A time to gather stones together.

There is a certain compulsion which is prevalent among walkers; they cannot see a stone without feeling the need to place another stone on top of it. Cairns grow at path junctions and on summits, but also at apparently random points. Few are as evocative as the inukshuks described in this post by tamnonlinear (thanks to matociquala; and don't miss the pictures!), but they do inhabit the landscape, and provide a fixed point on which to take compass bearings.

In the department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, columns have been set up every few miles along the Chemin de Santiago. And passing walkers have clearly suffered the impulse to balance stones on top of them.
( More of this - with pictures )

These three images - the column and the two crosses, the two piles of stones and the wire draped with bright scraps of cloth - keep rearranging themselves in different patterns in my mind, pulling in different associations (I haven't even mentioned the Tower of Lives from Chaz Brenchley's Books of Outremer, for example). I try to arrange my pebbles in a logical pattern, but all I can do is gather them together, do my best to balance one on another.