Mars, the Red Planet is the 4th furthest from the sun.  It looks red, even to the naked eye in the night sky.  In 2014 it was closest to the Earth and at its brightest on April 14, as I was writing this, in line with a full moon that would eclipse the next day.  I went outside and set up a tripod and took this photo from my back patio.  I was amazed that the planet, when zoomed in on showed up like a red bead in the sky with a dimple in the center.  It seems to be an auspicious time to resume work on the Labyrinth for the final phase leading to its completion.


Mars is the second smallest of the planets in our solar system after Mercury, and gets its red color from a coating of iron oxide on the surface.  Even though it is about half the diameter of Earth, its Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain on a planet in our solar system.  Mars has a thin atmosphere and ice caps on its poles like Earth.  The ice caps contain enough water that if they were to melt the surface of Mars could be covered with 11 meters of water.  The rotational tilt of its axis causes the planet to experience seasonal changes and might even melt ice to create flowing water during the warmest times of the year.  Mars is orbited by two moons that are named after the Roman God Mars sons Phobos and Deimos.

In mythology Mars was the God of War, and was the principal deity worshipped by Roman soldiers.  He was the offspring of Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology).  Mars has a long history that dates back to Neolithic times when he was the God of Spring, growth in Nature, and the protector of cattle.  This would have made him an important deity for herders, who lived close to nature, moving their flocks seasonally to greener pastures.  He was also associated with Woodpeckers and Wolves.  A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers rules the woods at Halls Hill Park and made themselves known by pecking the trees around the Labyrinth while I worked on the Mars circuit.  Wolves are the ancestors to all dogs.  There aren't any wild wolves on Bainbridge Island but there are plenty of dogs.

Statue of Ares at the Villa Adriana, Tivoli, Italy

The wild and untamed world was the characteristic realm of Ares, the Greek predecessor of Mars.  Acts of brutality came from his intense energy and rage.  He was associated with the violent, chaotic aspect of war, as opposed to the orderly military strategies overseen by his sister, the Goddess Athena.  He represented danger, being insatiable and destructive in battle.  Because his influence was untamed and violent, Ares was treated by the Greeks with scorn in spite of his valor.  His most famous love affair was with Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.  Opposites cannot help but attract in the divine realm, but their children can be a handful.  Ares traveled in his war chariot with their offspring Phobos (Fear), and Deimos (Terror), and his sister Enyo (Discord).   Aphrodite by Ares also gave birth to the God of Love, Eros, who's arrows inflicted insatiable desire in those they pierced.  Greek Eros became the Roman Cupid, the chubby winged boy favored even by the Catholic church.  Unions like love and war can explain emotions like lust and jealousy.

Mars was held in much higher regard by the Romans and was elevated to a very high position, second only to the God Jupiter.  He was the patron deity of the Roman army and was also a God of agriculture.  Rather than being psychopathic, his violence was justified as conflict with the goal of peaceful resolution.

Venus and Mars, from a mural at Pompeii, Museum of Archaeology, Napoli

I built most of the Mars circuit between the end of March and April 3rd.  I started with the loop in the East connecting to the Jupiter circuit, and worked in a clock or sun wise direction which I have been following through the entire project.  The colors here in the first section I built are the greens of Spring.  The symbol I chose to make for people who rang the prayer wheel is a spear with 3 prongs.

The beginning of the Mars circuit, looping from the Jupiter circuit

A trident is like a pitchfork and is usually associated with the God Neptune.  In the Hindu religion, Mars would have been comparable to the God of war, victory, wisdom and love, Lord Murugan, Son of Lord Shiva, who presented him with a Vel, or Trident.  There is a dramatic festival honoring the occasion called Thaipusam that is celebrated by Tamil Hindus in Malaysia, where piercings are made through the cheeks and tongue with rods capped with a trident.

A heavily pierced devotee of the Hindu God Murugan participates in the Thaipusam festival in Penang, Malaysia

The first of these spears I made was for a couple undergoing a separation, in a sense, conflict with the hope of a peaceful resolution.


This red trident reminded me of the lilies painted on the beautiful murals at the Minoan palace at Knossos, Crete, where the Labyrinth of the Minotaur was located.  If all spears were lilies how different the world would be.

A wall mural of lilies with approximate recreations from the Palace at Knossos, Crete

Then working to the west, I made more simple little tridents for people who came to turn the Prayer Wheel.  Many of the symbols I make blend in to the surrounding mosaic and are difficult to locate unless you know what you are looking for.

A Trident of Vel in the brown western direction of the Labyrinth.

Two women visited the Labyrinth on a quiet afternoon as I was working my way through the area with black stones.  I told them about some of the meaning I've incorporated in to the project and that I had recently returned from Greece with stones from sacred places.  One of the women said that her favorite Greek myth was that of the Goddess Persephone.  I showed them where the mosaic of the River Styx flows in to the underworld in the Pluto circuit and that it was a place where Persephone would return from Hades in the Spring to see her Mother Demeter, signaling the end of winter.  I told them that this was a place where symbolically people could meet with those who have passed away when the Earth wakens from its slumber.  One of the women began to cry and the other woman told me that her stepfather Howard had died the day before at the age of 93.  So I made a black pitchfork for Howard.  They said it was very appropriate for him as he had been a farmer.  I hope Howard doesn't mind that his Trident is a funky little thing, but the moment was very sweet.


I worked my way from black to white to blue green and ended the Mars circuit where it will bend in to the Earth circuit.

And so I have nearly completed 8 of the 11 circuits, and the center area yet to be built grows that much smaller.  This is a huge and daunting project, one where a lot of hard work brings me great pleasure.  The war is in my sore shoulders, but the peace is in having done the work.

The nearly completed Mars circuit

Thanks for taking the time to read this, Jeffrey

Three circuits and the center to go!

Earth is the 3rd closest planet to the sun after Mercury and Venus.  It is the only planet not named after a Roman or Greek God.  The name Earth is derived for an Anglo Saxon word Erde which has Germanic origins.  It is the densest planet in our solar system and the largest of the 'terrestrial planets'.  Earth was formed about 4 1/2 billion years ago and simple molecular life forms originated in the planet's seas about a billion years later, possibly around thermal vents deep in the oceans.  These organisms proliferated and began forming a biosphere that significantly altered the planet's atmosphere, creating an ozone layer that blocks life inhibiting solar radiation.  This enabled life forms to eventually move from the seas to land masses.  Earth is in just the right place for life to happen.  Its all a matter of circumstance that this little speck in the Universe developed in the way it did.  And the results of this chemical manifestation have been magnificent.  The planet is in constant flux in a symbiotic melange of systems that adapt to every modulation in the environment.  The organisms that thrive here have taken advantage of every circumstance in what was an ever expanding variety of species until our current species came along.  Its believed that a meteorite ended the era of the dinosaurs, who ruled the Earth for 180 million years.  We've been here for about one million years, at first living as part of the ecosystem, until we attained the ability to alter the environment in order to subsist on a more controllable level.

In the last 540 million years, the time span where the fossil records show the existence of large populations of complex hard shelled organisms, the Earth has experienced between 5 and 20 mass extinctions.  Today our impact as a species is causing another one.  Our hominid ancestors developed in to a highly adaptable species, capable of living in diverse climates from the tropics to the Arctic.  After the last ice age ended, Homo sapiens populations grew exponentially.  We currently number about 7.2 billion people.  That number is projected to increase by another billion in the next 10 years!  The impact that this population explosion has had on this planet is far reaching.  It is estimated that 30,000 species will become extinct in the next year, about one every 3 hours.  A report in National Geographic magazine predicts that 1/4th of all species on the planet are threatened with extinction by 2050.

One of four bronze ecosystem panels on the Prayer Wheel in Halls Hill Park

Currently our disconnect from the natural world is at an all time high.  Most American's knowledge of nature comes largely from watching television.  The majority spend far more time texting than communing with the natural world and concerns about the economy rate far higher than environmental concerns in polls.  I am eternally grateful that I was taught to love and respect the Earth even though observing the way that we degrade our natural world can be a very difficult thing to watch.

An incredible array of colorful seaweeds washed up on the shore of Rockaway Beach

Still, I find this planet to be so fabulous that it is my life's goal to explore as much of it as I can I'm able.  One of the great tricks has been to balance the desire to be a vagabond with working and having a home and garden.  Its one of the reasons I choose to work outside.  I take the winters off when the garden is dormant and the weather inclement in Oregon.  I've probably learned more traveling than I have doing everything else combined.

Meteora, Greece

What I have seen out there is nothing short of breath taking.  Earth is covered in gems, many of them man made but the best being natural landscapes.  We tend to completely alter the landscape to suit our needs, leaving no remnant of what was naturally there.  I feel incredibly fortunate to be building this Labyrinth on a site surrounded by nature.  I've returned to Bainbridge Island this time to complete the project.

The Earth circuit is the one I chose to build as "the Community circuit," an idea suggested by my client to make the labyrinth more participatory.  The idea was to have people bring stones and found objects that I would use to build the third circuit from the center.  We made a nice sign explaining what I was looking for and people slowing started to leave stones.  Since I've been back on the site this Spring a few more piles have appeared and the selection looks good.  People have left collections of beach glass, geodes, an amethyst crystal, Ammonite fossils, a Tibetan lock, and oxidized metal spikes and nails from the days when ship building was a lucrative trade on the island.
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An assortment of stones and other objects donated for the Community circuit

I loaded the truck with my gear for the two final weeks  of work and filled the gas tank (Saudi oil?  Domestic Fracking?  Tar Sands?) and got on that massive strip of traffic clogged pavement that is Interstate 5 and drove back to Bainbridge Island on April 15th.  My biggest environmental sin is driving a fossil fueled vehicle over long distances, pumping greenhouse gases in to the atmosphere.  Once I'm settled in here though I am staying just a minute from the site which makes for a very low carbon foot print commute.

The night before I left Portland there was a full moon with a lunar eclipse that was dazzlingly visible from my back yard, with Mars shining red above it.  It seems to be an auspicious time to resume work on the Labyrinth.

Full Lunar Eclipse with Mars above and a bright star to the right

I arrived on the island and drove first to Fay Bainbridge Park, which I hadn't been to before.  There is a long wide beach backed by driftwood logs there.  I combed it for small pebbles to use to make flower petals because in the Earth circuit I am celebrating the richness and fertility that is unique to the planet we live on.

The beach at Fay Bainbridge Park

When I arrived at the site I removed the forms from the work I left behind and began clearing the area that I'll be working in.  A yard of crushed rock had been delivered to fill the gaps between the circuits but it doesn't match the nice gravel I was using before, so I am filling the gaps 2/3rds of the way and top dressing it with gravel that I'm scooping off  the parking area up by the road, doubling the amount of work required for this step in the project.  Somebody left a purple tulip on a boulder which I placed between the two white loops near the 'Clouds of Heaven' loops in the northerly direction of the Labyrinth and later buried in gravel.

A purple tulip left at the Labyrinth

This started the cycle of being tired and sore that will progress as I make my way to the end of the project.  The pain in my shoulder had nearly gone away during my break, with the help of massage.  My materials still hadn't been delivered the next day so I spent time setting up forms and sorting rock, and then went to Fort Ward Park to do some discrete beach combing.

Fort Ward Beach

It was a cold damp day so the beach stone was wet, showing off the colors.  I gathered more small pebbles to use as flower petals and some larger stones in colors I am short on for the edges of the path.  There are some interesting bedrock formations exposed along the Fort Ward beach that make circles surrounded by rings of thin layers, with the colorful beach stones filling the depressions.

Soft bedrock formations at Fort Ward Beach

It is arrangements like these that influence the way that I work.  I'm always learning from Nature, who I consider the greatest teacher.


My project manager Gregory picked up 8 bags of mortar for me as the delivery of a fresh pallet didn't happen that day.  I mixed four bags and worked until dark, making time consuming little flowers with bits of green beach glass people had brought.  I have to put them in on edge and they are quite small.  They came out looking like Sea Anemones, which I like.  I left a gap in the mosaic so that I can connect the Mars circuit to Earth circuit later.  The spans between loops are getting shorter than the steel bands that I use for forms so I am having to work around that.  I had new strips cut from a thinner gauge of steel because the bends are getting tighter and I need greater flexibility than the thicker steel strips I've been using will tolerate.  The new strips are so thin that I have to use two of them sandwiched together to give them the rigidity to hold the shape of the curves.

Green beach glass 'Sea AAnemones

The next day I worked my way around to the western cardinal point, where I set a donated Ammonite fossil and made a couple more Sea Anemones using brown beer bottle beach glass.

An Ammonite Fossil, brown beach glass 'Sea Anemones, and alabaster dice in the west of the Community circuit

A woman named Ellen who lives below the park came up and brought me some wonderful pieces of oxidized metal her husband had collected from the beach, including nails with copper in them that have a nice green patina.

Ellen

The collection of beautiful old metal spikes, nails, and beach glass that Ellen's husband collected

I worked until the rain made it too miserable to continue, so I went home to my place for lunch and was rewarded with a spectacular double rainbow that lasted for over an hour.  I walked back to the site, taking in the vibrant damp greens of Spring and set things up for the next day.  The weather is supposed to be drier tomorrow, so I will make good progress.

Double Rainbow over Puget Sound

In the morning I headed for the site earlier than usual.  The sun was shining and that can be very motivating when you work outside.  It was a beautiful day, with birds chirping, woodpeckers pecking, and me making mosaics.  Some nice people came by and I gave them tours and made flowers for the ones who turned the Prayer Wheel.  In the afternoon I finished the bends in the south from the Mars to the Earth circuit.

Bends connecting the 4th to the 3rd circuit

In the bend to the left I incorporated a Tibetan lock cast with the Bodhisattva Red Tara cast on the front and a lovely mandala that is now set permanently in mortar.  I surrounded it with thin pink and red stones, including some beautiful metamorphic ones in the crown that I collected from a beach while I was in Greece.

Red Tara

A woman named Lyssa came by and asked if I would do a radio interview with the local access radio station.  I talked to another woman, Catherine about having Monks from the island's monastery come to do a blessing and chant around it when it is finished.  I've envisioned people sitting on each of the 12 boulders and joining in a focused chant.  I would love to see people dance on it as well.  Bring flowers to set in the gravel between the paths, or offerings to place at points you find special to you.  There will eventually be a broom so you can sweep it.  There are thousands of details to be found if you seek them out.  Walking this labyrinth is meant to be a fascinating journey in Time and Space.

I worked from the point I stopped at yesterday, setting the Community circuit from the Western cardinal point to where a pair of bends will occur connecting to the 2nd circuit, the Venus circuit.  In the area with orange stone I placed a copy of the Phaistos Disk, which I bought when I was on the island of Crete in Greece this winter.  The original disk was found in the Minoan palace complex at Phaistos and is twice the size of the copy I bought.  It is considered to be the oldest known example of typography.  Carved seals were stamped into a wet clay tablet in a spiraling line but the text has never been deciphered.  Countless copies in a variety of colors were produced for the souvenir market.  I chose one that mimicked the original.  Surrounding the disk I set bits of red grout from the palace site and pottery shards from the Minoan palace at Knossos.  I added to the mix some alabaster dice making the numbers 7 and 11 along with small orange beach pebbles, creating a quirky flower.

A copy of the Phaistos Disk

From orange area I worked my way in to black stones and then white where the bends to the Venus circuit will be connected later.


