I enjoy hiking in remote locations and have always been comforted by a well-placed cairn – a stack of stones. The term cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic term càrn and they have been used since prehistoric times for a variety of purposes.
The cairns you find on a hiking trail are intended to mark the trial and reassure hikers they are moving in the right direction, especially when the path is not well worn or evident. Today we can take for granted our ability to understand where we are and determine where we are heading. We are inundated with signage and with GPS technology it is easy to establish our exact location and a sensible path to a desired location. We even have the ability to zoom out to see where we travel in relationship to a neighborhood, city, region, country and planet.
But, what about major life decisions? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere? Did we choose the correct college, neighborhood, friends, spouse or job? How do we know we are on the right path and headed in the right direction?. I have two teenage sons who do a considerable amount of hand wringing before a major decision.
Who really knows or can accurately calculate the impact of a particular life decision? As I get older I have become more comfortable with my life decisions and less concerned about straying from the well-worn path. I have identified and experienced enough cairns in my life to know that I am headed in the right direction.
The work shown here is one image in a series that explore this idea of the cairn as a life marker — the precious moments when we are reassured that we have taken the right path. These moments are not visible like a physical stack of rocks; rather, they involve a deep emotional perhaps spiritual knowing. The shapes, colors and relationships presented in each of these compositional explorations conjure a distinct feeling that can be associated with these various markers in our lives — a way of making the invisible, visible.