Beaches, mountains and riversides across the globe, littered with stacks of stones. Tourists follow in the footsteps of their ancestors, who used them to mark holy places and navigate through the mists.
Tradition ∙ authenticity ∙ connection ∙ meaning
However: “When we reach a remote summit or deserted beach, we know people have stepped there before, but for a moment we can enjoy a place where humans do not predominate. […] A forest of stacked stones destroys all sense of the wild.”
– Patrick Barkham
‘THE WILD’
The holiest place in the modern world.
Is marking holy places not in our nature? Is our nature unnatural? We have not been living in the wild for tens of thousands of years. We have evolved to transform our surroundings.
“Humans and their crafts have entered into nature and have altered every system on earth and sea, and many in the sky, to the point that ‘nature,’ understood as something untouched by humans, only exists on earth where humans have chosen to set it apart as ‘natural.’”
– John Durham Peters
‘Wild’ within our confines, with our permission.
Would we be able to leave nonhuman nature in peace, if we started looking for the nature which surrounds us?
How wild is climate change?