George Malone, one of our Fore-bearers
found via google,
from National Geographic, sometime in the early sixties.
An amazing balanced rockatree and not a cairn which is
a permanent marker
natural forces create rockatree
ROCKING ROCKS
photo John W Bell
"What adolescent hiker has not been tempted to knock over a boulder
that is perched
insecurely by the side of the trail? With one quick shove, over goes
a rock that may have maintained itself
in an upright but vulnerable position for centuries ....perhaps
thousands of years.
It seems that good reason now exists to resist the impulse. Researchers
have started to use such
"precarious rocks" to help them determine whether a particular area may
be prone to earthquakes.
The basic premise of the technique is straightforward: seismic shaking
can easily topple delicately poised rocks;
hence, finding such rocks undisturbed indicates that no earthquakes have
occurred close by. The reasoning
is elementary; however, until now, few geologists have ever attempted
to quantify the relation between
unstable rock formations and earthquake ground motion.
Recently James N. Brune and John W. Bell of the University of Nevada
at Reno, along with several colleagues,
have started to examine various sites in the American Southwest with
an eye to gauging what the existence of
precariously balanced boulders might indicate about the likelihood of
earthquakes."
excerpt from Scientific American, April 1996