There is plenty of rain the forecast, making Spring on Puget Sound lush and vibrantly green.  One of the best parts of this project is when I visit area beaches to collect stones.  I needed to go to town and buy more rebar so I stopped at a beach at low tide on Eagle Harbor where the town of Winslow is located.  The selection here is limited but I can always use small stones, and I want to use material from as many of the island's beaches as possible.

A beach on Eagle Harbor

Connecting Eagle Harbor to Rockaway beach where I collect most of my stone is Creosote Point.  This was once a major facility for treating wood with coal tar as a preservative for making power poles and pilings for docks.  The plant operated for 80 years until environmental concerns forced its closure.  The contaminated site was designated a Superfund site by the government and efforts to contain the contamination continue to this day.  There is a large steel wall enclosing the site and the water here is a murky brown color.  There is a park along the shoreline outside the steel walls, which is covered with barnacles and small mussels at the tide line.

The beach at Creosote Point

I found two beautiful big moon snail shells on the beach that are as large as a small fist.  I later filled one with mortar and placed it in a bend in the Community circuit.  The next day was Easter Sunday and the weather was beautiful (God smiling on egg hunts).  I went down to the Labyrinth and set up the forms looping to the Venus circuit.  A woman named Helen came down and asked if I had found a ceramic heart she had left in a small bag on the boulder where stones were left for the Community circuit.  I told her I had taken it home to figure out a way to install it so that it wouldn't fall out later because it is very thin.  It was a meant as a memorial to her young son who had passed away.  Our conversation was so sweet and tender and one of those moments that makes this project so special.


After that I went to a lovely brunch given by my hosts for their family.  They all came to visit the Labyrinth and then Deborah Cheadle, who I met yesterday came to take me over to the country club to collect stones on the beautiful beaches that surround this exclusive point on the island.  This is an area of stately old homes with marvelous views across a pasture like golf course.  We sat in the sun and picked small colorful stones and visited through the afternoon.  I learned a lot about island history and got to see some fine homes and gardens on this glorious day.  Bainbridge Island is an incredibly beautiful place to live.

Bainbridge Reef by the Country Club

Then I returned and built the loop connecting the Earth circuit to the Venus circuit.  A couple came as it was getting dark, their first visit to the park.  They said they would bring me some stones as their last name is Rockefeller.

The colorful pebbles Deborah and I collected on the beach by the Country Club

I finished the Community circuit when I built the loops in the white northerly direction that connect it to the Venus circuit.  These loops are special in that I incorporated Helen's ceramic heart dedicated to her son.  I set some geodes that belonged to a man who passed away who's name I do not know, and made petals with bits of donated beach glass and ceramic crockery, and stones given to me by a couple who's dog Reilly had just passed away.  I surrounded all of this with special bits of marble I gathered in Greece from the Temples of Dionysos, Demeter, the Delian Apollo, the Temple of Hera on Samos, and the ruins of a Hellenistic house on the island of Paros, and a stone I brought back from Pompeii 4 years ago.  Please tread lightly when you walk on these delicate turns in the path.

Another circuit done, in honor of the incredible planet on which we live.  May we honor it and treat it with love so that it may continue to sustain us.  That is my wish.  Thank you to the people who brought stones and meaningful object used to create it, and thank you for reading my ramblings, Jeffrey

Venus

The Second circuit in the Labyrinth is dedicated to the Planet Venus, and the Goddess of Love, beauty,  pleasure, and procreation.  This is the second shortest circuit in the Labyrinth.  Venus is a terrestrial planet about the same size as earth but has an atmosphere that is 97% Carbon dioxide.  The surface of Venus is 462 degrees centigrade, so there is no water.  The outer layer of the atmosphere is Sulfuric Acid.  Charming. 

An ancient Greek statue of Aphrodite, with a replacement head carved by Canova

Venus is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite.  According to Hesiod's Theogeny, a poem describing the birth and genealogy of the Gods, Aphrodite was said to have been born out of the foaming sea (Aphros) where the genitals of the God Uranus were flung after he was castrated and deposed by his son Cronus (Saturn) at the desperate request of his Mother, Gaia, who was tired of giving birth to bizarre and troublesome children.  While this may cause a smirk of malice among women, and men to cross their legs, I find the analogy of love being born out of the pain of divine castration to have some interesting psychological connotations.  What better way to explain the vagaries of love to scholars and illiterate sheep herders about the irrational chaos inspired by the secretion of hormones and various other chemicals in the brain when one comes in to the proximity of an object of desire.

Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus

When the genitals hit the water, Aphros and Bythos went to work.  Aphros (Sea foam), and his sibling Bythos (Sea Depths) were Ichthyocentaurs, anthropomorphic sea creatures with the body of man to the torso, where a pair of horses legs emerged followed by the tail of fish.  They were fast swimmers and able to breathe underwater.  They bore a scallop shell to the surface near the shore of Pathos on the island of Cyprus where the genitals had splashed, from which the Goddess Aphrodite emerged, so beautifully depicted in Botticelli's painting and this scene from the Terry Gilliam movie, 'The Baron Von Munchausen.  Aphrodite literally means rising from the Sea Foam.


                                             Double click this to make the video full screen

A less macabre birth story is the claim in Homer's Iliad that Aphrodite was the offspring of the Goddess Dione, a consort of Zeus.  Dione is a feminine form of the word Dio, so essentially she was the female aspect of Zeus himself.  

Aphrodite was so beautiful and desirable that Zeus suspected there would be trouble in the kingdom with suitors fighting for her favor, so she was married off to the hideous God Hephaestus (Vulcan), the God of artisans and metal smiths.  He made her fabulous jewelry and a corset that made her even more irresistible, but she was not content with him and took other lovers, including Ares (Mars), the God of war.  Hephaestus learned of the affair from Helios and made a very fine but unbreakable net which he cast over them as they slept naked together.  He dragged them to Mt. Olympus to exact retribution, but the other Gods only found  the situation humorous and made him release them with a minor sentence.  

Aphrodite fending off Pan, with the aid of Eros, Parian Marble, from the island of Delos, Greece

Aphrodite is often depicted in the company of her winged son Eros, the God of Love.  Eros later became the Roman cupid, which is the most pagan of characters to cross over in to the realm of Christianity.  My favorite Eros story was a time when he was kissing Aphrodite and a loose arrow in his quiver grazed her breast.  She pushed him away but then her gaze set sight on the youth Adonis with whom she fell hopelessly in love.  He was a hunter so she followed him on his expeditions, even though she had no interest in hunting.  She was so distracted that she fell behind on her divine duties and had to leave him for a time to tend to her responsibilities as a Goddess.  Before she left she advised Adonis not to hunt animals that showed no fear.  Shortly afterwards he was castrated by a giant boar (believed to be a jealous Ares).  Ouch!  It is said that where Adonis's blood spilled Anemones bloom.  They were my favorite late winter flower when I was in Greece, colonizing specific areas of suitable habitat.  Once again castration leads to beauty.

Anemones on the island of Ios

I began the Venus circuit on Easter Sunday after a lovely sunny day of pebble collecting in the Country Club peninsula of the island with a woman named Deborah Cheadle, who's family's summer home overlooks a geologic formation created when the sea floor was uplifted during a great earthquake that occurred hundreds of years ago.   Later I built the loop from the Earth circuit and made the first hearts in the second circuit dedicated to love.  

The loop from the Earth circuit to the Venus circuit

These are not the most obvious symbols since they are usually made of two stones pressed together at the center.  Love usually attaches itself to another entity making it a two part equation.  The ultimate love is loving compassion for all sentient beings as prescribed in Tibetan Buddhism as a way of liberating the soul.  This is a good circuit to commit to that ideal while walking the Labyrinth.

A 3 part red heart with a green beach glass Aorta

The next day was gorgeous once again.  The resident woodpeckers to working on trees making a wonderful vibrational sound in the forest.  I set up my forms and worked from green to pink, and red in to purple, ending where the circuit will loop to connect to the first circuit, dedicated to the planet and God Mercury.  

A couple who's dog Riley passed away brought me two white pebbles they had found the beach in Fay Bainbridge Park.  They told me that the speckled white granite one was exactly the same color as Riley was.  I'll make a flower around a geode using the two pebbles for petals when I make the loop in the white northerly direction connecting the Venus circuit to the Earth circuit.

Reilly's Pebbles

Later a man named Chris and his daughter Christine came cycling by.  He said he had been reading my essays and was very interested in the stories about Greek and Roman mythology.  It was one of those engaging conversations that just naturally occur in this space.  It inspires profound thought.  I had just wet the stonework so I could take my daily photograph and the light was perfect.  I was done working for the day but told them I would make them a pair of hearts tomorrow.

Christine and Chris

It rained all night but was dry in the morning and it turned out to be a pretty nice day in spite of the weather forecast for more rain.  A group of four people came to visit and got the tour, and then I set to work moving the forms for the days work.  Every day I have the nicest interactions with a wide variety of people, many of whom come back again with more people to share what is happening here.

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Helen brought her friend Joyce this morning and we had a nice talk about what I am building and how I would incorporate the ceramic heart Helen had left with her note earlier.

Helen and Joyce

They each gave me a silver coin with an angel on it to place in the mortar below the heart for their children.  It was a very sweet gesture.  Angels of Love.

Helen's ceramic heart and two silver Angel coins to be placed underneath the heart

So my goal for the day was to build the Venus circuit from the west to the bend in the north connecting to the Earth circuit.  I transitioned from orange to black to white, and in the bend I set a collection of small stones and shells given to me by a woman named Kayla representing her family and the challenges they've faced and overcome in the last year.  Near those I placed 3 geodes, surrounded by donated ceramic bits and beach glass and the two stones for Reilly the dog.  I added white marble stones I had brought back from sacred places in Greece as well.  One is a disk of white Parian marble that I found on the island of Paros at an excavation site with Hellenistic period mosaic floors.  I had other pieces of marble from the Temple of Hera on Samos, the beach of the Delian Apollo on Naxos, and beaches on Crete.  Another stone came from Pompeii when I was there 5 years ago. 

I placed the two angel coins beneath the ceramic heart and filled the center with bits of beach glass.  This cluster of mixed elements makes for an interesting and rich conglomeration. 

Mercury has a surface similar to our moon

Parian Marble statue of Hermes, 1st Century BC, found in the Antikithira Shipwreck excavation, National Museum of  Archaeology, Athens.  Only the part of the statue buried in the sediment escaped the erosion of time.

The last circuit that I built in the Labyrinth is the first, dedicated to the planet and God Mercury.  Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and also the smallest in our solar system.  It takes 88 Earth days for it to make a full rotation around the sun.  The speed of its rotation may have inspired its being named for the fastest of the Gods.

Mercury is the small dark spot in the lower center.  The others are sun spots.

The Roman God Mercury was the messenger, perhaps best known in modern times as the logo for FTD Florists.  In Greek mythology he was the God Hermes.  He is often depicted with wings on his golden sandals which were made by the God of Craftsmen, Hephastus.  On his head he wore a winged hat called a Petasos.  This was derived from floppy sun hats usually made of felt worn by farmers whose form gave the impression of wings.  These two implements helped to give Mercury the ability to fly at great speeds.



He carries a Caduceus, a staff entwined by two serpents given to him by his half brother, the God Apollo.  It became the symbol of commerce, negotiation, and balanced trade (an irony in today's corporate world).  He is also the patron deity of communication, divination, eloquence and poetry, boundaries, luck, and my favorite- travel.  In Roman mythology he was also the guide of souls to the underworld.  And he deliveres flowers!

A classic Mercury adorns the prow of a gondola in Venice, Italy

I began the work on this circuit by bringing the straight path that runs in line with the entrance in to the curve of this circuit, which runs a short distance around to the west where two loops connect it to the Venus circuit.  I made a feeble and totally abstract attempt to depict a Caduceus.  Only I will ever know where it is.  Then I went back to flowers, tapping in to the FTD Florist connection by coincidence.  Ford made a Mercury, and Hermes makes scarves, and I made a rainbow of colored stones.  The next day I made the second loop connecting the Mercury to the Venus circuit in brown stones.

Rainbow colors in the Mercury circuit

A breathtaking rainbow over Puget Sound a week before I made this mosaic

While I was working on this my friend Sarah King from Portland arrived.  We sat on the bench swing when it rained and then I went to work on the other half of this short circuit.  I will make the loops at the end tomorrow.  I made Sarah a black flower that went perfectly with her outfit.  She had a little black lava pebble in her car from a special outing that she retrieved and I tucked it in to a spot next to the flower.

Sarah King

Next to it I made another flower using a glazed black door knob for the center given to me by a woman who lost her husband last year.  Mercury is an escort for departed souls to the Gates of the Underworld.

Later two women came to visit.  Bonny lives on the island and Naira is from Armenia.  Naira works for Habitat for Humanity and Bonny worked on a project with her in Sri Lanka.  We had the sweetest visit and I made them each a flower after they went to ring the Prayer Wheel.  Doing good work is the best message of all and it was a pleasure to meet these generous souls.

Bonny and Naira

The next morning the sun was sparkling on the water and a frigate boat, the Odyssey was loaded with Sea scouts as it pulled out of Blakely Harbor.  Through the telescope it looked like they were saluting.  The temperature feels like it goes up 10 degrees when the sun is out and what a beautiful day to go sailing.

A Odyssey pulling out of Blakely Harbor

I returned to the site and finished the loops that connect the Mercury circuit to the Venus circuit in the shortest section of the Labyrinth.  It looks kind of like a hot dog so I am now calling it the "Frankfurter".  Once I finished this section I started the daunting task of moving stones off the Labyrinth.  Len brought me several large nursery tubs to store them in until I can use them for other projects in the park.  There must be a ton or more of stones that didn't get used, because having a good selection to chose from is essential for making a well fitted mosaic.

The Mercury circuit finished

I was planning to take the rest of the day off but a series of people arrived as if they were scheduled by appointment, one after another, including my friend Gillian Matthews from Seattle who brought her son.  It was a beautiful afternoon and people were dropping off pebbles and found objects for last minute inclusion in the Labyrinth.

Special delivery of a special little stone that will go in to the sun at the center of the Labyrinth

Chris came by again with his big yellow Labrador Retrievers.  He brought a fascinating book of historic photos of Bainbridge Island showing an entire mill town below the site where I am working.  Small Victorian houses lined a waterfront street edging a bay filled with frigate ships loading up lumber destined for the far reaches of the globe.  Lumber was shipped to California, Chile, England, France, Germany, and Australia.  Stones were brought as ballast and dumped off Rockaway Beach before loading the wood.  These stones make up the majority of the material I used for the mosaics.  Now a Labyrinth sits in the midst of a forest growing on what was once the largest lumber mill in the World, which when viewed from Nature's standpoint was a genocide.  In my mind we have some healing work to do.  Mercury comes bearing flowers to those who give back to the Earth.  May walking this path inspire us to do so.

The last of the circuits is complete

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

An incredible solar flare arcs far from the surface of the Sun

The Sun is the star around which the planets in our solar system orbit.  It's made of "hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields" that formed when when a large molecular cloud collapsed more than 4 1/2 billion years ago.  The majority of the matter in that cloud gathered in to the Sun while the rest spread as a giant orbiting disk that would eventually become the planets and asteroid belts we know today.  Its diameter is 109 times that of Earth.  3/4's of its mass is made up of hydrogen, and most of the rest is helium, with less than 2% being heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, and iron.  This fiery ball generates enormous amounts of heat that warm the surface of the orbiting planets on the side that faces it determining planetary day and night cycles.

