Michael Grab started stacking rocks in eye catching ways as a hobby back in 2008, and after four years of splitting his time between his job and his fascinating hobby, he made a choice.

Denton Machuga places a rock high atop his record-setting 101-inch stack in the individual height competition at the 2023 Llano Earth Art Festival. Photograph by Patrick Michels ...

If that won't convince you, maybe the law will: the practice of moving the rocks could be seen as vandalism, which is illegal. An earlier version of this article was published in January 2023.

I've seen them, and I'm sure you have, too. Rocks are stacked and balanced in various formations on hiking trails, beaches, and in deserts. There's actually something artful about it.

Stop taking the natural world for granite.If you move a rock from one place to the next you may have inadvertently disturbed the home of a tiny critter living beneath it. Moving stones can also ...

But here they are anyway, smartphones extended, stepping lightly around David Pollock’s stacked-stone cairns. It’s midafternoon, which means, for Pollock, his day’s work is done.

The desire to stack rocks is understandable from a practical, aesthetic, and spiritual perspective. It seems almost primal. “As a species, we evolved in rocky landscapes,” says David B ...