Inuksuit In Woodland Valley, NY

We went camping recently at Woodland Valley Campground and saw many carefully arranged piles of rocks in the stream. I have creations like this left all over the Catskills before, but did not know what they were called. I thought 'cairn' would be appropriate until I found the word 'inuksuk' (plural: inuksuit).

An inksuk is a small pile of stones, usually in a vertical stack of some sort. These are common across the frozen lands of North American where the Inuit people live. It is supposed that they are left for navigational purposes or to mark certain spots.

You can see such an item on the cover of the Rush Album Test For Echo. One might consider the symbol used for the Canadian Winter Olympics in Vancouver as an inuksuk, but I read here here that such an item is called an inunnguaq because it looks like a person.

I have seen these in my travels since about 1995 when I started hiking a lot of the peaks of the Catskills and the Shawangunk Mountains (or "gunks"). I gather people just started doing it for fun. Here are what we saw in Woodland Valley.

This is one that Jennifer and I created (that'swhy the rocks are still wet). I told her we had to dedicate it, so she dedicated it to the memory of her grandmother. 

I made this one, and Jennifer said I should dedicate it. She suggested I dedicate it to my  late aunt Roberta (aka,  aunt "Coo" or "Cookie") so I did.