The Sun flaring

The Sun's name comes from the old Anglo Saxon word Sunne, which was derived from a Germanic word, Sunno.  Sunna was a  Goddess in Germanic mythology.  Sunno came from the older Indo European word sóh₂wl̥,.  For the Egyptians, the God of the Sun was Ra.  The Greeks worshipped Helios, who later became associated with Light to make room for Apollo.  Helios was considered a Titan, while Apollo resided on Olympus, a loftier abode.  It was in Latin myth that Apollo drove the chariot of the Sun while the Greeks always attributed this task to Helios.  In mythology, Apollo was born on the Greek Island of Delos.  Delos is said to have the most sunny days of any other place in the Greek empire.  A city of temples was built on Delos over the years there by the various Greek states wanting to gain the favor of the Gods through displays of devotion.  In Roman mythology, the Sun diety was named Sol Invictus.

All that remains of the Temples to Apollo on the Island of Delos, Greece

The Hindu God of the Sun is Surya, who also drives a horse drawn chariot.  The 13th Century Temple at Konark in the Indian state of Orissa is a monumental chariot like structure with stone wheels that is drawn by majestic horses with Surya at the helm.

A stone wheel on the Temple of Konark, a monumental chariot guided by the Hindu God Surya

The Halls Hill Labyrinth is literally a path leading to the Sun, which you reach by walking in and out of circuits dedicated to the planets in the solar system.  It has been a long haul building the hundreds of feet of path that leads from the eastern entrance of the Labyrinth to the center.  I've gone around and around 11 times and now I am ready to build the center, the star that dominates our very existence.  I started the center by arranging the steel form strips in to a circle merging with the straight path that leads in to it.

The forms set for making the center of the Labyrinth

A lot of people came by on Friday and Saturday, to the point where I was having a hard time getting my work done.  I've been at it for 12 days straight and I probably need a day off.  But that will come after I'm finished.  People are showing up with last minute stones, beach glass, and found objects for me to incorporate last minute in to mortar.  Boxes of heart shaped rocks, barely tumbled broken bottles, and broken dishes have been offered up but much of it can't be properly set in to the mosaic with lasting results.  But the things that will work will find their way in to the center of the Labyrinth.

Judy brought me a bag of beach glass.  She came on her bicycle, bravo!

What I need for the sun mosaic are lots of slender and wedge shape stones, so I went to Pleasant Beach and picked about 50 good thin little pebbles to mix in.  This is one of the most beautiful beaches on the island.

Looking for slender pebbles on Pleasant Beach

I spent much of two days collecting the loose unused stones from the site that have been spread out over the mosaics.  I picked out all the linear, rather hot dog and wedge shaped stones to use in the center disk, where I want to make a bursting design radiating from a hole in the center.  The hole will be the same size as the white stone mosaic moons on the outer 11th ring of the Labyrinth.  This hole will represent Blue Moons, which occur when there are 13 full moons in a year.  It will also represent solar and lunar eclipses when the Earth, Sun and Moon are aligned.  I'm hoping people will come and walk the Labyrinth on full moons when the forest is bathed in moonlight.

Deborah Cheadle, who took me to visit the Country Club area on Easter Sunday came by and then went home and retrieved a stack of nursery pots that I can store unused rock in for future mosaics.  Her father Andrew Price came by later in the evening and gave me a copy of his book about the history of the Port Blakely area where I am working.  I look forward to reading about it.  He told me the first tennis courts in Washington used to be near where the Labyrinth is now, built by the Halls brothers after which the hill and park are named.

I mixed a couple of bags of mortar and set the first third of the Sunburst and think it looks very pretty, like multi colored hot dogs mixed with other linear pieces in rich colors.  So I'm roasting hot dogs on the Sun.  I added a mixture of colored stones in with the twelve seasonal colors that expand out from it to depict the bursting force of the Sun.

Beginning the circle of rays that emanate from the center of the Sun disk

Having the center open makes a kind of turn around leading in and out.  Later as people began to walk it I noticed that people tend to enter to the right, probably conditioned from driving on the right, but for me the energy flows in a sun wise direction.

The first section of the Sun

I had so many visitors yesterday that I was mentally exhausted.  The weather forecast was for rain the day I finished and it was cold out.  And it was Sunday and I really felt like I needed a day off, but I set goals for myself and push to meet them sometimes.   It is a lot of work to build a path that is almost 1,000 feet long out of beach pebbles and stones.  Because the weather was chilly, I didn't get a lot of visitors, but rather just the right amount.  It was a special day and I had good heartfelt connections with most of the people who came by.

Joe and his daughter Kailin (I'm hoping I'm remembering these names properly) came first with some pieces of beach glass for me to slip in to narrow gaps between the linear stones I am using.  They loved the idea of having something in there that is personal to them.

Joe and Kailin

Judy, who came by yesterday just as I was swearing a string of foul curses when I accidentally dumped my lunch salad on the floor of my truck, brought me a bag of healthy treats in a labeled bag and some nice big nursery tubs for storing the left over stones.  Thank you Judy.

Delicious things in a humble paper bag

I mixed the two bags of mortar that I had left and set the south side of the sunburst.  Gregory went to the building supply place and picked up two more bags and delivered those so I would have enough to finish.  A photographer named Joel came and took stills from the top of a ladder while I worked.  As he was leaving Terry Moyement arrived and he videotaped the last section of work I needed to do to complete the project.  We hugged after I placed the last tone.  I told him I thought the Sun looked like an alien Cyclops from the entrance or  one of those weird water towers you see on the tops of hills.


I had to finish the Labyrinth more than anything else in my life and had worried along the way that something could happen that might prevent me from completing it.  I'm so glad I made it to the end, and I thank my body for tolerating the hard labor necessary to create a project of this scale and intensity of meaning.  I found myself crying from time to time later that day, probably a combination of relief and exhaustion.

The next day I removed the forms and filled the gaps with gravel.  The Eagle Feather has been at the center of the project almost the entire time.  It survived the winter, and I think I will leave it in there.  Please don't step on it.

The Eagle Feather and a memorial stone left for someone named Monty

I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the site and then went for a walk down the slope to Blakely Harbor.  The houses down there range from funky little old places to American dream homes.  The old Victorians have been renovated and their original character is unrecognizable.  Beyond them is Port Blakely park, with rotted pilings and a heavily graffitied old concrete mill building where island kids gather to party.  It hardly seems real that this place was once the largest supplier and shipper of timber in the world.  The pilings covered in seaweed are all that remain of the once bustling port.

Blakely Harbor, once the site of the largest lumber mill in the world

Once all of the loose stone was picked up I cleaned the stonework with muriatic acid to remove the mortar film that dulls the surface.  Then the Labyrinth shows its true colors.  The work was a kind of penance and I did all of the physical labor from start to finish except for the site preparation, which was masterfully installed by Savage Landscapes.  Seeing it glowing there in this magical glade in the forest I have gotten to know so intimately is rather overwhelming.

The completed Labyrinth

And then people began to arrive and walk it.  Helen brought her daughter, who walked it 3 times.  Another woman I had not met before arrived and half way through burst in to tears.  Nancy and Dave came.  I hadn't seen them this year and was so happy that they came.  Dave is blind and Nancy walked him through it.  At the center, they embraced the woman who had been crying, who I learned had suffered the terrible loss of her son.  Then I started to cry.  It just seemed so impossibly beautiful and powerful and full of everything I intended it to be all at once, kind of overwhelming like the cosmos itself.


I'd like to thank the people who's vision made it possible for this project to happen, and all of the amazingly diverse people I have met during the process of its construction.  Its been an incredible journey.  We may publish a guide to understanding the meaning incorporated in to the circuits so that people can better understand what they are walking on, and work will be done to improve the entrances, so I will be back to this beautiful island in the not too distant future.  When you come to the bend to the 3rd circuit in the pink stone area of the south, and you see the Red Tara, a Bodhisattva surrounded by radiating stones, try not to step on her.  She connects Heaven and Earth and deserves great reverence.  There will be a formal dedication

Red Tara

Thanks for following this winding path from the outside to the center, Jeffrey

This is a podcast radio interview I did with Bainbridge Island resident Kayla Black about the Labyrinth I built there.  Its a good one if I say so myself, surprising me as I usually don't like hearing myself on the radio!

http://bestofbcb.org/out-002-landscape-artist-describes-his-labyrinth-in-serene-park/

Cheers, Jeffrey

The view from inside the Lost Nomad's of Vulcania

I wasn't going to go this year…really.  But then at the last minute somebody I had never met generously gifted me a ticket and vehicle pass.  Apparently I was supposed to go, so I packed my funky old Toyota pickup in 3 hours and headed for the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a 10 hour drive from Portland for the 11th time.  I arrived at midnight and pulled over to rest before hitting the line of thousands of vehicles heaped with everything known to man.  It can take several hours of queuing to get in to the temporary city, which numbered 66,000 inhabitants this year, the third largest in Nevada State, if only for a week.  Lightning started to flash all around and then it rained.  The playa, a vast pancake flat dry lake bed made of gypsum turns in to a layer of glue when its wet and it becomes impossible to drive.  So perhaps 10,000 people became stranded in line all day Monday while many thousands more were turned back at the road.  A muddy party developed around the hundreds of RV's, trucks, and cars as DJ's set up sound systems and people started socializing and dancing and barbecuing.  The playa dried enough by sundown to reopen the gates and we flowed in.  I arrived at Dustfish, where I camp on the Esplanade at midnight, taking 24 hours from when I arrived to get all the way in, a record wait.  Let the fun begin!

Girl Scout Group 666

I am a documentarian at heart, probably a symptom of OCD, and I take a lot of pictures.  Thankfully I took photography classes in college and over the years have learned to take good pictures.  I crop them and edit them ruthlessly.  This year I have whittled them down to 101 images that show a glimpse of the fantastical wonderland that is Burning Man.  Enjoy.

Entertainment on top at an RV waiting in line to enter Burning Man

Handstand on the Playa

Tutu Tuesday

Eidolon Panspermia Ostentatia Duodenum (epod) by Michael Christian and Dallas Swindle of Berkeley, California

Eternal Return, Zoatrope by Peter Hudson https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eternal-return-2014--2

Lost Nomads of Vulcania, by John Mross and Archive Designs of Eugene, Oregon

Solar Palms

Come closer...

LOVE

Burning Man Timeline, a history of the event since its beginnings

Wheels of Zoroaster, by Anton Viditz-Ward of Telluride, Colorado

Hayam Sun Temple, by Josh Haywood of London, England

Party on a giant art car

Parasolvent, by Dan Benedict of Anaheim, California

Art cars at night

A DJ at Ego Trip

My friends Aradia and Tiare at the White Procession at the Temple of Grace on Thursday morning

Butoh performance on Thursday morning at the Temple of Grace

A couple from Santa Barbara, California at the White Procession at the Temple of Grace

A flock of crows descends on an abandoned art car that had a flat tire

Morning coffee in a dandelion helmet

A little bowler at Black Rock Toilet Bowl

(In)Visible by Kirsten Berg of Berkeley, California

Sunset and Minaret, by Bryan Tedrick of Glen Ellen, California

A woman writing a message on the base of Embrace, by the Pier Group

Embrace, a 7 story wood sculpture of a couple embracing.  It was burned on Friday morning but I was asleep

The Man and Wind Horse House, a gateway by Joe Bob Merritt of Gunnison, Colorado

Rainbow Chimes

Desert Island art car

The Monaco art car and Fledgling, a mechanical bird by Christian Ristow of El Prado, New Mexico

Incredible mechanical flowers that open and close

Tessalate steel shapes illuminated from within

Sex Bombe Kabaret at Dustfish

Sex Bombe Cabaret at Dustfish

Socializing in front of Center Camp

Bike Bridge, by Michael Christian of  Berkeley, California, fabricated by 12 young women from Oakland

Base of the Bike Bridge, by Michael Christian

Nap Time in Center Camp

Contact Improv in Center Camp

Infinity Mirror in Center Camp

Sock Savior

Stargazer Lilies

The Temple of Grace, by David Best of Petaluma, California

Inside the Temple of Grace at night, by David Best

Dancetronics all night party before the Embrace burn

Root Society

Macrame Hammocks

A fabulously painted Citroen

Sperm Wind Socks

Giant cock in the Gay Quarter

Playa Fashion

A memorial procession from Dustfish for Lord Huckleberry

Butoh in memory of Lord Huckleberry

The sound booth at Dustfish

An Israeli man on a bicycle rode up with a bowl of gummy worms.   When I contemplating taking one, he said "Choose wisely".  This is what I got.

Ghost Ship in a dust storm

Zap! by Bruce Miles

(epod) by Michael Christian and Dallas Swindle of Berkeley, California

Deer skull (I don't know the name of this piece)

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The Temple of Grace, by David Best of Petaluma, California

Black Rock Observatory by Tom Varden

Last Outpost, by Shing Yin Khor

Swinging in the Last Outpost

Sunrise Saloon, at sunset by Thomas Haan and Brian Jones

The Road to Nowhere

Bike Portal by Johnnie Olivan

Cell-Abrate by Shannon Reagan

Detail of Cell-Abrate

Fire procession to burn the Man

Art car

Pulpo Mechanico art car

Fire cannons

Chatting before the Burn

The beginning of the burning of the Man The battery ran out in my camera during the burn

Fiery Tricycle

Coffee and Day glo pastries on an art car

Pulse and Bloom, by Shilo Shiv Suleman, Saba Ghole, and Rohan Dixit of Cambridge, Massachusetts

Fire in Balance by Patrick Sheam

Inverted flames on the ceiling of Fire in Balance

Aztec art car

Crashed out at LumenEssence

Sunrise over the playa

Sunrise and the Minaret by Brian Tedrick

Ecstatic Sunrise

The Lost Tea Party by Alex Wright, aka Wreckage International

Morning on a wood scrap ship art car

Good morning at the Twerkulator

Gathering on Sunday morning in the Temple of Grace, by David Best

Sleeping in the Temple of Grace

Offerings in the Temple of Grace

Sunday morning in the Temple of Grace

Inside the Temple of Grace

3 dust devils emerging from the Temple Burn

Thanks for reading, and viewing, Jeffrey

A blend of drought tolerant plants in the Coray Garden

Even though I am best known for my stone mosaic work, my first love in gardening is working with plants.  I aced my tests in Plant Materials in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon because I loved studying plants so much that the information just seemed to stick, which isn't the case with me for subjects like math.  Give me Nature, beautiful Art, Architecture and Music and I'll be a happy man.

In the past year I have worked on two gardens where I was able to create an entirely new planting scheme from a blank slate, one in Portland, and one in Los Angeles.  The Portland garden belongs to a good friend who bought a well built new row house in a large development in an inner city neighborhood.  Each row house came with a rectangular patch of blank earth, covered in a blanket of bark mulch surrounded by a wood fence.

The garden as a clean slate

As people moved in to their new homes, a number of landscape professionals built gardens for them, each with a different take on what a garden should be.  The simple rectangular fenced space for me was really just an outdoor room.  These modern row houses are mounted on top of single car garages that elevate them to a high position.  The development covers most of a city block and everybody has a view of everybody else.  So lots of trees went in to these small spaces, trees that are considered small, but when mature will not feel small at all in relation to the space they have been allotted.  It will be interesting to see the forest of Japanese Maples and Dogwoods filling in these modest outdoor boxes over time.

