Dolmen Project Year Two
Confessions of a “Guerilla Artist”

Perhaps one has to be crazy, in light of all that we went through last year, to strike out once again building cairns and sculptures. However, we still need exercise and we still have the need to create. Our goal for the most part remains the same as last year which was primarily to put creation back into recreation. Now that more people know that it is us doing the building the element of concealment is probably not as important as it was in the past but it is still more fun to build in secrecy. I still like the idea of people going out on the trail and finding something there that wasn’t there the day before. By the end of the summer there were a lot more people building, but there were still more tearing them down. We still get a sense of excitement when we see a build done by others. Part of the reason we are continuing, I must admit, is just to not let the destroyers win. In my mind it is a battle between good and evil with the creators representing good. I realize not everybody sees it that way.
We went out a couple of times during winter just to see how things were fairing and to our surprise many cairns and sculptures lasted all winter.
Day 1 (4/12/09) Easter
What better way to celebrate Easter then with the rebirth of some cairns. The weather was beautiful and very few people were out to disturb us. It may seem a bit harsh to look at people as disturbances but when you want to build gorilla art they are. We were pleasantly surprised to find many structures still standing and a couple of builds done by others. One of my favorites was a heart formed out of wire near the beginning of the trail. We built a couple cairns behind it which I later named “Cairns in the hearts of others”. Because of the beautiful afternoon we did a lot of building including some new tie builds. One of the many highlights of the outing was a flyover by some sand hill cranes. I love the shear size of them. We have decided to try and concentrate on bigger builds in more remote places in an attempt to keep destruction to a minimum. In some cases the build are just starts and will be elaborated on later.