Picture this: you're walking along a trail through a forest of smooth-barked aspen trees. Tall grasses wave along the trail's edge and glimpses of rocky ridgelines emerge through scattered openings. As you drop into a small hollow, you notice something on the trunk of one of the trees. Carved into the trunk is "Bill was here 7/09."

What is your reaction?

Here is my reaction: "So what Bill - thanks a lot!" Leaving your mark is a big fat stick in the eye of anyone who values the escape of entering landscapes where nature is the artist and the canvas is essentially unmarred. Carving in a tree is a prime example of thoughtless, unethical outdoor behavior. Like littering, it is a widely disparaged act.

Carving in tree bark or littering aside, there are a lot of outdoor actions or practices that are less commonly understood as being harmful. There are also acts that fall into gray areas. So, it's not surprising that disputes arise about what activities are and are not considered acceptable on parks and other public lands.

I was recently reminded of this when an employee and friend at Acadia National Park forwarded an article decrying Acadia's efforts to fight unauthorized cairn building. As has been reported a fair bit of late, Acadia has been working to keep visitors from stacking rocks into piles (and, as an aside, from stealing rocks).

Cairns (most simply, stacks of rocks placed into pyramidal shapes) are used in Acadia and other parks to mark trails in open, treeless areas. Unfortunately, some park visitors find their inner artist/mason in these same areas and build their own cairns. These sprouting cairns, sometimes intricately balanced or placed in various patterns, can detract from the aesthetic experience and mislead hikers. Perhaps more importantly, sensitive environments, such as alpine locations with limited, poor soil, are terrible places to be taking rocks out of the soil. Often, once a rock is removed, the proverbial dam is broken and nothing is there to keep water from washing the surrounding soil away. Soil is not quickly replaced atop mountains.

All of this brings us back to the online writer bemoaning Acadia's firm stance against cairn building. Much of her diatribe painted the Park as the fun police, cracking down on a worldwide, long-standing tradition of artistic expression, interaction with nature, and celebration. In some ways, the piece could have been considered spot on -- after all, where is the harm in, say, a hiker placing a stone atop a mountain cairn. However, the overall defense of adding to cairns missed a few points (which, I might add, were graciously acknowledged by the Web site writer in a follow up by park staff).

The level of "naturalness" in parks is a complicated concept. Nonetheless, I feel a strong argument can be made that at Acadia, for example, vistas shaped by nature have the power to inspire. There is an "otherness" about the place for many visitors. While some I don't doubt find "rock art" or needlessly oversized cairns interesting, the uninvited creativity, to many others, is a misplaced stroke that only detracts from the finished masterpiece. While rock art is culturally linked with some places (e.g., some artic regions), it is not central to Acadia's sense of place (except the history of planned cairns serving a trail function). Rock art or unauthorized cairn building at Acadia can be viewed quite similarly to carving in trees.

This piece of writing has been littered with art references, on purpose. Another art-related outdoor activity with a dark-side is fairy house building. The coast, with its supply of driftwood, moss, lichen, and evergreen barks, is the fairy home-building hotspot. These little homes, built of natural material, can show remarkable creativity. They also can multiply like wildfire and take-over a trail or coastal setting. Like Acadia's unapproved cairns, fairy homes can involve tearing material out of the environment to make the creation.

When it comes to building art in nature with elements from nature, setting matters. Parks, preserves, and other natural, public areas are shared areas to be stewarded into the future. This significantly raises the "do no harm" bar. On private lands or in purposefully less natural settings, people can go ahead and build their own little Stonehenges.

Just remember to lift with the legs.

If you need to get creative in parks, try photography, poetry or plein air painting. If, by chance, you gravitate more towards digging, hauling and installing, find a park to volunteer at. Parks are very open to volunteers assisting with trail maintenance and projects such as building stone steps, constructing bridges, etc.

Physically interacting with nature is great, as is creative expression. In parks and public lands, though, there is a need to respect the spirit of the park and the desires of your fellow citizens. Save the rock placing for your Zen garden.

Rex Turner lives in Augusta and works in the conservation field. He can be reached at

rexpturner@gmail.com