Stone Stacking

I walk my dog really early when there is nobody around, and having seen a couple of rocks by the side of the track, every day for a week or so I balanced another rock on top of the last one - I don’t know what made me do it, it just felt satisfying.

The image is shown, and it didn’t last long - last night I suspect an animal had taken a pee on it (looking at the damp patch on one side of it this morning), and accidentally kicked it over in the process (I can imagine the shock). The Husband looked askance at me when I told him what I had done, and then mumbled something about being a Crazy Woman.

Rock balancing is an actual ‘thing’ apparently, usually done with more pleasing smooth pebbles rather than my rocky offerings. There are even professional rock-balancer artists who can spend hours on their rock balancing, their aim when stacking the stones is to make the impossible look possible, and the larger the size of the top rock, the more improbable the structure looks. People often assume that they have composed their structures using glue or support rods or photoshopped the final result, but it is just clever balancing.

One Japanese rock balancer is interested in rock balancing sculptures in terms of their overall silhouettes, and considers the shapes and colours of the rocks used and their effect on the sculpture's contours, and starts his designs by selecting a stone to be placed at the top, and building up to it.

Cairns

Rock piles are sometimes called ‘cairns’ and often mark hiking routes in parks, or are built on summits or peaks by passing people who add their own contribution to the pile. Every park has different rules about cairns, so it's always a good idea to check out a park's website for information on hiking trails before you go mad and start building one, as one of the concerns is that it might get so big, toppling over could hurt some unsuspecting hiker further down who had perhaps stopped to admire the view and get toppled themselves. Or they could be misinterpreted as trail markers that could be falsely followed by other trekkers.

Spiritual Reason?

This ‘art’ is often connected to spirituality and luck, saying the higher the stack grows, the more luck a person has if they have added to the pile, and that the practice grants them inner balance, being symbols of stability, creativity, self-worth, strength, and fragility. Stone stacking to a Buddhist is a tradition of devotion and prayer.

Stone piles have been built by world cultures from nomadic to agricultural to tribal. Ancient Mongolians erected cairns, as did mountain dwellers in South America. Often, the stacks were intended to help people find their way safely around areas with little or no vegetation.

The Physics behind the art

It’s simple - the place where each rock rests on the rock below is the contact point. The artist chooses each contact, looking for small depressions or chips in one of the rocks. The curve of the other rock nestles into this depression. There must be three points around the edge of this depression at which the rocks are actually touching, forming a small triangle. The combined centre of gravity of the rock or rocks above must be directly above this tiny triangle, and there must also be enough friction to prevent the rocks from sliding off one another. The smaller and further from horizontal the contacts, the better the sculpture. That's all there is to it.

Well, that’s the theory. In my case, I just ambled along and picked flat-looking stones, and balanced a new one on each day. I do admit that I looked for a long time for one that might be curved enough to provide two ‘points of contact’ (third rock from the top, though I didn’t know at the time that it was part of the art), but the other image (not mine!) is much more soothing, nice round pebbles against gentle lapping waves.

Well, I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan