People Are Stacking Too Many Stones | Hacker News Reader

People Are Stacking Too Many Stones

newyorker.com

37 pointsgk134 comments

  can cause erosion and damage ecosystems

Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

If anything, it's an argument for the sake of arguing. It's almost perfectly illustrative of the perils of trying to get humans to cooperate and agree at all.

First of all, you have brick buildings. Second of all, you have open pit mining. Third, you have mountaintop removal. Fourth, highways. All of which are literally millions, if not billions or perhaps even trillions of times worse.

For reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-pit_mining

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining

I mean, hey, maybe we shouldn't throw pennies in wishing wells, or Old Faithful for that matter, but seriously, if you're worried about this, I have another anxiety: shoes. The durable rubber soles of shoes actually leave imprints in sand, when people wear them while walking. Don't believe me? Try it yourself!

And what's worse? Astronauts used these appliances on the surface of the moon itself, forever contaminating the lunar landscape, previously pristine, and unfettered by human influence. A tragedy of the commons.

> Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

I guess it should say, "locally". I don't disagree there's far worse things damaging the ecosystems of the world, but if there's a trail, and people keep hiking off trail to make rock stacks, that area will get damaged, locally.

It's like if someone built a path through your backyard. Great, there's a path you don't want, used by people you don't want in your back yard. But everyone likes it, as it provides a nice shortcut. Are the local authorities to shrug and say, "well, there's worse things", and cite its popularity, then point to your car? Or, should something be done?

Yes. Yes they will. They will shrug. The local authorities will shrug at you. All the time.

They will tell you to deal with it, and pay for your own fence. In fact, they'd be more likely to intervene, if you build a fence that's too big. A fence made out of stones, even. Stacking too many stones to make an excessively large fence, to prevent people from stacking stones.

Imagine.

In the real world, police enforce trespass laws all the time. It's far better than having to deal with the fallout after a direct confrontation between trespassers and property owners, in most cases.

The results are actually mixed and varied.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=skateboarders+v...

Indeed they are. Which is why "will shrug at you all the time" was untrue.

>>can cause erosion and damage ecosystems

>Oh please. This is so far from an actual concern that I struggle to summon the energy to even shrug about it.

It is causing noticeable impact though. I recently went to Iceland which has had rapid tourism growth since about 2008. There is a place along Ring Road (the road around the whole island) where long ago, a rock was placed on a stack for good luck in their travels. [1] There's essentially one place where it's "tolerated" on the island for a reason that goes back hundreds of years. Even driving 20+ miles beyond the location, there were stacks of rocks off ~100 feet off the road. It really ruined the natural look.

Iceland has moss covering large chunks of the island. It takes something like 30 years for the moss to grow back. Simply stepping on moss can kill it, justifying the MANY messages about staying on the paths. Someone walked over 100+ feet of mossy rocks to stack rocks.

The rocks slow down the water flow rate and prevent the dirt from getting scooped up.

I don't know how else to say it, but it is a big deal.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/laufskalavarda

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Iceland has a population of 300k and brought in more than 2m visitors last year. 10% of its GDP and 30% of export revenue. The vast majority of tourists in Iceland are very respectful, but Iceland's hasty decision to bootstrap its economy after 2008 with tourism despite a lack of infrastructure has its costs. The way I see it, Iceland is lucky to have attracted so many higher quality guests.

I was in Iceland this past June and the mismatch between the number of tourists and the infrastructure at the national parks and scenic overlooks/stops was enormous.

I have no idea what the right number of tourists for Iceland is but at several locations the facilities (restrooms, food services, shop) were small and completely overwhelmed by the number of busses that were stopping in quick succession.

I was on a cruise and unfortunately the logistics of port calls tends to create very bursty traffic patterns with large number of tour busses disgorging visitors in quick succession at these under-sized locations.

For example the facilities at Goðafoss were undersized: https://www.google.com/maps/@65.6860127,-17.5395264,3a,37.5y...

On the other hand the facilities at Geysir were much better: https://www.google.com/maps/@64.3100169,-20.3013397,3a,75y,1...

Indeed, open pit mining does ruin the landscape, but we make a collective calculation that it's worth the cost in some locations‡, just as we designate other locations to be left as pristine as possible. In natural habitat let's make the impact as low as possible -- ideally leaving no trace.

‡ Almost nobody is at the extrema of "mine all the things!" or "do no mining at all" -- clearly some is needed -- so I consider that your position a straw man.

My new year's resolution for 2019: stack lots of stones everywhere I go. At all times.

Sorry to hear that. I spend a lot of time in the backcountry and would rather not deal with your visual pollution -- a billboard of your presence. Why not just do the rock stacking in your own back yard where it will (apparently) be appreciated?

My point in posting such a response is that it’s actually a mistake to complain about this.

My revulsion is the use of the internet as a bragging platform, in general. It doesn’t matter if it’s a walled garden or a fediverse of open source aggregators. People showing off and hamming it up to score points is the root cause, and any attention, even negative is going to fan the flames.

Particularly if people develop a sense that you’re going to step on their efforts to goof off and play drunk jenga in the woods with popsicle sticks, which is the tone this argument projects to most people.

If it’s not this, it’s love locks or any other insipid passtime that erupts for a few years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_lock

Graffiti never dies, it just takes on new forms, and moves to new areas, growing at a fixed rate proportional to the population, just like litter.

To be honest, I’d rather go back to last week, when we were more worried about the giant microplastic garbage patch in the Pacific ocean gyre. It’s probably a more pressing issue than rearranged rocks being moved a few feet, here and there, in zones already tightly controlled by humans to seem artificially wild.

