Descending New Hampshire’s Mount Washington in a blizzard some time ago, a friend and I briefly strayed from the ice-encrusted Lion Head Trail – not all that surprising considering wind-whipped snow reduced our visibility to a few feet at best, and our goggles continuously frosted over.

We realized that veering too far north would have led us to wander aimlessly through the Alpine Garden, a lovely, flower-filled expanse in early summer but frigidly isolated in mid-winter. Had we meandered too far south we risked tumbling thousands of feet into Tuckerman Ravine.

Our only choice: retrace our steps and relocate the path.

Drifts had begun to obscure our footprints, but after a few heart-pounding moments that seemed like an eternity we encountered a large pile of rocks – literally, a lifesaver.

This was one of the many cairns marking the trail, and after getting our bearings – and silently uttering a prayer of gratitude to the guardian angels who watched over us – we resumed our downward journey to the lodge at Pinkham Notch.

Anyone who has hiked above treeline understands the value of cairns, built for the most part by volunteers under the direction of such worthy organizations as the Appalachian Mountain Club.

My appreciation extends beyond their role as trail markers.

As loyal readers know I’ve long had a fascination – some might say obsession – with rocks, and have dug up, rolled, dragged and pushed them for years while building a network of walls, pathways and steps extending from our house to the woodsheds and deep into the surrounding forest. Eons from now archaeologists doubtlessly will ponder what sort of primitive aboriginal constructed these randomly placed stony structures.

Among the many joys of living in New England – and curses, if you’re trying to dig a hole or plant a garden – are the rocks deposited by the last glacier some 18,000 years ago. What’s more, frost often pushes up a new “crop” every winter and spring, ready for harvest by rockaholics wielding pry bars.

A few years ago I started constructing cairns alongside my trails, not so much as navigational aids but more as artistic installations. I would like to say these stone piles have been influenced by Andy Goldsworthy, the extraordinarily gifted Scottish sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who often uses natural materials as media, but that imparts way too much artistic merit to my creations.

Not long ago I viewed one of Goldsworthy’s signature works, “Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall," assembled in 2010 at the 500-acre Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York as part of the largest collection of contemporary outdoor sculptures in the United States.

This breathtakingly inspirational wall, which winds around trees, through a pond and over hill and dale, illustrates the difference between an artist and dilettante stone-pushers such as myself.

Still, I’ve gotten enormous satisfaction from assembling a few towers of varying height and breadth – until last winter.

That’s when my most ambitious creation, measuring about 10 feet high and 15 feet in diameter, developed a fissure. For weeks I watched the crack widen, and then, one morning in spring, I discovered half the structure had collapsed into a jumbled heap of granite.

Now that the buggy heat of summer has passed I’m preparing to rebuild my oversized cairn. This time I’ll try to follow more faithfully the “one-on-two, two-on-one” formula for properly laying stones on top of one another in order to avoid another debacle. I also may have to scale back the height somewhat.

Anyway, here’s hoping for a new, improved cairn. I’ll let you know later how things come together.