AKRON, Ohio — Pink granite, smooth quartz or sparkling sandstone — it doesn’t matter a rock’s type or size; Ed Cote uses nothing more than gravity and instinct to turn them into what many consider an art form.

Cote has been stacking rocks in Northeast Ohio and around the country for years. His stacks have been featured in newspapers, once on the front page of the Akron Beacon Journal. He created the Akron Rock Stacking Facebook page, where he’s viewed as something of a guru. The page now boasts more than 350 members.

Cote stacks for pleasure and to enable people to see the process unfold, whether it’s at a local creek side where he’s jamming to R&B on a Bluetooth speaker, in a classroom where he’s inspiring kids or at any number of festivals at which he’s exhibited the unusual art of rock stacking.

Not long ago, Cote was asked to demonstrate rock stacking at a yoga event at Akron’s Lock 3 Park, where hundreds of people armed with mats came to sweat it out together in the sun.

“Being an old, crusty, old fat guy, in a sea of yoga pants — I wasn't ready for that,” he said.

More than 200 people tried their hand at rock stacking that day, with many staying until dark to practice the techniques, he said.

Cote doesn’t stack for fame or fortune.

“I don't take myself seriously. I don't self-promote,” he said. “I’m not trying to sell calendars and photography. I'm not trying to sell classes. I just like to share the experience with people.”

But he does challenge himself.

“Instead of looking at it like a mason, I kind of look at it like a crazy person,” Cote said. “I start with the impossible and work backwards, instead of working from what I know is possible.”

Many of his larger totems certainly look impossible, as though the rocks were deliberately connected with glue, a metal spike or perhaps a magical incantation.

“If you put something big on top of something small, it just freaks people out,” he said.

For fun, he sometimes picks up metal candlestick holders at thrift shops for stacking.

“You can put a mammoth rock on top of a candlestick holder and it just looks like it should not be there,” he said.

Cote favors shaped rocks rather than flat ones, which are easier to stack.

“There are so many different styles of rock stacking. What I do is more balance than stacking,” he said. “That’s more like putting pancake on top of pancake and just blindly going up, whereas the stuff I do is like balances and counterbalances.”

Cote says true rock stackers frown on using anything but shape and gravity to construct a stack.

He has stacked side-by side with many of the best in the world, such as Bill Dan, who’s been stacking in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge for decades, and Michael Grab in Colorado, whose artistic stacks are his livelihood.

But Cote is likely most proud of stacking with Jenna Baker, his 21-year-old granddaughter, who Cote says is a natural.

“She doesn't realize it, but she's better than I am,” Cote said.

Over the years, Baker often accompanied her grandfather when he went to stack, and just enjoyed the outdoors while he worked with rocks. About a year ago, Cote said, he turned around to find her stacking.

“For years, she had no interest in even trying that,” he said. “But Jen is doing these crazy little micro-stacks. She can stack little, itty-bitty rocks on top of little, itty-bitty rocks like that. I don't have the patience. That's why I say heavier or bigger is easier.”

Baker’s work is now often admired on the Akron Rock Stacking page, Cote said.

Stacking is something the pair enjoys doing together.

“It's funny, because we challenge each other, and it's never a competition thing,” he said.

Baker, who enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, said she doesn’t know what made her suddenly inspired to participate.

“I just really wasn't into it. I just kind of sat there and watched,” she said. “And then I started doing little rocks. And I found it peaceful, you know, actually a fun thing to do.”

Now, when she goes hiking with friends, she encourages them to try rock stacking.

“And I'll show them, you know, and they try to do it, and they're like, ‘Wow, this is so impossible,’” she said. “It does take patience to start learning how to do it.” 

Cote lugs piles of rocks with him to events, purchased by-the-pound from All Rocks R Us in Akron.

Often, while working hands-on with kids, he can sense the adults want to try their hand, too. If they are hesitant he encourages them.

“So mom's trying it herself behind the kids, and, more often than not, mom can stack like anybody can stack,” he said. “It's just, if you don't try it or you don't experience it, you don't know if you can or not.”

Sometimes, after he’s completed a huge stack, he’ll kick it over to allow spectators to try to stack.

“People get mortified with that, you know, because they're looking at something that shouldn't be perceived, that shouldn't even be standing,” he said. “I'll just kick it over and it's like I set the Mona Lisa on fire or something. It’s a very fluid medium.”

Something that interests Cote is civilization’s long history of rock stacking.

He points to the Inuit of Canada’s Artic Regions, whose stacks are known as Inuksuit.

Similar stacks appear in Hawaiian temples. In modern times, rock stacking is frowned upon on the Big Island, but rock balancing, which is Cote’s style, is considered less offensive because it uses fewer rocks, thus causing less disturbance to the land’s natural features, according to rock stacker Dan’s website, Rock On Rock On.

But even before people could travel intercontinentally, people stacked rocks, so they weren’t mimicking other cultures, Cote said.

“Before language, before religion, before basically mankind as we know it, every culture on the planet has put a rock on top of a rock for whatever their reasoning,” Cote said. “It's like an instinct. When you see them you want to do that, you just want to see if you can stack them. Just like skipping rocks. But you're like taking it to a different level.”