A view of the neighbor's gardens

The house I worked on has a south facing rear garden which I find the ideal exposure.  The back porch sits a full story above the garden giving it a birds eye view, as if you were looking at a plan.  Gardens are often rendered from plans but not seen from that perspective, a common failing of landscape design.  I worked to develop a garden that looks good from above and when you are down in it.  What I ended up building is a simple garden room, with a patio that acts as a carpet for moving around and placing furniture.  The plantings are a blend of complementary colors and textures that are meant to mature without overwhelming the space over time, with some editing.

The way we started out was funny, because my client had never gardened before, and now he had this patch of bark mulch with an air conditioning unit ceremoniously placed in a prominent position and a view of lots of other peoples homes.  The site is flat, with a dry stacked basalt retaining wall on one side raising the fence on the eastern property line to 10 feet above the ground plain.  We were out shopping for basic tools he would need to turn Tony in to a gardener, hoses, a shovel, a hoe, etc. when we wandered in to the garden section of a Home Depot.  Most of what we bought came from the local hardware store rather than the big box giant, but I had to introduce him to a corporate garden center for some reason.  The plants in one gallon pots at HD are usually cheap, and since there was nothing but bark in the garden we ended up buying some tough plants that would tolerate the crappy subsoil that had been dumped and spread behind his new house.  We bought two kinds of Cistus, and Osmanthus heterophyllus variegata, 3 Yucca aloifolia 'Variegata', 3 Berberis thunbergii 'Aurea', 3 dwarf Russian Sage; Perovskia atriplicifolia 'Little Spire', and a Spanish Lavender.  It was a starter garden for less than $100.  I had opened a can of worms by doing this because he was totally dependent on me for direction.  All of the plants were chosen for their ability to adapt to rising temperatures and dry summer conditions that are the result of a warming climate.

We could have just plunked these in to the existing soil but I was soon able to convince him that it was worth rising to the next level and preparing the soil.  I suggested an easy gravel patio, but in the end he decided to commission me to build him a Pennsylvania Bluestone Patio with some pebble mosaic inserts to give the garden an elegant structure that would be beautiful to view from above and be easy to maintain.  So I hired a couple of strong friends to cart in two cubic yards of yard debris compost up the steps and in to the back yard, which was mixed in to the existing soil around where the patio would be built.  This was enough organic matter to turn the marginal soil in to a rich planting mix.  Then they hauled in 2 yards of crushed 1/4 minus gravel for setting the bluestone slabs.  We went to a stone yard and found a couple of nice pallets of stone for me to work with and hauled all of that up from the street and spread it out.  So much of the process of building gardens is about hauling heavy things.  The pretty parts are a small part of the equation.

A crushed gravel base for setting a Bluestone patio, surrounded by amended soil and new plantings

Because of the exposed views and lack of shade we went to a large wholesale nursery  to buy the larger more expensive plants.  We came home with 4 Cupressus sempervirens 'Tiny Towers' and 3 Cupressus 'Swane's Golden' with the idea of planting a screening hedge along the back that would create vertical stripes of green and gold.  We also found a nice Lagerstroemia 'Natchez' Crepe Myrtle that would provide year round interest in an upright vase shaped small tree with white summer flowers.  I then planted what we had bought and set to work arranging the stone.

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This part is like working with a jigsaw puzzle, moving the stones around until I find the most pleasing placement.  Then I use a large angle grinder with a stone cutting blade to trim the stones to fit tightly together and improve their shapes.  I left gaps throughout the patio to make simple small striped pebble mosaics using black and gold bagged Mexican Beach Pebbles.  The patio is essentially rectangular with an arm connecting to a concrete threshold for the steps leading up to the back porch.  I set most of the stone on a thin bed of mortar but left small permeable gaps so that the patio would drain without having to be sloped.

Cutting the bluestone slabs to fit

Finished layout with holes for pebble mosaics

I used the rest of the stone slabs to create a long linear path down the side of the house to the tiny front garden.  These are awkward spaces that many homes have that are challenging to make attractive because they are so narrow and confined.

A stepping stone path leads from the patio to the front of the house

I planted two Parthenocissus henryana vines on the eastern fence that will eventually cover it in lush foliage.  This vine has tiny flowers that attract masses of bees in late summer, followed by beautiful bluish berries with red stems.  The leaves turn purple and drop revealing a tracery of tendrils in winter.  On the western fence I planted a climbing Hydrangea petiolaris 'Platt's Dwarf' that will have to be trimmed to stay tight against the fence.  It will be covered in lace cap flowers in summer when the patio is mostly in use.

The garden needed a focal point so I cast a stone mosaic fountain using a form I had built for other projects and scraps from trimming the stones for the patio.  I poured a concrete base to set the fountain on with a pond liner filled with beach pebbles surrounding a concrete pipe that makes a reservoir on which I placed a nice glazed Vietnamese plant saucer I bought at a friend's import store.  I covered the edge of the pond liner with beautiful quartzite boulders I bought from a local stone yard.  They came originally from Northern Idaho.

Installing a cast free standing fountain

An electrician installed buried wiring to supply outlets for lighting and the fountain, controlled by a switch so it would be easy to turn on and off.  The sound of the water splashing in to the bowl makes a pleasing sound that draws and holds your attention in the garden while drowning out the white noise of the city.  A niche in the fountain makes it an altar where we placed a small bronze statue of the Hindu God Shiva doing the Nataraj, the dance that creates the universe.  Hummingbirds can drink from the stream of water and birds can bathe in the bowl.

Installing the wiring

The fountain creates a focal point in the garden, centered on the end of the patio

I kept the plant pallet in the drought tolerant range and used ones that would appreciate the heat of the southern exposure.  This includes a lot of herbs for ground covers, Wooley Thyme and Golden Oregano, and Red Dragon Sedum and Acaena inermis purpurea to frame the patio and the stepping stones leading to it.  I bought several Salvia microphylla for its long bloom time and attraction to Hummingbirds. While trying to keep the plant pallet limited I ended up with a lot of variety, but repeated certain plants throughout the beds to give the design a cohesive look.  It was wonderful to see bees and birds discovering the plants in what was before a complete void with no benefit to nature.

Wooly Thyme and Golden Oregano soften the edges of the patio

The garden was able to establish a good root system over the winter in the well amended soil and the following year only required watering once a week, although it would survive on considerably less water than that.

Contrasting ground covers and shrubs with complementary colors of foliage tie the garden together

People have been amazed at the transformation of this little garden in the span of just one year.  A few small plants died in the intense cold spells of the first winter but the garden is thriving.  I will probably have to remove the Russian Sages as they are much too vigorous in the rich soil and are spreading by runners.  I cut them back to keep them contained but this will become an endless process. They aren't as dwarf as the name lead me to believe.  The Osmanthus will be trained as a small tree as it matures, screening the power pole that looms over the garden on that side.  Minor adjustments to keep the garden fine tuned as it grows are part of what makes a nice garden beautiful.  It is a pleasure to dine alfresco on the patio during the long summers here.

The garden at 14 months of age

I've been working on the Los Angeles garden of Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub in installments for 7 years.  Most of that work occurred in the large back garden while the front remained a traditional lawn with two messy Coral Trees and a thorny clipped Carissa hedge lining the wide front walkway, dividing the garden in to odd linear inaccessible sections.  I had been suggesting we remove the lawn for years but they resisted as it would be a radical departure from the traditional look of the neighborhood, where green grass and clipped hedges are the norm.  You would never know you are in a desert around here.

A typical Los Angeles Garden surrounding an expensive home

I had removed a narrow strip of grass along the sidewalk 4 years prior and planted it with a mixture of interesting drought tolerant plants.  It drew a lot of praise from passers by but was never well groomed. I learned a lot about plant performance and how big things get from doing that section.

The original narrow strip of lawn along the sidewalk

A dry garden replaces a strip of lawn

Because of the prolonged drought that has stricken the state, California is faced with a dramatically limited water supply that could reach disastrous levels unless dramatic changes in water conservation take place.  This is the most populous state in the U.S. and water shortages are happening now.  Some climate experts believe that the drought could be part of a cycle that could last for hundreds of years, like the one that caused the fall of the Mayan and Anasazi cultures over 1,000 years ago.  And it just keeps getting hotter.  So the city of Los Angeles has been offering a tax rebate incentive for the removal of grass.  There is a website you can go to at: http://dpw.lacounty.gov/wwd/web/Conservation/CashforGrass.aspx although the examples in their photo gallery are not what I would call beautiful.

An old photo of the lush green lawns, young Coral Trees, and Carissa hedges

So when my clients sent me a message saying it was time to remove the thirsty lawn because it was embarrassing to have it under these conditions, I flew down to the City of Angels in early October.  The Coral Trees the original designers had planted had grown in to thorny masses with a bed of snake like surface roots that threatened to heave the driveway and entry walk, so they were also removed.  They were beautiful in flower but required major annual pruning and were just too big for the garden.  The gardeners had scraped the grass off and done a superficial soil preparation by tilling the top 2 inches of the heavy clay soil, adding a little perlite but nothing else.  The ground under this thin layer was hard as cement.  The weather in October used to be pleasant but temperatures this year were still climbing over 100 degrees Farenheit.  Nobody wants to do hard labor when its that hot so my crew disappeared after a day under of working with me.  To inspire them I work like a mad man.  As Brooke said later, I do the work for four people.  My crew managed to do as little as possible and then didn't return until the last day of my 10 day work stint.  So I did most of the work on my own, chopping out basketball size chunks of clay, which I moistened and later broke in to smaller and smaller pieces, that I mixed with lots of perlite and compost.  It was brutal work that left me with blisters and a bad shoulder but I somehow managed to turn rock hard earth in to light, well drained soil.  Hopefully it won't return to its original state with time as the compost decomposes.

A clean slate

The house I'm working around is a stately stucco dwelling with a glazed white brick first floor and balustrades on the second level, and a glazed tile roof.  In order to make the brutality of working with such dreadful soil rewarding, I selected a dream fantasy collection of drought tolerant plants native to South Africa and Mexico and the Southwest, Cacti, Aloes, Agaves, Yuccas, Senecios, and Dymondia as a flat lawn replacement.  I planted 6 Dasylirion longissimum (Mexican Grass Tree) in the wide parking strip, and two Bismarkia nobilis palms.  These are dramatic sculptural plants of a fantastic nature.  I was inspired by a trip to Lotusland, the fantasy garden built for the eccentric Polish Opera singer Ganna Walska in Montecito near Santa Barbara.  Mass plantings there make for incredible drama.

The Aloe Garden at Lotusland.  Aloe bainsii is the tree in the photo

An image from the web of Bismarkia nobilis, two of which I planted in the wide parking strip

Dasylirion longissimum and Senecio madraliscae in the Parking Strip

An image of Dasylirion longissimum taken from the web.  I planted 6 of these in the wide parking strip

I was going for Dr. Seuss in my vision.  I found a nice specimen Aloe bainsii to use as the primary tree in the new planting, and 14 Aloe striata, which have orange margins on the wide fleshy leaves that illuminate in the late afternoon sunlight, as do the dozen small Golden Barrel Cacti I'm hoping will take to their new home.  It was important to make the soil as light and well drained as possible for these plants to survive.  I moved the big Aloe ferox plants that were too close to the sidewalk for comfort in my earlier planting.  In a wide bed along the driveway I layered Night blooming Cereus cactus with Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks on Fire', Aloe striata, Golden Barrel Cactus, and bluish Senecio serpens.

Night blooming Cereus Cacti, Firestick Euphorbia, Aloe striata, Senecio serpens, and Golden Barrel Cactus by the driveway

I clumped Yucca gloriosa 'Variegata' and Yucca rostrata, which will eventually develop trunks to bring height to the plantings.  The blue Senecio ground covers will tie all the sculptural forms together in a cohesive arrangement.

Yucca rostrata and gloriosa along the slope

People walking by are often confused by what is going on here.  At first they thought I must be replanting the lawn, because that is what is most familiar.  Awareness of the drought isn't all that apparent in Los Angeles, where diversionary entertainment is the main industry.  What I was doing finally resonated with a neighbor when he asked how often it needed to be watered and I told him once every two weeks once established.  Many of the plants can survive on that now, while others, like the tiny Dymondia ground covers need frequent supplemental water until they are established.

Aloe bainsii, the Tree Aloe, with Aloe ferox and Aloe vera

I found a nice half pallet of beautiful pink sandstone slabs at a local stone yard and laid out a path running through the garden from the driveway to the entry walk and on to a bench.  I trimmed the corners with a stone cutting saw so that they have soft pillowy shapes reminding me of paths from the Flintstone cartoons, and arranged them using intuitive Zen principals of placement.  Before, the garden was always inaccessible because of the Coral Trees and the spiny Carissa hedges that divided it in to linear sections.  Now you can stroll around the garden and take in the interesting variety of plants.  I surrounded the stepping stones with flat growing Dymondia, which is nice because it is durable, drought tolerant, and doesn't grow over the edges of the stones.

A new pink sandstone path runs through the garden from the driveway to a bench on the other side

I look forward to watching the garden grow in to a collection of fantastic specimens.  It is hard to tell at this stage in the planting what it will grow in to as many of the spreading plants are small dots.  The Senecio serpens grows more slowly than Senecio madraliscae which I started out using as the primary ground cover for its blue succulent stick like foliage.  S. serpens requires virtually no maintenance to stay neat looking while S. madraliscae needs trimming.  The Agave angustifolia 'Variegata' trio between the Tree Aloe and the path will form perfect round balls of sharp spines.  For the most part though I tried to use plants that are less vicious to the touch.  Round basalt stones help keep car tires in line with the driveway as people back down to the street.

Crushed ornamental grey gravel mulches the slopes which will eventually cover with spreading plants.

We graveled the slope down to the sidewalk to keep mulch from washing down to the pavement and hold the slope.  I thought about graveling the entire garden but time and budget and the fact that plants will eventually cover most of the ground made that seem unnecessary.  I hired and trained a new gardener to maintain all of this on a level that was never achieved by the mow and blow crew that showed little care for a refined garden, and now there isn't any lawn to mow.  Plus is will be one less noise filled hour when a crew doesn't have to do weekly lawn maintenance.  My drought tolerant Lotusland/Dr. Seuss fantasy garden is in place.  I'll add photos next year of its development.  May it inspire others to take advantage of the many wonderful plant species that can grow in Los Angeles's mild climate, without requiring whats left of the Colorado River to keep it alive.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

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Angel with a mallet

The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genoa, Italy is the largest repository of Italian funereal art in the country and one of the largest in Europe.  When I visited this magical, charismatic sea port known best as the supposed birthplace of the explorer Christopher Columbus, a friend sent me a message and suggested I visit the cemetery that had so impressed him when he was a young man.

I love cemeteries and have visited so many I can't imagine counting them, but there are a handful that stand out in my memory as being truly spectacular.  There is of course Père-Lachaise in Paris, which in my mind is the most amazing, although Staglieno in Genoa certainly rivals it a different way.

Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

My recent visit to the Campo Santo in Pisa, Italy took my breath away.  Pisan Gothic arcades in white marble form a vast rectangular courtyard surrounded by a lofty roofed corridor that contains Roman sarcophagi to 19th Century masterpieces in sculpture.

The Campo Santo at Piazza di Miracoli in Pisa

Many graves are set in the marble floors like those found in churches while marvelous crypts are placed  along the walls and in a domed chapel.

