cairn
noun·/kɛərn/
A heap of stones deliberately piled as a marker of a trail, a summit, a boundary, a grave, a memory. A cairn is modest and communal; any passerby may add a stone and thus renew the sign.
On the ridge the fog erased the path, but the cairn held steady, a small human answer to blank weather.
Etymology
From Scottish Gaelic càrn “heap of stones.” The word carries the landscape that made it necessary: places where wood rots, metal rusts, and only stone can be trusted to remain.
Related Words
tumulusa burial mound; earth rather than stone
waymarkthe function a cairn often serves
dolmena different megalithic form, more architectural
cenotaphmemorial without remains; a cairn can be either