Inukshuks in the Mist

It may only be the first of May, but I am already scheming and dreaming about this year's camping trip with my sister, Marilyn . I have to laugh a little because when I went to reference an article she wrote about our favorite place to camp, I discovered that she published The Sacanda Campground at exactly this time one year ago.  Spring must get our camping juices flowing.

Recently I posted a photo of stacked stones in the Sacandaga River for a Capture This competition.  It was well received, but in my haste to post it I neglected to mention that Marilyn was the artist, not of the photograph, but of those stacks and several thousand others in the river over the past 10 years.     

Marilyn calls her stone creations inukshuks, after the stone assemblages the Inuit Indians build.  The ones the Inuit put together can be huge life-size creations or small cairns, but no matter the size the only forces holding them together are gravity and balance.  As a rule, the ones my sister builds are only one to three feet tall  because the river has a lot of kids playing on the rocks and tubing by our little villages of inukshuks. We don't want any toes or fingers to get crushed by falling rocks if the inukshuks accidently get bumped.

The inukshuks (which I teasingly named upchucks when Marilyn first started making them) have caused a lot of comments and even a few incidents over the years.  The park ranger always knows when we have visited her cabin in any season because we leave a little guy or two on her front porch. People in canoes and kayaks, as well as floaters on tubes have been known to pause in their travels to admire them.  Rock-stacking is contagious; it amuses us to see little inukshuks show up in other parts of the river too.  So many rocks, so little time!

Unfortunately, stacks of rocks do make tempting targets for the bullies among us who like to knock over other children's blocks.  Most kids and adults stop throwing rocks at them once they learn a little about the inukshuks and are encouraged by us to try to build their own.  However, we have been known to use our bodies as human shields when folks just don't get the message to leave our guys alone.  Marilyn and I go sit in the river with the stacks--people may be brave enough to fire rocks at other rocks, but so far they have not thrown them at us!  If they still don't get the message, then we knock over the inukshuks ourselves, thus eliminating the targets.  If we can build them, we can knock them down.

The strangest incident involving our little guys occured the year that the movie, The Blair Witch Project, was popular.  I remember that year because some of the campers around us asked us if the rocks had some special meaning related to witchcraft.  We laughingly explained the history of inukshuks and eveything was OK.....

Until Thelma and Louise drove their big old camper onto the site next door.  We really didn't pay any attention to them until we started hearing rocks crashing and someone swearing down by the river.  We were horrified to discover a very strange woman at riverside, screaming and yelling at the rocks, kicking over any inukshuks she could reach, and throwing stones at the rest. The woman had dirty stringy hair, appeared to be wearing every skirt, shirt, and jacket she owned even though it was a hot day,  and had a huge carry-all satchel strung around her neck and across her body.  And  she was heaving rocks at OUR GUYS!

Well!  Marilyn and I rushed right down to the river and sat down in the middle of our stone community to save them.  Our odd neighbor did stop throwing rocks and went back up to her campsite.  We eventually were able to convey the message that the rocks were harmless and had a gentle history of good luck attached, but I don't think the woman believed us.  She told us that back home in Arizona someone had tried to harm her with an evil spell by stacking stones just like ours all around her house.  She escaped, but the rocks were following her!

Thelma (or maybe it was Louise) spent the rest of her time that day sitting in her camper staring out the window at us.  Quite frankly, we were spooked, so that night we slept with our hatchets in the tent! Fortunately Thelma and her equally strange-looking partner, Louise, moved out the next day, but it was definitely one of the strangest incidents we ever encountered in our many years of camping.  Have I mentioned that we call our yearly camping adventure, Camp Insanity? That year was even more insane than most!

So here it is, the beginning of May, and the river stones are calling once again.  We are reviewing our photos and notes from years past, dusting off the memories, making the shopping lists, and getting ready to be ready.  Stay tuned for more camping adventures as Camp Insanity heads for the Sacandaga once more.

[To learn more about inukshuks, the following link is very informative: http://www.sulis.net/inukshuk.htm 

All photos were taken with an HP Photosmart 850.