A gorgeous monument in the Campo Sacro in the Piazza di Miracoli in Pisa

The Capuchin crypts in Palermo Sicily are unforgettably macabre, with semi preserved bodies laid out on ledges and hanging from the walls in their rotting funeral garb.  The embalming processes used there  combined with the climactic conditions of the underground crypts have preserved the dead creating a place literally like going in to the graves themselves.  

Bodies on display in the Capuchin Crypts in Palermo, Sicily

Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires is regal and grandiose and Sao Joao Battista Cemetery in Rio de Janiero is worth a visit if only to see the grave of Carmen Miranda.  The Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is a museum of breathtaking marble sculpture as well.  There are a lot of cemeteries in the world and this is just a tiny selection, but I remember them as being grand outdoor galleries of finest sculpture.

A road climbing the hill to the upper reaches of this enormous cemetery complex

Opium Poppies

Napoleon was the man who first dictated the need for proper cemeteries in Italy with the edict of Saint-Cloud in 1804 to help alleviate the disease and stench of internment within city walls.  People were often buried under the floors of churches and catastrophic epidemics were commonplace.  During times of plague bodies were just piled in the piazzas for lack of a place to put them.  As proper cemeteries were established beyond city walls, affluent families saw the opportunity to create grand memorials to their legacy and loved ones.  A grand funerary memorial is a symbol of status in the hopes of not being forgotten.

Arcades create enormous galleries for a breathtaking array of funeral monuments

The Genoese architect Carlo Barabino began work on the design in 1835 after proving himself a master with other prominent projects in the city.  The architect Giovanni Battista Resasco carried on the work after Barabino's death during a cholera epidemic.  The main structure of the cemetery wasn't completed until 1880.  Additions of an English, Protestant, and Jewish cemetery were added over time.

A sign with a plan of the cemetery

The lower and upper arcades create high terraces containing different periods and styles of art considered in vogue at the time of their construction.  These arcades frame the dramatic centrally positioned Pantheon, a domed building modeled after the ancient structure in Rome.

The Pantheon with a monolithic sculpture of Liberty bearing a cross

Above and beyond these symmetrical structures is a more naturalistic park with winding roads and stairs connecting a fantasy world of family tombs in a variety of styles from Neo-Gothic, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau to Art Deco.

The Neo-Gothic Capella Raggio, built in 1896

 The back sides and corridors of these arcades are filled with simpler covered crypts in a style that goes back to the pre Roman Etruscans.  More contemporary renditions lie behind these older ones in a style that is popular throughout Europe today.


The flat areas in between were later filled with the humble but telling graves of the common people, smothered in gardens of colorful silk flowers and the flickering lights of electric eternal flames, that is until the battery runs out.  Photos of the departed are affixed to the stones to keep memory alive and aid in locating loved ones when visiting.

Tombstones of the common man fill ground that was once open

A revered Nun

But what is most remarkable about this place is the memorial artwork itself.  Renowned sculptors were commissioned to  carve imagery depicting grief, loss, mourning, death, decay, pride, valor, reverence, beauty, and the ascension to Heaven, often guided by angels or Jesus Christ himself.

Christ resurrecting from his tomb

The sculptors ability to convey the feeling of a person moving from the world of the living to the afterlife, leaving behind family and friends is done with such nuance that you can feel the emotions meant to be expressed.  The downcast eyes have lashes, the delicate hands touch those of an angel preparing to carry the soul to heaven.  There is even a sculpture of a woman literally dancing with death while trying to tear herself away.

Dancing with Death

This is an exhausting collection of images that I took on a melancholy but unseasonably warm day in January.  These incredible works of art are all the more mysterious in that they are now covered in a layer of dust, rather than polished and cared for.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the literal sense.  As the Rolling Stones once sang, "Time waits for no one." Here is a comprehensive tour of what I found to be visually haunting and beautiful at the Cimitero monumental di Staglieno.

A humble relative grieving the loss of a loved one

A wicked depiction of the Grim Reaper draped across a sarcophagus

An Art Nouveau sculpture of loved ones communing in a swirl of flowing drapery

Contemplating Death

Grand staircases connect the lower and upper arcades

Nowhere to go but up

With the assistance of an angel

San Michele

Reluctant parting

Rapture

Tears

Contemplative sorrow

Angels with dirty faces

We're going up now

Knocking on Heaven's door

A parting kiss

Carried away

Sending a child to Heaven from the crib

Opium must have been liberally prescribed to the dying

He's gone now

A stubborn man

An incredible moment when a flock of pigeons flew through an arcade

Father and Son

The Pieta

Giuseppi Mazzini, one of the fathers of the unification of Italy

A cupid's kiss

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Lovely Iris blooming in January

A grotto graces a terrace on the hillside

This incredible bronze was cast to drape directly over the natural rock

An elegant grill light well

Zombies wreaking havoc

Whats a cemetery without cats?

The Crematorium

An awkward kiss

An incredible depiction of the discovery of a death

The departed

Grief

Mourning

The family gathering around the death bed

A poignent prayer

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Preparing for take off

One of the cemetery's most famous angels

A beautiful angel

Bronze Oak

A monument to the penitentiary

Fresh arrivals

A beautifully rendered monument to departed soldiers

Flowers, mostly silk for sale outside the cemetery gates

A funeral wreath

Discarded flowers

 Thanks for coming all this way with me, Jeffrey

A fountain of a mermaid holding an urn graces the terrace above the Court of Honor at the Palazzo Reale

I spent the winter in Italy this year, mostly in the north of the country.  One of my favorite cities, which I did not spend enough time in was Genoa, which the Italians call Genova.  It is most famous in the west as the supposed birthplace of Christopher Columbus, although that is disputed.  Still, it merits a fine statue.

A monument to Christopher Columbus on the Via Balbi in Genoa

The Palazzo Reale, or Royal Palace in Genoa sits on a hill across from the Church of San Carlo on the Via Balbi, in an area of the city that was being developed in the 17th Century in to a fashionable neighborhood for the city's wealthiest families.

A Renaissance period grotto in a palazzo on Via Balbi

The project of building the palace was begun in 1643 for the Balbi family who rose to noble status through successful trade in the production of silk, and later banking.

Lavish silk wall coverings in the palace

But fortunes and styles change, and finacial problems forced the Balbi family to sell the palace.

Portrait of Catarina Balbi

Substancial additions were made in to the next century by the next owner Eugenio Durazzo, who's family became the most influencial in Genoa.  His son Gerolamo completely refurbished the palace after his father's death, so that almost nothing remains of the original Balbi Palace, even though it had been ornamented by some of Genoa's finest artists and craftsmen.  Being patrons of the theater and opera, the Teatro Falcone was build adjacent to the palace.

Gate leading to the Court of Honor of the Palazzo Reale

A view from the garden to the gate

In 1816, the Savoy dynasty of Torino petitioned to make the palazzo in to a royal palace.  Their son Ferdinand was given the title Duke of Genoa, and sumptuous apartments were built for his parents the Duke and Dutchess of Savoy, and himself.  The Savoy Palace in Torino to the north has a grandeur comparable to Versailles outside of Paris, which became the enviable model for what a royal family should aspire to.  So great halls with mirrors became all the rage in a number if Italian royal palaces, the one in Genoa included.  This hall was used for important diplomatic receptions.

Galleria degli Specchi, The Hall of Mirrors

Sala del Trono, The Throne Room of the Duke of Savoy in the Palazzo Reale

A very well made film about the palace can be seen here that covers the detailed history of the development of the palace interiors and the families who inhabited it.  No mention is made of the gardens since they are a much later addition, which I am discussing here.

A romantic fresco with Puti and a mandoline player in the ballroom

The frequent remodeling of the palace includes the peculiar looking wings with roof terraces were added to the back of the main building, and have that tacked on look but also makes for a look something like a  fancily frosted cake.

The Palazzo Reale with its awkward additions

The 1944 bombing of Genoa by the allies damaged the Teatro del Falcone in the palace but most of the building was spared, unlike so many others important historical buildings throughout Italy.  In the 1950's the theater was rebuilt and the 'Hanging Garden' terraza was installed.

Pebble Mosaic in the Risseu style

The pebble mosaics were reassembled here after being removed from the war damaged Monastery of the Blue Nuns of Castelleto district.  The mosaics have ornate white pebble designs set in a field of black pebbles depicting a series of animals, and scenes from daily life surrounding an 8 sided marble fountain basin.  These are the lovliest pebble mosaics that I saw while traveling in the Liguria Province.



Wide axial paths connect connect it to the palace and lead to a view towards the lighthouse and harbor.  Its quite beautiful from the ground plain or seen from the roof terrace and bridge arcade above.

The pebble mosaic terraza was once part of a Convent that was heavily damaged in World War II and moved to the palace during restoration.

This traditional style of pebble mosaic is called Risseu and can be seen all over the region of Liguria, although usually the patterns are more simple.  The Genoese kingdom spread across parts of the Mediterannean and Adriatic and Aegean and Black Seas in the 13th Century, and along with it came the import of pebble mosaics.  I saw several elaborate Risseu style mosaics in front of Turkish mansions on the island of Lesvos in Greece dating from the Ottoman empire in the late 19th Century which were influenced by the Ligurian Risseu style.

An Ottoman period mosaic in the Ligurian Risseu style in Mytilini, on the Island of Lesvos, Greece

Dogs hunting a wild boar at the Palazzo Reale

The mosaics relocated to the hanging garden terrace in Genoa depict a number of exotic animals in natural settings, forming a kind of zoo like menagerie.  There are hunting scenes, and wild animals from far away lands, and mythological creatures that would have added an entertaining and somewhat educational relevance to the designs.  Some of them could be telling a story but I am not aware of what they would be.

A leopard in a forest in the Palazzo Reale's pebble terrazza

A stag mosaic at the Palazzo Reale

Elephant with a monkey on its back under a palm.  It is possible that the artists had never actually seen a real elephant.

A Seahorse

The mosaic terrace has very good proportions and sets the stage for the view of the harbor although industrial development has made the view towards the harbor less appealing than it once was.

Fishermen drinking wine while they work

A man herding mules to a Mill

The Mosaic Garden looking out to the Genoa Harbour

A plaque commemorating the restoration of the Palazzo's mosaics

The scale of the garden is very pleasing, with its plantings of native Chamaerops humilis, the Mediterranean Fan Palm and other species, as well as Italian Cypresses

A white marble balustrade borders the terrace of the Hanging Gardens

Looking down from the arcade bridge built that divides the Hanging Garden from the Court of Honor

Marble urns and the Mermaid fountain on the arcade

A man playing a horn in the forest

An ancient Roman sarcophagus ornaments one of the axial paths of the garden

View of the harbor lighthouse from the Hanging Gard

A video can be seen at this link showing the process of building a Risseu technique pebble mosaic.
http://www.mused-mosaik.de/en/2013/07/31/ligurian-risseu-technique-la-repubblica-tv/
The process is obviously tedious, something I know very well from building them over the last 3 decades, although my process is quite different.  The pebbles used in this work have a very uniform shape and thickness enabling them to be set in a thin bed of lime mortar.

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The results are quite wonderful to behold, and pavement fit for a king.  Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

These are some images of other pebble mosaics that I saw in the beautiful town of Portofino, north east of Genoa.  It is traditional to see these kinds of mosaics around churches.

4 dolphins and 2 tridents

A creature emerges from the patterns formed by a pile of colored fishing nets in Naoussa on the Island of Paros in Greece

Floats keep the nets aloft in the water

A cascade of gold filigree in Naoussa, on the Island of Paros

During my travels through the Greek Isles in the winter of 2013 and 14 I was struck by the beauty of the fishing nets I saw piled on the waterfronts of villages.

Nets on the waterfront in Panormos on the Island of Tinos

I began to experiment with photographing the nets in ways that captured the lines and patterns and blends of color that they conveyed.  The colors would change depending on the light and the time of day.

A painted stool for sitting while repairing nets

Nets piled on the waterfront in Panormos on the Island of Tinos

Shades of blue and turquoise in Tinos Town on the Island of Tinos

One of the things that struck me about the nets were the variety of colors.  When combined, the delicacy of the patterns they formed and the way that they intermixed, along with the contrasting forms of the net floats made for wonderful compositions.

Gold blends with orange in nets on the waterfront of Heraklion, Crete

Floats arranged like necklaces on the waterfront of Naoussa on the Island of Paros

I became obsessed with capturing images of these beautiful tangles of color and line, sometimes seeing figures and faces within them.

Turquoise and Yellow Nets in Tinos Town on the Island of Tinos in Greece

Pale blue traceries on the waterfront of Tinos Town

The array of hues is diverse and wonderful, rich reds, maroon, cream, pale blues, turquoise, and most commonly shades of yellow.

Red and Maroon nets in Naoussa, Paros

A beautifully enhanced image of the planet Jupiter showing a swirling cloud layer of ammonia crystals

It is Spring and I am back on Bainbridge Island to resume work on the Halls Hill Labyrinth.  Last fall I completed 6 of the 11 circuits.  I started with the outer rings, and they make up the majority of the project since the circuits get smaller as I work my way towards the center.  The outer circuit, the 11th is dedicated to the full moons of the year, and I call it the Lunar circuit.  The 10th circuit has 108 stones arranged like a Tibetan prayer bead necklace, so I call it the Mala circuit.  The 9 rings leading to the center are dedicated to the 9 planets, starting with Pluto (yes, I know Pluto was downgraded from planet status).  The planets are named after Roman Gods, except for Uranus.  Roman worship borrowed heavily from Greek religious traditions, so there is usually a Greek equivalent to every Roman deity.  Pluto was first Hades.  Neptune was Poseidon.  Uranus is the only planet named after a Greek God, the Roman name being Caelus.  Saturn was Cronos, Jupiter was Zeus, and Mars was Ares. Earth was Gaia in Greece and Terra Mater (Mother Earth) in Rome.   Venus was Aphrodite, and Mercury was Hermes, and the sun was Helios and Apollo.

A magnificent bronze statue believed to be Zeus hurling a lightning bolt dating from 460 BC at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

The 5th circuit, which I am building now, is dedicated to the planet and God Jupiter.  Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, being approximately 1,400 times the size of our planet Earth.  It is the third brightest object in the night sky after our Moon and Venus, and at its brightest can even cast a subtle shadow on the ground. The Romans named the planet after the King of their Gods.  The majority of the planet is made up of layers of hydrogen and helium gases.  The cloud layer that we see on the surface of the planet is a relatively thin (about 50 kilometers deep) layer of ammonia crystals, and may contain a layer of water, as powerful lightning activity has been observed that would most likely be caused by water's polarity.  The intensity of these lightning storms is estimated to be 10 time greater than anything ever recorded on Earth.  As water vapor rises to the outer layers of the atmosphere it freezes, and the ice crystals rub against each other creating an electrical charge that is discharged through lightning.

Lightning captured on Jupiter by the NASA spacecraft New Horizons

Jupiter is the Roman incarnation of the Greek God Zeus.  He is a God of the sky, lightning, thunder, and justice.  He is often depicted clutching a lightning bolt ready to hurl it Earthward.  Lightning is a phenomenon that could easily inspire divine explanation.

Jupiter depicted in a ceiling painting I photographed in the Louvre in Paris

The Eagle is associated with Zeus, and Bald Eagles land here in the tallest trees from time to time.  I love hearing their distinctive cry and have seen them soaring overhead while I work on the labyrinth.  I have heard that with the building of new homes on the island that trees traditionally used as nesting sites by eagles year after year have recently been cut down.  There is great wealth on Bainbridge and lots with views of the water are increasingly more rare, so the impact of new building on less accessible sites tends to be greater.  Our natural systems are being impacted at an alarming rate.

