This giant pile of rocks lies close to an outlook called The Pinnacle along the Appalachian Trail, and is an example of a “cairn,” albeit gone overboard. Stacking stones into towers has served as a direction marker, memorial, or spiritual commemoration across many world cultures. The term cairn is Gaelic, and means “a heap of stones:” wanderers would be able to follow a path with these markers, and hikers along trails in the United States have taken up this ancient custom. Of course, the particular cairn pictured here is so overboard that one wonders if it is an unsubtle comment about the rocky nature of Pennsylvania trails.
