Down there”, he pointed, “there are hundreds of them.” 

” Oh, cairns.” I said. “Yeah! Cairns!”, he agreed as his eyes and smile grew wider, happy to share something that seemed amazing to him. He simply shook his head in wonderment and seemed happy to have someone understand. Taking his experience with him, he headed to his car while we made our way along the path to share in this experience of a stranger who had had his eyes opened in some new way.

This was an experience my husband and I had while traveling this week in Door County, Wisconsin. We had pulled into a state park in this beautiful, autumn landscape and our first encounter was with this young man. Something about his face will not leave me. He was someone who looked more like he might recite rap lyrics rather than be overwhelmed by the sight of stacked stones. And yet his need and willingness to fold us into his experience keeps warming my heart. The look on his face reminded me of descriptions of mystics I have read, descriptions of their encounters with the Sacred.

And, indeed, the site was breathtaking. A long beach filled with white stones, common in this area, all stacked with varying heights and artistry. I stood on the beach and just took them in and something moved so deeply inside me that I knew it struck some ancient chord. Like the young man, I, too, was having my own experience of Mystery. Of Beauty. Of Wonder. After the initial awe, questions fluttered in my mind. Who was the first person to build? Why? Was it someone calling on their own ancient and deep knowing of placing a stone and then another and another to mark the place where something important, something holy, had happened? Did they somehow attune their heart with that of the biblical Jacob who placed a stone and said, “Surely a God is in this place?” Was each tower a prayer…… or a work of art, which is just another form of prayer, isn’t it? 

I had no answers to the questions that roamed and danced through my logical brain. For the experience of this beach of stacked stones…..cairns….was not one that called upon the logic of the intricate,human brain. Their power came from the visible presence of knowing that so many had walked the beach before and had left a marker that they were there. Their power came from a recognition that as humans we have the ability to take whatever is present to us and to create something of beauty and to make meaning of that creation. To walk among the stones and to see the ways in which some were piled higher and more precarious than seemed possible gave me courage to make my own symbol, my own cairn, that now stands among the hundreds that will continue to be there. That is until the winter winds blow fierce or the waves crash onto the beach from stormy waters, toppling those most fragile creations. At that time, many will go crashing to the beach floor spreading the time, energy and hopes of the builders onto the earth and into the waters. In another season, others will arrive and try their own hand at building, at creating, at honoring the place where earth and water and sky come together.

And as they do, some will say “Surely God is in this place.” And so it goes……..