200 AD Roman floor mosaic depicting Zeus as an Eagle, snatching Ganymedes.  Museum of Archaeology, Thessaloniki

This winter I visited several islands in Greece, including Crete and Naxos.  Both islands are mountainous, and I climbed up to caves on each that are related in mythology to the life of Zeus.  The cave of Ideon Andron on Mt. Ida, south of the city of Rethymno on the island of Crete, is according to legend one of two possible birthplaces of the baby Zeus.

The Ideon Andron Cave, one of the mythical birthplaces of Zeus, on Mt. Ida, Crete

Sired by Cronus (Saturn), and birthed by the Goddess Rhea,  Zeus was destined to be eaten by his father, like his siblings were before him.  Being Gods, the family role call of Cronus' offspring is significant, including Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.  Cronus had heard in prophesy that he would be deposed by one of his own, like his father Uranus, who'm he castrated and dethroned.  But Rhea wasn't going to have it this time so she wrapped a stone in swaddling and offered it up, and it seemed to pass the culinary needs of a distracted God.  Zeus was squirreled off to be raised in a secret cave on either Crete or Naxos.  Though the myths vary, he was said to have been raised by the Nymph named Adamanthea, and fed by a goat named Amalthea, who nursed him from his magical cornucopia horn.  To mask the divine baby's cries and avoid discovery, a band of Demigods called Kouretes clashed their spears against their shields to drown them out.  Excavations at the Ideon Andron Cave on the flanks of Mt. Ida yielded a treasure trove of offerings related to the cult of Zeus, including a bronze drum depicting winged Kouretes beating their shields while a triumphant Zeus flings a lion over his head and straddles a bull in the center.

8th Century BC Bronze drum depicting Zeus and Kouretes, from the Ideon Andron, Museum of Archaeology, Herakion, Crete

After his birth, some versions of the Zeus myth say that he was taken to the island of Naxos to be raised in a cave on the flanks of Mt. Zas.  Zas is the tallest mountain on the island and bears a form of his name.  I was the only one on the mountain the day I hiked it and it was a magical afternoon spent spelunking without a flashlight and and looking for stones to make little lightning bolts with.


Zeus, in retribution for his father having eaten his siblings, dethroned Cronus and caused him to vomit up the family.  Afterwards he became the supreme deity to whom all others worshiped.  

Zeus was a ladies man, and had a jealous wife, the Goddess Hera.  He sired many children with Goddesses and mortal women, many of whom were cursed and put to great tests by Hera.  The list is stellar.  Athena was born when Zeus's skull was split to relieve the worst of headaches after he had swallowed Athena's Mother, Metis.  The twins Apollo and Artemis (Diana), were birthed by Leto on the island of Delos after a curse from Hera that made it impossible for her to give birth in any other terrestrial place.  A tryst with Maia produced Hermes.  Hera had six children with Zeus, including Ares (Mars), Hephaestus, and Hebe.  Mnemosyn, the Goddess of Memory gave birth to the 12 Muses.  One of Jupiter's Moons is named for the Muse Aoide.  Dionysos fetus was stitched up in Zeus leg after his Mother, Semele was incinerated when she made Zeus promise her a boon, and she asked to see him in his divine form.  He attempted in vail to minimize his appearance to spare her, but he had promised with an oath made on the River Styx and was committed to fulfill it.  All in all he sired more than 40 divine offspring and a large number of mortals, including the mighty Heracles (Hercules).

Lighting bolts I made and left outside the entrance to Zas Cave, Naxos, Greece

Zeus had many rolls and aspects as a God.  He was the King of the divine pantheon that resided on Mount Olympus.  He continued to be the King of Gods in Rome as Jupiter, and the most important oaths of honor were made in his temple.  The Jupiter Temple at Baalbak in Lebanon was the largest temple in the entire Roman empire, with some of the largest known blocks of stone ever hewn, weighing 60 tons and more.

The Jupiter Temple at Baalbek, Lebanon, the largest in the Roman Empire

Me standing on the World's 2nd largest known hewn stone at Baalbek, Lebanon

The Roman Emperor Hadrian completed what would become the largest temple in Athens, the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.  Begun in the 6th Century BC, it was envisioned to become the greatest temple in the ancient world.  The King of Gods and Man was given the highest level of respect by the ancient Greeks and later the Romans.  By honoring Jupiter more than any other empire, Rome could claim divine supremacy over it's realm.

What remains of the great Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Athens, Greece

With all that in mind, I packed up my tools and returned to Bainbridge Island on March 23rd, the 3rd day of Spring.  I had hoped to be there earlier to mark the Vernal Equinox but the lovely apartment that I stay in wasn't available at that time.  It was a beautiful day with ample sunshine for the drive up.  I stopped at the beach in Purdy and the tide was out in the late afternoon so I collected a couple of 5 gallon buckets of stones.  When I arrived at the site I went immediately to work clearing loose stones from the area where I would resume building the path that leads to the center.  Because the 5th circuit turns and runs to the center I started at the bend from the 6th circuit in the northern Cardinal point.

The Labyrinth as it looked on my return on March 23rd

The next morning a pallet of mortar was delivered along with 10-20 foot sticks of 3/8 inch rebar.  And so the toil of building the Labyrinth resumed.  I built the bend and made my way from white stones in to silver stones.  This is the next set of turns inward from the 'Clouds of Heaven' that I built last fall between the 9th and 8th circuits.  Finding white stones is becoming more difficult in the right shapes as I have picked up most of what is available on the beaches that are close by.  Winter waves have turned the beaches and revealed new stones but I have to work harder to go further down the beaches to find the colors I need.


Today I had a visit from a lovely woman named Angie, for whom I dedicated the first of a series of simple 'lightning bolts', that I am incorporating in to this circuit as a symbol of Zeus, the God of lightning and thunder and storms.  In return I asked her to go and turn the prayer wheel and send an intention out in to the World.

Angie visits the Labyrinth

Angie's Lightning bolt (they tend to be very subtle when made of beach rock)

The next visitors were a family out enjoying the beautiful weather.  When people ask about the project I tell stories about the meaning of the various colors and circuits and what a Labyrinth is used for.  It will be so interesting when people actually start to walk it.  I find Americans to usually be very impatient, and walking this will require a fair amount of patience and time.  Some people just walk by and don't say a word, others come on a regular basis to show friends and to see the progress.  Some tell me they have been coming on a regular basis all winter just to gaze upon it.


My good friends Trish and Thane from Portland came by on their way back from Anacortes to see the project.  I love that friends find their way to this rather remote location in their travels to see what I am up to.  I made a special lightning bolt to commemorate their visit.

Friends from Portland visiting the project

Turning from the 6th circuit to the 5th at the Northern cardinal point

From my bag of select stones that I brought back from Greece I made a lightning bolt using the small slivers of stone I had collected at Zas Cave on the island of Naxos.  The link between the sacred places I visited in Greece this winter and the Labyrinth form a physical link between the Labyrinth and Greek Mythology, which I have been studying a great deal lately.

A lightning bolt made from stone shards I collected on Mt. Zas on the island of Naxos, Greece

I worked my way around to where the 5th circuit turns and runs straight to the center of the Labyrinth.  A section of the path in line with the entrance path parallels the one leading to the center, which represents the sun.  These straight paths are made of yellow stones since they are aligned with the east, and yellow is the color for the east in Native American medicine wheel diagrams.

The paths turn towards the center in the East

These paths bisect the Mars, Earth, and Venus circuits, and then the one centered on the east west axis connects to where the Sun disk will be at the center.  The path next to it connects to the Mercury circuit, and turns and goes part of the way around the Sun.  Once you reach the center it is traditional to walk back out following the reverse route.  If done with intention, this walk should be consciousness altering, if only for having exercised the patience needed to do so, but hopefully with so much more.

The next day was epic for its rainbows.  They lasted for at least an hour, arching across the sound while I gathered another 400 pounds or so of rock.  The tide is out in the afternoon so I am gathering what I need to make my way through each band of color during that time.

A brilliant full spectrum rainbow

It is a constant search to find the right shapes and sizes of stones in 12 colors I'm using, and the graduations in between.  I will have collected more than a ton by the time I finish the 5th and 4th circuits.

The day's pickings

Later, a very fashionable girl named Ava brought her parents, Lori and Farrell to see the project.  I told them about the community circuit that I will be building, the 3rd from the center where the Earth would orbit the Sun, and how people were bringing stones they had collected to contribute to it.  Enthused by the idea, they returned the next day with 3 buckets of beach rock, most of which had well chosen shapes I could use.  This doubled the amount of stones that have been left by people on a boulder by the Labyrinth over the winter.  I will build that circuit when I return in the middle of April.  Now that I am back on the site, more stones for the Community circuit have been showing up every day.

Ava, Lori, and Farrell

Later in the evening, Barb, who lives below the park came by with her two dogs.  We talked about the Labyrinth as a place of contemplation and soul searching, and the idea of it being a portal or link between realms of existence.   The is solace to be had here.

Barb and her sweet dogs

I worked my way around from Spring in to Summer, using up most of the pink and red stones that I had on hand.  I am always looking for these colors as they are not so plentiful.  I've incorporated a number of wave tumbled red bricks in to the red areas due to the rarity of flat red stones.  I left a gap at the Western cardinal point for turns that will connect to the 4th circuit, where brown then transitions to orange.  This is the direction of the Autumnal equinox.

The Jupiter Circuit, the 5th

On March 29th, I worked my way from orange in to black, mixing in stones where both colors are blended.  Then I transitioned in to white, and completed the loop in the North across from where I started when I returned to the island a week ago.  It rained all morning so I had to put my tarp up over the frame I have set up for shelter.  I'm able to walk the frame around like a spider to keep the areas I am working on dry.  Fortunately I haven't had to work under the tarp a lot because it is darker and kind of moody when it is up.  If it looks like it won't rain for a while I take the tarp down.  But it was up for the completion of this circuit as the rain came and went, and the sky grew dark.

Subtle zig zags of stone honor the God of Lightning and Thunder

Just as I was setting the last stones in the bend from the 5th to the 6th circuit, a dramatic bolt of lightning struck the water out on the Sound.  I could see the flash through the trees and thunder rumbled past a few seconds later, so it was very close.  Zeus had spoken!  I let out a whoop.  About 5 feet away from where I was sitting is the lightning bolt made from the slivers of limestone I brought from the Zas Cave on Naxos.  The electric connection between Heaven and Earth is buzzing through the Labyrinth now in the Jupiter circuit, and there is great magic in the World.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

With the Jupiter circuit complete, there are four circuits and the center remaining to be built

Camassia quamash, Camus

Springtime in the Willamette Valley of Oregon is a lush, glorious floral extravaganza.  At the southern end of the valley around my childhood home of Eugene are green pastures and meadows where remnants of once vast Camas prairies are still found.  Camassia quamash is a bulb plant with blue star shaped 6 petaled flowers in the Lily family.  They flourish in the damp clay meadows and pastures surrounded by Oregon White Oak and Douglas Fir forests here and were once a primary food for native peoples.  Being here in late April, it is hard not to pull over and admire the beauty of a sea of blue flowers where the bulbs have gone undisturbed.

Camas flourish in a well managed pasture outside Eugene, Oregon

The plant grows about 12 to 18 inches tall with a cluster of blue flowers that has its greatest impact in mass.  The blue petals have a variety of shades, from powdery and pale to a deeper shade as they age and fade.  Native cultures of the Pacific Northwest based a significant part of their nomadic year collecting the bulbs, which were roasted or boiled for their sweet flavor and nutritious content.  As white settlers arrived to homestead and begin farming the land, a significant portion of the native Camas meadows were tilled or grazed by livestock, depleting this important food source for indigenous people.

Camas and buttercups spangle the pasture on a lightly frosted Spring morning at my Mother's place

Bulbs are still collected by traditional gatherers in the fall once the foliage has died back.  They would be roasted for one to three days, turning black.  A third of the mass of the bulbs is converted to a fructose called inulin when cooked, making them a sweet delicacy for hunter/gatherer peoples.  The roasted bulbs could be dried and ground in to a flour to use in winter for sustenance.  In the fall after gathering the bulbs, prairies were set fire to burn off encroaching brush and forest to provide better habitat for game animals and Camas bulbs to ensure a steady supply of food.  Huckleberries were collected in the mountains in fall as a staple food as well.

A sea of blue

Depending on farming practices Camas bulbs can flourish in pastures and prairies if allowed to grow and bloom in Spring and then die back before a pasture is mowed or grazed.  When pastures are cut in Spring the bulbs will die out and disappear.  It takes several years for a seedling to mature enough to bloom so Spring disturbance of the bulb's habitat has caused a significant decline in the plant's native range.  At my Mother's home they grow in the front pasture that is only hayed in the fall.  I love seeing them when I walk up the long driveway to pick up the newspaper and mail.  I was driving out to visit old friends who live in the country yesterday and had to stop at one spectacular field that was painted in drifts of blue Camas to admire the beauty of the scene in late afternoon light.

Camas can be easily grown as an ornamental bulb in gardens where they will naturalize and form drifts.  They were introduced to English horticulture in the 1850s and are perhaps more prized for their exotic blue beauty there than they are in their native habitat.  There are other species and color forms available in specialty nurseries.  I rarely see them planted in American gardens, which is a shame because it is a lovely flower to behold.  I have one friend who has become very involved in native culture and goes on bulb digging expeditions in the fall to harvest this wild crop.  I have yet to taste one though.  I just admire their beauty and hope that they are allowed to flourish where ever possible to paint the fields blue in Spring.

Springtime in the Southern Willamette Valley

Thanks for reading always, Jeffrey

These are some of the places that have inspired me to do what I do when I build gardens.  Nature is foremost for me always but sometimes humans do a pretty knockout job too.  Here I will show some of my favorite natural landscapes on Earth.  In a later essay we will visit landscapes created by humans that have moved me as well.

Olympic National Park, Washington

At the base of the World's largest Western Red Cedar, Olympic National Park Ancient trees are astounding things, sometimes spanning millennium.  We are here but a short time by comparison.  Olympic National Park in Washington State harbors some of the largest species of trees on the planet.

Redwood National Park

Giant Redwoods tower more than 200 feet above the Eel River in Northern California

The western United States is one of the most beautiful parts of the world and the biggest trees are found here.  No trees are taller on this planet than the Redwoods of northern California.  Everything looks small after a day amongst these giants.  Trees can live to be over 2,000 years old.  98% of the original old growth of these magnificent forests have been cut and turned in to building materials.

Only in America

Patagonia

Cerro Fitzroy in Argentina

I don't think I've ever stared at a cloud for so long.  It lasted for over an hour, an eye in the sky

Patagonia in the south of Argentina and Chile has some of the most breathtaking landscapes I've ever seen.  The largest glacier system outside of Antarctica has sculpted the Andes into unimaginably fantastic vertical forms.  I've spent parts of 3 winters trekking throughout the region.  A clean, unspoiled natural ecosystem is unsurpassable in my mind.

Perrito Moreno Glacier

Glaciers make it clear that the Earth is always being resculpted, constantly changing and evolving.  The famed Perrito Moreno Glacier in Argentina is still advancing while most around the globe are retreating due to global warming.  The glacier at times forms an ice dam that separates two lakes.  When the upper lake fills to the breaking point an incredible flood of water bursts through creating a true spectacle.