Well the good news is the 1/r2 rule applies to people too (just go to the beach -- the huge mass of people is close to the entrance, and density drops off in a lovely bell curve). Hunters (in the California at least) are rarely far from their truck, especially in winter (for most species of game). The rock stackers are more likely to be in a national park presumably because they are accessible and have that vital wifi access.

There's lots of true wilderness (e.g. BLM land in the US, far northern Canada, etc) which are the opposite of "tightly controlled", mostly inaccessable to motor vehicles where you can travel for weeks without seeing another human.

I do find the idea of love locks possibly overloading bridges to the point of damage or collapse kind of awesome though.

As for the consequences of stacking rocks into formations, I thought this mystery was solved several thousand years ago with any variety of ancient pyramids?

It's middle class graffiti. The sort of people that moan about tags on a wall are off stacking and piling like fools. Like graffiti artists the point is exactly to not do it in their own yards... it's like dogs having a wee every couple of yards.

My "rule" for these kinds of activities is to ask myself, if every visitor to the area did this would it cause a problem? If so, for the most part, I refrain from doing whatever the thing is. I think this applies well to the rock stacking.

Unless you are marking an off trail route or a faint trail please don't stack rocks, its confusing or just vandalism.

You can easily take that to ad absurdum levels and every activity you do is destroying the world. There's a balance, and stone stacking happens to balance the line between posturing one's virtue and respecting an ecosystem.

This is somewhat of a problem on mountain routes, where stack stones are sometimes used as navigational markers (cairns). The ethics of Leave No Trace say not to leave these cairns. Many times, people will put these up to aid others, but their route deviates from what could be a better/safe alternative. Or at least a different opinion on what one is. Then, you have two sets of cairns, each going off in its own way.

Until you get three sets.

This goes on, until no one can realistically understand what the cairns are trying to communicate.

It gets even better in Canada: not content with merely leaving unsightly traces of their presence for other hikers, the stone stackers go the added mile and make bastardized Inukshuks, thus combining their graffiti with cultural appropriation.

https://capstoneseminarseries.wordpress.com/spring-2015-volu...

This is an excellent point that a lot of people overlook. In some parks the cairns are so far apart that creating a new "pseudo cairn" can cause some serious navigational inconvenience. There's nothing more annoying than having to constantly double back and recheck against a trail map because some individual has decided to exercise a best neglected artistic flair. They should save it for their own garden.

A notable feature of stacks of stones is that they're easy to knock over. So if you don't like them, knock them over. It'll make you feel good, to the extent that you don't like them. So it's a way for stackers to help topplers feel good about themselves. Toppling stones is actually strangely satisfying, like stomping a sand castle, starting a domino avalanche or exploding a death star. Cumulatively the number of stacks will reflect the balance between stackers and topplers, so it's democratic.

Myself, I don't care, but I have other pet peeves that I do care about for very little reason. Stickers that are hard to remove from products, for one. Now that requires urgent action.

Yes! Stickers! I bought a cheap cell phone and it had a sticker I couldn't see when it was in the package, that covered the battery compartment so I couldn't even open it. And it wouldn't come off. Picking at it produced a gummy hopeless wad. I resorted to a pocket knive, carved away plastic and paper until it was gone.

This may be a stupid question, but what exactly is the concern with erosion in mountainous terrain? I just don't understand what's at stake. Mountains erode. Why should we worry if human activity hastens the process a little? I'm asking in earnest. What am I missing?

On a spectrum of: private land, public land, national park; stones stacking seems: reasonable, regrettable, deeply thoughtless. If one cannot visit a park without visibly changing the landscape, one should simply not enter a park.

Examining this activity without considering the location is simply false equivalence. Any vandalism in a national park, or any nearly untrammeled area of similar protectable value is not defendable. Also, get off our lawn.

With so many real problems in National Parks (including the ASTOUNDING number of mysterious disappearances of park visitors) I find this article a generic case of pearl-clutching stupidity. Humans have been stacking stones atop one another since at least 12,000 BC as in Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. We stack stones for our shelters, our fireplaces, and our workplaces. We stack stones for monuments. So now we are stacking stones for sheer aesthetic beauty. Good. Stack away with the knowledge that you are continuing a human tradition that has been going on for millennia.

It's surely unconscionable to write about stone stacking with nary a mention of Andy Goldsworthy!

I was in WY to summit Gannett peak during the eclipse a couple summers ago. It was windy. Our tent was starting to deteriorate and rip apart. We moved stones. Built a wall. For shelter. I respect nature and it's beauty but never once did "I shouldn't be stacking these stones" cross my mind. There were plenty of stones left!

My only issue with stone stacking would be if people intentionally did this to throw people off a trail route. Even with a good map and compass a rock cairn can be a godsend. Especially when you're in a boulder field.

Anyone doing this for Instagram likes is an idiot.

The article states:

"The calamity of the stone stack, in our anxious times, seems admittedly minor. But it’s a prominent example of how social media can generate scale, transforming an activity that would be mostly harmless in isolation into something with planetary impact."

Does this mean, if I do not see any other rock stacks in a national park, I can create my own, since there is no real harm unless it is done at scale? Or would that also be wrong, since even if I am doing only one, it might contribute to the next visitor also making one, and so on?

The latter, according to park personnel. Just because you don't see one doesn't mean someone hasn't already dismantled them all.

If you compulsively must make stack, then tear back it down and put the stones back before you leave.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

Example of the sorites paradox.

One isn’t a problem. Two isn’t a problem. You can keep saying oh one more won’t be a problem until at some point it is.

Initially I thought this was some metaphor, like trying to string too many components together, or something, heh.

Making a mountain out of a mole hill?

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