I took a day off from work and headed over to the Peak District with all the essentials for a day’s walking: waterproofs, map, compass, boots, food and drink and the dog. The plan was to walk from Castleton over Mam Tor, Hollins Cross and Lose Hill to Hope and then back along the river.
Along the route, there were several waymarkers in the form of signposts but also by the way of cairns. A cairn is an impermanent human-made pile of stones. The word “cairn” comes from a Gaelic term meaning “heap of stones.” Cairns are piles of rocks placed as markers to remember things. Sometimes to remember important events or placed as memorials to remember someone who had an association with a place. Most often though cairns are there to remind walkers of the way they should walk. They are placed along difficult to see paths or at the junctions of tracks where a walker needs to decide which way to go.
The fascinating thing about cairns is although some are planned and concreted most are simply a collection of rocks made by repeated addition of single stones as people pass by. They are a real community effort. The flip side of that is if people stop adding rocks they can fade away over the years and the seasons.
Waymarkers are important to walkers and ‘life way markers’ are important to us all. The COVID situation has caused lots of people to lose long-established markers in their lives. Weddings are cancelled, trips to the office do not happen, holidays aren’t taken and loved ones are not visited. I am so grateful that we have in-person services at the Vine Centre, despite reduced numbers, the wearing of masks and no singing. The weekly gathering together each Sunday, in person, is welcome way marker in the week. I have a friend who feels the same way about his weekly hockey training sessions, the importance of which is as much about the interaction with his team as it is ball skills and tactics.
There are still a large number of people that through isolation, job loss, COVID restrictions or other circumstances do not have the access to regular social interactions, they are missing the life waymarkers. Like the building of a cairn I wonder what would happen if, as individuals and as a community, we were all to take the effort to interact with our neighbours to help provide a marker in their lives to help them navigate these unprecedented times. If we don’t, like an abandoned cairn, I fear people will fade away.