The Galapagos Islands

Our boat driver jumps in to the abyss

When people ask "Where is the most amazing place you've ever been?" I usually say The Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.  We stayed in the islands for 3 weeks, and the intimate contact with wildlife really made me feel as if I was a part of Nature rather than separate.   Evolution is made totally obvious when you travel from island to island and see the variations that have developed between species based on the restraints of each environment.

Swimming with playful female sea lions is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had

Some of the most pristine beaches on the planet

River Rafting

The Misahuai River in Ecuador

Rafting is one of my favorite activities.  Living on a river changes you.  There is only one way in and one way out and the route in between can vary from utterly placid to the most exciting thing you've ever experienced.  Days of clean air untainted by automobile exhaust are a rare commodity in today's world (the first thing you notice when you get to the take out is the smell of cars).  There is the marvelous scenery, the vitality of riparian ecosystems, and the thrill of the rapids (I've nearly drown!).  I've rafted the Thompson River in British Columbia, the Middle fork and main Salmon Rivers in Idaho, the Snake, the Rogue in Oregon, the Colorado through the Grand Canyon (more than two weeks of some of the grandest scenery imaginable), and the Green River in Utah.  In Asia I've rafted the Marsayangdi in Nepal.  In South America I've rafted the Futaleufeu in Chile twice, the Rio Fonce in Colombia (during high water the rapids were the largest I've ever seen, and the Misahuai in Ecuador where hand size blue morpho butterflies and flocks of parrots bejeweled the Andean jungle above the Amazon Basin.

Camping on a beach in the Grand Canyon in Arizona

Crater Lake National Park

Crater Lake during a lunar eclipse    photo by Louis Ruth

I grew up in Western Oregon and fantasized as a child that I would someday become a ranger in a National Park.  When I was 18 I got a job working on tour boats at Crater Lake National Park, the deepest lake in the United States.  I rode around it at night on the Rim Drive alone on my bicycle during a full moon once.  It is incredible to swim in it's endless pure blue.  Blue is the only color in the spectrum refracted in the crystal clear water of this 1,943 foot deep lake.
For geology it is hard to beat Utah.  Layer upon layer of rock are revealed from the temple like heights of Bryce Canyon to the depths of the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Escalante Staircase and Capitol Reef lie in between, seen from what is one of the most beautiful roads there is, especially in the fall when the Aspens are golden.  Around Moab, Canyonlands and Arches National Parks are sculpted by wind and rain to the realm of the surreal.

Southern Utah

The Doll House, in the Maze, Canyonlands National Park

The Nepal Himalaya

Jharkot on the Annapurna Circuit

The Himalaya are the greatest and highest mountain ranges in the World.  I trekked to Annapurna Base Camp in 1996, and for 21 days walked over 200 kilometers on the Annapurna Circuit in 1997, and Langtang/Gosaikund in 1998.  Crossing the high passes in deep snow were the most physically challenging things I've ever done.

Climbing to Thorong La Pass in Nepal in April, 1997

Southeast Asia

I spent 11 winters in Asia.  A roundtrip flight to Bangkok from Portland used to cost around $500.  From there I would island hop to some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen in Southern Thailand and islands off the coast of Malaysia.

Kayaking in the Phi Phi Islands many years before the Tsunami

My first trip to Asia was to Bali, Java, Lombok, Sumbawa, and the Island of Komodo where the dragons live.  Komodo was like visiting some primeval film set, with giant lizards, wild pigs on the beach, flying foxes in the trees, and acrobatic dolphins doing triple twists for the fun of it on a wilderness island.  Later on I traveled around the great island of Sumatra and saw Orangutans living in the jungle near Bukit Lawang.

I saw Orangutans in the jungle near Bukit Lawang on Sumatra

Southeast Asia has a treasure trove of incredible places to visit.  I visited Myanmar at a time when travel restrictions were briefly removed for the first time in decades.  I visited Cambodia twice, the first time when the Khmer Rouge controlled much of the country.   Laos is perhaps the sweetest country I've explored.  A gentle culture separated from the rest of the World for decades somehow preserved it from the rapid development that has swept up the planet.  That is now rapidly changing with the growth of tourism.

Many heavenly days were spent swimming in the pools of Quang Xi Falls near Luang Prabang, Laos

The Amalfi Coast, Italy

The Amalfi Coast from the Villa Rufalo in Ravello, Italy

Italy is a geographically beautiful country with surprisingly rugged mountains and some dramatic coastlines.  One of the most breathtaking of all is the Amalfi coast, which has inspired lore since ancient times.  The Sirens from Homer's Odyssey were believed to live on small rocky islands off shore, luring sailors to entrapment with their intoxicating songs.  Tears came to my eyes each time I navigated the winding highway along it's precipices.

The Columbia River Gorge, Oregon and Washington

Crown Point and the beaches of Rooster Rock State Park in the Columbia River Gorge

One of the main reasons I live in Portland is it's close proximity to the Columbia River Gorge, and epic landscape that cuts through the Cascade Mountain Range between Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens.  A number of catastrophic floods during the last ice age created the the sheer cliffs from which plummet the largest number or high waterfalls in North America.  Many a blissful day has been spent on the wild beaches of Rooster Rock State Park, home to Ospreys, Beaver, and Deer.

Sunset from Rooster Rock State Park

There are so many places I haven't mentioned, some intimate, some grand.  The sound of the trickle of snowmelt is one of the main reasons I build so many fountains.  Mountains and rocky beaches inspire my stonework.  And I love to plant trees, knowing they will grow to be so much greater than me.  I love Nature above all.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

Temple 1, Tikal, Guatemala

I recently posted a series of photos highlighting places from the Natural World I've encountered in my travels that have inspired me in my life and work.  Nature for me is the pinnacle of what is possible.  The complexity of the symbiosis of all the forces of Nature spinning around, from the most infinitesimal particle to the far reaches of our racing universe feels like magic to me.  I think you really have to abandon all hope of rationalizing this magnificent system and just commune with it to really experience it on the whole.  Religion and science try to make sense of it all, but it will always be more than you can imagine until you fully succumb to it.

A Devata, Angkor Wat, Cambodia

We are the species with the big brains and the handy body mechanics to build things, and as a result I think we rationally tend to stray from the profound, all encompassing connection to the environment around us; that which is always there, all the time.  We go about our days ruled by our egos and our identities and our relationships and the way we define the world, and end up not feeling the connection intrinsic connection we have with our environment.  We are taught from birth to categorize our perceptions.   Organized religion has to be learned.  For instance, take the fact that an enormous number of people who might otherwise be considered worldly and respectable but know nothing about plants beyond the basics; thats a tree, a bush, grass, flowers, roses, and some vegetables.  But we would not have evolved to be what we are as an organism without plants.  Therefore, I think it is essential to explore the world of plants in order to be  a more environmentally conscious person.  Gardening is one of the best ways to do that, and observing nature with an open curiosity that really gets you to look more closely, to study, feel, smell and listen to what you are passing by as you move around.  It will make you exponentially more aware of what is happening around you.  We hurtle through space in cars on pavement far too much these days.  You've got to stop, and smell...everything, including the roses.

A mosaic ceiling in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

Agricultural advances made it possible for humans to gather in large enough numbers to create societies and to celebrate collective beliefs.  There is a theory that devotional sites where people gathered predated actual settlements.  Architecture is the means of bringing beliefs to form, and those rendered in stone often remain as the main historical record of these endeavors.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Angkor Wat

The largest temple structure ever built by humans on this planet is a sacred architectural manifestation of a cosmic order that explains the creation of the Heavenly realm, manifested in the Earthly realm.  This place is utterly profound.  There is sacred geometry and numerology and alignments with the sun, moon and stars that are a pinnacle of human expression.  The largest and finest bas reliefs I have ever seen are here.  These are unparalleled masterpieces telling the tale of the Hindu God Vishnu presiding over an epic metaphor for the energies needed to create the universe.  The relief panels line up with the shadows cast by columns of the sun and moon of equinoxes.  One side of the temple reliefs appear crudely rendered compared to the others, but this vast complex is about as close to perfect as we builders ever get.

The Hindu God Vishnu presides over Angkor Wat

You cross the Eternal Sea over a causeway that goes backwards through a divine time span called a Yuga, to an earlier, more connected period of consciousness.  It can be useful to read the Wikepedia description at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga to get a better understanding of these concepts.  They are grand and abstract.  So as you approach the main temple mountain, you move back in time and enter realms of increasingly greater divine consciousness, until you reach a series of terraces punctuated by nine towers in concentric squares.  To climb to the top level is to enter the realm of the Gods.  In order to do this the structure has to have perfect proportions based on a system of geometry that is called Vastu Puranic architecture.  The perfection is recognized and therefore attracts the energy of the Gods.  Unless I want to write a book, I will have to leave it at that.

My entourage for the day

The first time I went to Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge still controlled most of the country beyond the capitol at Phnom Phen and Siam Riep, where Angkor Wat lies.  Angkor was once a great city of the Khmers, the seat of the God King, with a perfectly conceived cosmic order to the central city.  I stayed for two weeks, sitting for long periods at various sites.  There are more than 70 of them.   A couple of mornings I had my motorcycle chauffeur  take me out to Angkor Wat to watch the sun rise.  The second time I was the first arrival and I believe I had the entire holy mountain to myself.  People began to trickle in as the light illuminated the mists of the surrounding jungles.  It was one of those rare experiences in life that may never be possible again.  Angkor today is mobbed with tourists now that it is once again a safe place to visit.

The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

The Taj Mahal

It almost seems stereotypical to move next to the Taj Mahal.  This white marble tomb is by far the most famous structure in India and one of the great architectural icons of the world.  It wasn't until my third trip to India that I finally went there because it was just too damn famous.  Boy was I made the fool.  I stayed for a week and scoured every inch of this breathtaking creation, and returned again the following two years.

An interlocking pattern of 8 pointed stars frames the lawns flanking the pool

Shah Jahan had his architects research every notable structure within their reach to realize the concept for this immaculately conceived complex.  The tomb sits on a white marble platform by the Yamuna River within a classic walled Chahar Bagh garden, an ancient Persian form divided in to four parts with a water channel at the center of the axis.  These represent the four rivers of paradise The gates you pass through are exceptional on their own.  Then there are vast gardens and marvelous structures perfectly oriented for balance and harmony.  Most people head up the central walkway to get to the main tomb, give it a look, pose for lots of pictures, and head back so they can get in a nap at the hotel before dinner.  But you can sit on the lawns all day and just gaze at the most perfect dome ever conceived by man, admiring the way the light changes its character.  The proportions are perfect.  The marble is inlayed with semi precious stones forming exquisite floral and calligraphic designs.  The place is big and there isn't a wasted spot in the equation.  It was built to be perfect.  The minarets are actually shorter in the back than the ones in front to give a more balanced appearance.

Pietra dura is the process of inlaying marble with thin pieces of semi precious stones

I went in enough times to get to know the guards and was able to stay after everyone else left in the evening.  One day I decided to walk around the exterior wall.  Being a gardener made it possible to persuade the guard at the garden to the left to allow me to explore the flower and vegetable gardens carefully tended below high red sandstone walls carved with beautifully rendered reliefs of vases filled with flowers.  As Mughal civilization grew more refined, the garden became the paramount art form of desire.  Flowers are a symbol of tranquility in a chaotic world.

The gardener at the Taj Mahal who tends the garden outside the walls

 The Taj Mahal taught me that something can be beautiful from a mile away and just as beautiful from 3 inches away.  Its hard to say that about most modern construction.

The Alhambra, Spain

Towers of the Alhambra viewed from the Generalife

 In the Spring of 1987 I made my first journey to Europe.  It was natural for me to be drawn to the Mediterranean region as there were pilgrimages I wanted to make to places we had studied when I was in school that had captured my imagination.  Foremost was the Alhambra in the beautiful city of Granada in Andalusia, Spain.  It is worth reading my essay, Tales of the Alhambra at http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2012/03/tales-of-alhambra.html and the Generalife at http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2012/04/generalife.html

Barcelona, Spain and Antonio Gaudi

Twisted, cantilevered columns support terraces and roads in Parque Guell

On that same trip I made the pilgrimage to Barcelona to see the Modernismo architecture that makes this city famous.  Antonio Gaudi is the best known of the architects from this period and was commissioned to design a number of increasingly fantastic structures that derive their influence from nature.  It is here that I became infatuated with mosaic encrusted surfaces.

The mosaic tiled roof of Casa Battlo, designed by Antonio Gaudi

Bali

The fabulous royal water gardens at Tirta Ganga

 My first trip to Asia was to Bali, where I lived with a family in the then tiny town of Ubud.  It is here that I experienced a tradition of finely crafted architecture imbued with great meaning.  The cycle of life is intrinsically bonded with that of the moon.  Watching the daily rituals, ceremonies, and dances made me realize that life can be a celebration of the divine.   This was the first place I encountered the art of stone being carved.

Sri Lanka

Apsaras painted on a cliff wall at Sigiriya, Sri Lanka

The first time I went to India was via the island of Sri Lanka where I went to spread the ashes of a close friend who had died of AIDS.  He had always wanted to visit friends who lived in the capitol of Colombo who I had never met.   They greeted us on arrival at the airport and I spent 2 months exploring this fascinating and magical place with two friends.  I spread the ashes around a stupa at Mihintale, the place where Buddhism was introduced to the King of Sri Lanka in 247 BC.  There had been heavy rainfall and the plains were flooded with fresh water, filling all the tanks and pools.  This was one of the most beautiful and memorable days of my life.

A white washed Dagoba marks the spot where King Devanampia was converted to Buddhism by Mahinda, son of the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka, at Mihintale

The ruins of the ancient cities of Annuradhapura, Polonoruwa, and Sigiriya are some of the most dramatic in Asia, with huge hemispheric stupas and called Dagoba's.

The Kutam Pokuna, Twin Ponds at Anuradhapura, a marvelous place to swim at the time of our visit

A monolithic reclining Buddha carved from a granite cliff in Polonoruwa

Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India

The Tiger Cave, Mahabalipuram

Mahabalipuram is a small, ancient village on the Indian Ocean in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.  It is here that the prototype of the South Indian temple was created by experimenting with a variety of styles carved from monumental rock formations.  There is still a thriving stone carving tradition after 2,000 years.  The sound of hammers and chisels pinging away at hard granite blocks to render a pantheon of Hindu deities and commissioned works lured me back the following year to work with carvers on my own projects.  I had a number of pieces made that live in my house and garden today.

Blessing a stone to be carved in to a lotus bowl

One of the most influential parts of the carving process for me was the blessing of the stone and tools before commencing a project as the work is so time consuming and precise as to be an act of devotion.  I've only built one project where I performed a similar blessing ceremony at the beginning and the results were truly profound.

A squirrel sits on a granite lotus bowl I designed and had carved in Mahabalipuram

Rajasthan

Hawa Mahal, Jaipur

There is something about Rajasthan that feels intoxicating to me.  It is the part of India I returned to 4 times.  Cities seem to emerge from a dream as much as they do from the desert, all in carved sandstone. The color of the local stone determines the predominant color of the town.  Jaipur is pink, Jaisalmer is golden, and Jodhpur could be called pink as well but a lot of the houses are painted light blue.  Bikaner has a kind of Victoriana about its heavily embellished architecture.  Shekhavati is covered in paintings.  Bundi's palace was painted with single hair brushes.  Udaipur gleams of white marble on a lake, and Mt. Abu and Ranakpur have some of the most ornate and delicate carving ever rendered by the hand of man.


