Cairn (Work)

Cairn (2024) is Jamie's most recent essay collection and the book in which the tending ethos most fully emerges as explicit subject rather than implicit method. The title refers to the piles of stones travelers add to along Scottish paths — each stone small, the cairn's value cumulative and navigational. The essays include return visits to sites Jamie has been observing for decades, reflections on what has changed, and meditations on the intergenerational work of maintaining attention across time. The collection also engages, obliquely, questions raised by the acceleration of ecological and technological change — the felt urgency of a practice whose tempo was never hurried now facing conditions that may not accommodate patience.