I walk or jog on Sleepy Eye’s Lake Trail. The trail has been a blessing. I used to run on the shoulder of Highway 14. That has become insanely busy. I was afraid of getting sucked into the wake of a semi-truck and ending up in Brookings.

I mostly go on the quieter west side of the trail. In part of that, there is a field on one side and woods on the other. In the trees, there is a rock pile.

There are rock piles all across the Corn Belt. Some of these are as old as when the first settlers came and began the work of turning prairie into cropland. The one we have in our grove is for sure older than me.

Sometime in the early years of the trail, a cairn appeared. A cairn is “a human-made pile or stack of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker.” Someone or some group spent lots of hours creating a cairn just off our trail.

There were several stacks of stones, meticulously placed one on top of another at various places on the rock pile. It had to be tedious work, sorting through the pile to find just the right one to set on next. Every so often, you could see someone started a new stack. Perhaps others brought their toil to the exhibition.

Rocks piled like that are surprisingly stable. Normal winds did not affect it. Whenever I came to that on my jog or walk, I felt a small smile.

Rocks themselves are beautiful and interesting in their diversity of color and shape. If one considers their age and the ancient forces that created them, whether you pick them up or sit on them, rocks are amazing.

To build a cairn, rocks become a piece of human-created beauty. It becomes an intersection between nature and human. The anonymity of the artisan builders adds intrigue.

Was this the work of some antsy teenager, using from their deep well of energy?

Or was it the work of an old man who was looking to fill some of the time that he had left?

The beautiful stacks were there for several years. And then one day, they weren’t. Somebody had stepped off the trail, climbed on the pile, and knocked them all down. I stopped to stare at the pile of rocks which was just a pile of rocks again. There was a pang of sadness.

Why?

Why would someone knock them down?

I had my phone with me and called my friend Judy who I knew walked that part of the trail. This was a loss to both of us. We made plans to bring a cooler of beer out there and begin rebuilding the silent monument. We never have. If joins the long list of things I mean to do.

I thought about the someone who built the stone artistry and the someone who knocked it down. Obviously, the building up took hours, and the tearing down could have been done in seconds. One was a builder, creator, really an artist. The other was a wrecker, or whatever the opposite of builder, creator, and artist is.

What of their motivations?

The builder would have had a long slow sense of accomplishment, growing with each stone delicately and carefully set. The wrecker, I suppose, had a brief rush of adrenaline. Each would have been able to step back and feel satisfaction.

Heaven knows we need people who are builders and creators. That can take many forms. Artists are creators. So are carpenters. Musicians create beautiful sounds. Plumbers give us water. Electricians give us light.

I have friends who do all those things. A nod to a few: Neil Neidt is a talented painter from Springfield. John Ebenhoh painted cars; now he teaches painting classes to share his gifts. Mike Schmid was an epic scribbler when we were in school. He retired, COVID hit, and he started painting in his basement. John is Edward Hopper and Mike is Jackson Pollock.

Joe and Justin Steffl are artists of a different type. They use hammers and saws instead of paintbrushes. The screen porch that is the best part of our summer was their craftsmanship.

I suppose writing is a type of creating, a building with words. When I’m writing one of these, it can feel more like a plodding chore than soaring artistry. But every once in a while, I smile at a line I write and appreciate wherever that came from. Occasionally, someone will comment on a line, and that’s the best feeling.

I’ll expand this metaphor. Things we say and do for another are also a type of creating. Acts of kindness and thoughtfulness build up the other person and really build the type of world we all want to live in.

Complimenting another person, supporting, lifting up, can make positive differences in ways we may not even see. Saying something nice to someone might cause them to go home and say something nice to their kid, and on and on.

It’s a little like the smile I felt jogging past the cairn off the Lake Trail. Little pieces of joy can echo.

Of course, there are the wreckers here too. A subtle insult, an angry post on social media, a dig at someone’s position on an issue. There are so many ways to hurt someone without physically harming them.

We seem to be in a time the wreckers are winning. Negative, mean, just awful words are everywhere.

I heard an interview with economist Arthur Brooks where he talked about our addiction to contempt. Hating is it’s own adrenaline rush. And of course, hate begets hate. Brooks said the only antidote to our addiction to contempt is love. You know, the “love your neighbor thing.”

Perhaps Brooks is naïve, but shouldn’t we try?

You and I can choose each day. We can stack rocks on top of each other. Or we can knock them down.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.