Conceptually, she says, the process symbolized bringing the mountain to the river, and bringing water to the soil.

Approximately 14 tons of rock were hauled to the plateau in a pickup by Stuart and her helpers – an estimated 3,400 rocks.

The group worked for a week, with Stuart and some of the others camping on the site and rising at 4 a.m. to check the movement of the sun so that the sighting position of the sunrise cairn could be aligned correctly with the rising sun on June 21.

The entire arrangement resembles a gigantic wheel, with a central beehive shaped cairn forming the hub and sighting lines radiating out like so many spokes to three other cairns in the direction of the sunrise, the sunset and due north.

Each cairn is situated on a natural mound, and the circumference of the circle was determined by the placement of these mounds.

Also on the site is a “moon crater,” a hollow paved with rocks, and a nearby circular “moon aura”.

“When the sun’s axis is furthest north and highest in the sky, the moon rises very late, very close to the sun in the sky,” Stuart says.

The installation is best viewed early in the morning or in late afternoon, when the shadows are long.

On June 21, the end of spring and the beginning of summer, and the 4:56 p.m. time of solstice approached, Stuart joined her assistant near the Sunset Cairn, looking out over Memaloose Island in the Columbia River.

The spot she had chosen was itself a place of transition. She has been told that the Indians called it “the place where the sun meets the rain,” with green forests to the west and the dry Eastern Oregon plains stretching to the east.

Not too far to the east on the Washington side of the river is the replica of Stonehenge. No one is quite sure why the original Stonehenge was built, Stuart says, but these are similarities of function in the two pieces.

 

 Primitive people have constructed sun alignments throughout the world as part of their religious rituals and worship of natural deities, but why did a New York City artist construct this work?

“It’s really for people to come up and contemplate about the passage of time, about transitions from spring to summer and from mountain to river,” she says.

 The word “transition” crops up often in her discussion of the piece.

 But words on paper cannot convey the experience of the windblown plateau and its vast surroundings or the satisfaction evident on the sun-browned face of Michelle Stuart.

Camping on the site during the completion of the project perhaps allowed her a little closer understanding of the earlier people whose lives were so exposed to and affected by the cycles of nature.

And as they had celebrated the changes of the seasons with ritual feasting, so did those who had traveled the narrow, rutted road to share this experience.

They consumed quantities of wine and food: great pans heaped with the green of honeydew melon and the red of fresh strawberries; fat brown mushrooms, zucchini slices and other vegetables barely cooked and marinated to be served cold; golden cornbread, barbecued chicken wings and a huge iron pot of rich chili.

Who furnished the food and wine?

 “I don’t know,” Michelle Stuart said.

 It had arrived with members of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts which had arranged for the “outdoor environmental installation.” PCVA’s programs are made possible by assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission and numerous supporters. The local Columbia Art Gallery assisted with the project.

For Stuart, however, the experience was not yet completed. The following day she would photograph her project from a helicopter, and a film is planned.

 This is her first piece of landscape art that is at least semi-permanent. Buried in the central cairn are rocks from the sites of other works, ranging from Honduras to Guatemala to Colorado and Niagara Falls.

Also within the cairn are an appropriate quotation from Rudyard Kipling and a Chinese poem, she says.

Stuart developed her feeling for the land and earth early in life when she accompanied her engineer father through the interior of Southern California looking for water and dam sites. Later, living in Mexico, she had the opportunity to experience some of the native Mexican culture and to delve into the mythologies of the area.

She worked several years as a topographical draftswoman, and that too has influenced her work.

 Outdoor installations are only part of her creations, however. A show at the Foster White Gallery in Seattle opening June 28 will feature other works – painting, sculpture and photo documentation.

 She says the paintings, “if you can call them that,” involve rubbing the residue of crushed rock into the paper. She says she works in different strata for different pieces.

 The local “Stone Alignments/Solstice Cairns” is located on private property, but visitors are welcome. For an overall view, the site of the doll museum off the old highway to The Dalles is best. Signs point the way from Mosier.

 To visit the site itself, take a left off the old highway at the Rowena Dell sign, then take the first narrow, twisty gravel road to the left. The road leads up between an old outbuilding and a barn, then to the right through two gates (close them behind you) and eventually out onto the site.