Abby Raeder, vice president of Chester's Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts, was driving recently down Route 30 near the Stratton access road when she noticed something unusual: hundreds of rocks stacked into countless cairns rising out of a nearby brook.

Captivated by the scene, she stopped the car, got out and waded through the water. She wrote about the cairns, and their creator, a young man named Grant, on the VTica blog. Grant told Raeder he started building the stone structures after his beloved Bull Mastiff, General, died a few months ago. "I needed to do something for him," he told her.

Unfortunately, the monument was fleeting. Raeder reported in a follow-up post this morning that someone who lives near the brook — and was apparently peeved about the traffic the site was causing — had destroyed the cairns.

"Word of the cairn destruction spread quickly, and now I am receiving countless responses in support of Grant," Raeder wrote. Indeed, one commenter left this message: "We will help Grant rebuild."

Photo contributed by Abby Raeder