In Jodhpur I rented an old bicycle and on an outing to the Umaid Bhavan Palace found a row of antique dealerships.  Mainly they sold furniture made from recycled wood and carvings and brass work but out back, often more discarded than on display, were parts of demolished buildings, carved sandstone window frames, panels, screens and columns.  Sometimes we had to dig the pieces out of the ground as they had been buried by sand storms.  But I saw the opportunity to bring them back to life in my garden designs.

The three red sandstone column capitols (upside down) are now in my garden

So over 3 years I shipped about 3 tons of old and new stone work.  The road to Mumbai from Jodhpur is very long, followed by a sea voyage to Singapore and then Los Angeles.  There the crates are transferred to a train and shipped to Portland where I pick them up at customs.  I was able to sell maybe 30% of what I bought and the rest later went in to my new garden next door.  So when I say my garden feels like a Rajasthani Maharaja's Palace it literally does.

The Sheesh Mahal in the Amber Fort near Jaipur is one of the inspirations for the wall I built in my garden

The wall I built in my garden reminds me of palaces in India

Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley

A holy image of a Bhairav, a Hindu diety draws pilgrims in Kathmandu

I spent 3 winters in India where I traveled north in the Spring to Nepal to trek in the Himalaya.  The Kathmandu Valley is the center for ruling classes and a number of small but brilliant temples were built for the royal family and their subjects.  The valley has gentle rolling hills compared to the steep terrain of the mountains, which for centuries were only accessible by foot paths.  Much of the country still like this although invasive and highly destructive road projects are being built that will forever change the villages along the way.

A beautifully sculpted lintel in Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu Valley

One thing I learned is that when you don't have vehicle access, the architecture becomes truly vernacular in that everything is made of local material that has been carried by hand.  Glass windows are one of the few things that are trekked in from afar.  As soon as a road arrives the tin shacks start popping up all over.

Stone Chortens, simple pagoda like structures near Pisang in the Annapurna Mountain Range

Mesoamerica

Rattlesnake Serpents frame the gateway to a temple at Chichinitza on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico

As soon as I graduated from college I hit the road.  This isn't unusual except that I never stopped doing it.  My first exotic trips were to Mexico, where I visited numerous excavated ruins of once great civilizations.  The first was Teotihuacan, one of the oldest and most spectacular pre Colombian cities.  I explored Monte Alban and Mitla near Oaxaca and traveled all over the Mayan realm in the Yucatan Peninsula down in to Guatamala.  I've incorporated symbolism in my own garden inspired by those that moved me here.

A wall covered in stone masks of the rain God Chac cover a temple in Kabah on the Yucatan Peninsula

Years later I ventured down in to Ecuador and Peru to experience the world of the Mochica, Kuelap, and the Inca empire.  The Sacred Valley is filled with profound ceremonial sites that combine stone, water, and light to create a bond between man and the greater universe.

The Mochica ruins at Chan Chan are the largest adobe ruins in the World

The tight fit of monumental stones and the way they are organically composed to withstand earthquakes and last beyond the life span of the civilization itself left a lasting impression on me.  If you do it right it may just have a legacy that becomes treasure for future generations.

Detail of terrace walls at Machu Picchu in Peru

A classic tapered Inca window at Machu Picchu

A water channel is divided by four in a ceremonial site in Tipon near Cusco, Peru

Peterson's Rock Garden, Oregon

A sunken courtyard and the entrance to the museum at Peterson's Rock Garden

All over the world people have built fantasy landscapes using stone and found objects to create mosaics.  As a child we used to visit a garden near my Grandparent's home that was built by the late Rasmus Peterson.  His inspiration is one of the reasons I do mosaic work today.  You can read the essay I wrote about this garden at jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2011/09/petersons-rock-garden.html‎ 
I learned that I could teach myself to build with stone in an artistic way, inspired by this man's vision.

Nek Chand's Rock Garden, Punjab, India

A village of people dressed in mosaic made of crockery

The largest of all visionary environments built on this planet is Nek Chand's Rock Garden near the Le Corbusier designed capital of the Indian Punjab.  It is built using scrap waste materials in ingenious ways.  Having lived through the trauma of the Partition of India and Pakistan, Mr. Chand created a magical kingdom in which everyone lives in harmony.  He did the work in secret in the jungle in an area designated as a green belt around the new city.  Wikipedia has a pretty good description at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Garden_of_Chandigarh

Lac Bangles decorate the saris on rows of women

All of the work was done by hand and thousands of tons of material were moved by bicycle, usually at night.  The garden now covers more than 40 acres.  It took us 6 hours to walk through most of it and I cried several times, overwhelmed by the incredible effort and resolve required to create such a place.  I know first hand how hard the work is.

Lac Bangles

A large number of figures are encrusted in rows of broken lac bangles like these for sale in a market.  He needed perhaps millions of pieces to make the saris and feathers on hundreds of women and birds.  Porcelain from sinks and toilets of the towns demolished to make way for the new city cover valley like walls dotted with figures.  One marvelous wall is covered in ceramic florescent light sockets creating a modern yet organic texture.

Ceramic light sockets from florescent fixtures encrust a wall

 Rocks with special character that the artist felt embodied special energy are displayed on a ledge covered in white pebbles, topped by rows of birds.

Nek Chand set unusual stones that embody spirits for him on white stone mosaic terraces

Portland Classical Chinese Garden, Oregon

In 1999 the city of Portland, Oregon broke ground on a sister city project with Suzhou, China to create a Ming Dynasty Scholar's garden in the Chinatown district of downtown Portland on the site of a parking lot.  65 Chinese laborers handcrafted a wonderful series of pavilions around a lake.  In my mind is one of the finest achievements in Portland's history and a rare example of modern craftsmanship.  Things like this rarely get built in America.  At the time of construction nobody was documenting the process and I couldn't help but stick my nose in to see what was happening as construction commenced.  Crates containing many tons of Lake Tai Scholar's stones were unloaded from ships, along with many more containing sorted pebbles.  Men smoking corn cob pipes squatted for weeks tapping pebbles in to a sand mix for the mosaics while pot bellied American workers stood around in hard hats.  None of the Chinese craftsmen spoke English, so I took pictures of my mosaic projects to  show them that I work in a similar medium.  The garden contains perhaps the largest pebble mosaic installation in the United States.

A Lake Tai Scholar's Stone nestles with a carefully shaped pine in the entry court of the Chinese Classical Garden

Hand crafted environments have a magical quality that you don't find in conventional construction.  The gates are capped with Chinese characters that allude to poetic ideas, setting the tone for the transition between courtyards and paths.  The pavements are pebble mosaic set in patterns mortared in to patterns which also have meaning and poetic significance.  I have visited other Suzhou style gardens in the United States but none compare to this magical place.  The upstairs in the tea house is my favorite room in Portland, and musicians playing Chinese instruments fill the building with the sweetest sound as lotus nod on the mirror of the lake.

A flower gate leads is reflected in the pebble mosaic pavements in the Courtyard of Tranquility

Watching the garden come to fruition and grow with impeccable maintenance has been a joy to behold.

A covered bridge

A Chili Pepper shaped opening reveals a view of a pebble mosaic pat

One pavilion is built to mimmic a boat on the water.  Perfectly integrated benches make for places to sit and contemplate the serenity and elegance of this careful blending of architecture, nature, art, religion, and the life of a scholar's family.  In my mind is one of the finest achievements in Portland's history and a rare example of modern craftsmanship.

The Painted Boat in Misty Rain

Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy

The Mouth of Hell, Bomarzo

I love fantasy landscapes.  The Italian Renaissance had a Mannerist period where some of the World's great water gardens were created.  Traveling in Italy is a dream come true for me.  I returned for 3 months this winter for another dose.  My first trip took me to the Villa d'Este, Villa Lante, Villa Farnese, and the Parqui di Mostri, Bomarzo, located in the Lazio Province where Rome is located.

A mossy tangle of roots compliments the strange architecture of the Parqui di Mostri

I had dreamed of Bomarzo, with its monumental grotesque sculptures, characters from literature and fable depicted in giant forms emerging from the woods, mysterious and mossy.  In winter the black tracery of bare trees decorated with water droplets web the grey sky.  Yellow catkins dangled from the hazelnuts framing nymphs and mythical beasts.  The Count Orsini built his palace in the medieval town of Bomarzo, looming over the valley that looks down on the Bosco.  He created a fantasy world in which to entertain and astound visitors.  I would imagine they had amazing costume parties here.

The Crooked House

I self published a book called 'The Gardens of Southern Italy' that you can view or order by clicking on the link at the top of the essay.

A River God and a Giant fish adorn a no longer functioning cascade and pool

Morocco

Moulay Idriss Tomb, Fez

North African cities is have an urban center called the Medina, a pedestrian realm that excludes cars.  This is a profound environment for an American like me.  Automobiles may very well bring about our demise on this planet from the gluttonous use of fossil fuels we extract and burn to power them, let alone the vast reserves of land that we have sacrificed to our system of highways and streets.  In only a century we have turned our precious planet in to a fouled mess for the convenience of getting around as quickly as possible.

Chefchaoen is known as the Blue City

Life in the Medina is a slower paced, intimate and magical experience.  Medieval Europe has remnants of carless centers as well.  Venice is the largest pedestrian urban center in Europe.  It is possible to live this way, without the huge parking lots and driveways and garages and wide impermeable streets that we take for granted and have literally paved paradise.  Our very health and wellbeing is at stake.  Walk!  The colors used to paint houses are rich and meaningful.  You can read essays I wrote at http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2011/02/colors-of-morocco.html and http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2012/02/chefchaouen-blue.html
I also self published a book of photos of Morocco you can view or order by clicking on the link at the beginning of this essay.

Roberto Burle Marx, Landscape Architect, Brazil

The Montiero Garden near Petropolis, Brazil

I spent 3 winters in Brazil, in part so that I could visit gardens designed by the landscape architect and horticulturalist Roberto Burle Marx.  A renaissance man, Burle Marx was an accomplished painter, sculptor, designer, plantsman, and singer.  He knew how to create a new vision of the world based on the abstraction of his paintings superimposed on the landscape, painting with plants.  He understood the natural world through direct observation, exploring the ecosystems of his native land and introducing a number of new plant species to cultivation.  He superimposed these systems into the modern movement that swept Brazil in the 20th Century.  There are so many ideas to be gleaned from his work.  You can read an essay I wrote about these gardens at: http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2011/10/gardens-of-roberto-burle-marx.html

Carnival in Brazil

One of many fabulous floats in a desfile at Carnaval in Rio

For 6 years after I completed my degree in Landscape Architecture I made my living making costumes and accessories which I sold all over the United States.  Costuming has been an important part of my personal expression and I continue to sew creations for festivals that I attend every year.  It was a dream to experience Carnevale in Brazil, a spectacle unrivaled in the world.

Regal Queen and King in Recife

The first two Carnevales I participated in were in Rio de Janiero, where I attended samba school and danced with the Manguiera school, the largest in Rio.   Costume pageants in Rio feature outfits so huge and elaborate that they enter the realm of the impossible.

Looking like a couple of giant chickens, dancing with the Manguiera School in  the Sambadromo, Rio

The third was in Recife to the north.  Each region has its own special style of dance and a broad range of costumes.  Vast quantities of feathers are produced in large farms for the events.  So much fun!

Girls in aboriginal costumes in Recife

The Oregon Country Fair

A Fiesta Parade

I grew up in Eugene, Oregon.  The region's greatest festival is the Oregon Country Fair, which I describe as being the quintessential hippie fair.  My parents took me as a child and I later joined an ambience troupe called Risk of Change, where I honed my skills as a costume maker and performer.  Creating various characters and embodying them helped teach me the potential for manifesting realities.  We can become what we want to become through intention.   We dress outrageously and dance about bringing joy to those we encounter.  It keeps inspires me, keeps me young, and fills me with love.

Old Oriental carpets cover the ground in our camp

I also learned from our camp that you can carpet the ground with beautiful old carpets and pillows to create an outdoor room for lounging around with friends, and what a wonderful thing that is.  This is the inspiration for why I put carpets out in my garden on dry days in summer.

Burning Man

The Temple Burn, 2007

The most outrageous festival I have ever attended is Burning Man.   A new world appears on the perfect white slate of an enormous dry lake bed in the high Great Basin desert of Nevada.  Because the playa is flat and bare of vegetation and nearly devoid of life when it is dry it is possible to build monumental structures that can be burned.  The element of fire is paramount.

A mobile theater and a steel tree house in the desert

But what is truly astounding about this event is the level of creativity that it inspires in its participants.  It is impossible to come away without profound inspiration.  Some of the most beautiful creations I have ever seen were manifested for this one week of Bacchanalia in late August.  At the end of the festival the playa is picked meticulously clean and returned to the pristine wilderness condition.

Thursday morning at the White Procession  Photo by Scott London  www.scottlondon.com

Earth is a breathtaking place to inhabit, rich in treasures that are worth knowing and deriving inspiration from.  It is my intention to do my best to honor the spirit of this potential in my lifetime.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

Setting stone in the outer ring of the Labyrinth

The Labyrinth Project is an installation I am building in Hall's Hill Lookout Park, a beautiful site on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, due west of downtown Seattle.

In the fall of 2006 I was approached by a person, who helped spearhead the building of the Islandwood Environmental School on Bainbridge Island in Washington.  This is an amazing institution. It is hoped that every child enrolled in school in the Seattle region be able to go to Nature camp for one week at Islandwood, where they will be guided by graduate students in environmental education.  For many of the kids it is there first time in the woods.  I built a cistern there that collects the water from the Learning Center in 2007.  You can read an essay I wrote about it at: http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2011/06/artist-in-residency-at-islandwood.html

The Cistern at Islandwood

They had seen the Council Ring that I built for Dan Hinkley and Robert Jones at their new garden at Windcliff on the Kitsap Peninsula.  The Council Ring is one of the most important projects I have built to date, in large part because it has symbolism and coloration that relate to the cosmos and the passage of time, and the sacred mountains of Tacoma and Sun-a-do, Mount Rainier and the Olympic Range.   The English captain John Meares, seeing the Olympics in 1778, thought they were beautiful enough to be the home of the Gods, and named the highest point Mt. Olympus after the mountain in Greece.  Mt. Olympus sits due West beyond the Eastern entrance to the Council Ring.  There are alignments with the Summer Solstice, which I marked as I was building it at that time.  The Giant Pacific Octopus design inside the ring points it's arms in the cardinal directions.  The surrounding colors of stone change with the colors of the seasons and the Native American Medicine Wheel.  Bald Eagles have landed on it.  It is a sanctuary linked to the solar system, the sea, and the surrounding land.  The Cistern at Islandwood has some of the same concepts.  Both projects required that I collect several tons of local beach rock.

The Council Ring at Windcliff

The site and gardens are stunning.  This park is meant to be a place of peaceful healing.  There is already beautiful boulder work and winding gravel paths that lead to a fabulous milled old growth cedar slab bridge that crosses a sedge and rush filled swale.

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Beyond this is a wonderful bronze prayer wheel, with a plaque explaining that you set an intention and spin the wheel 9 times.  A bell rings on the 9th rotation and your intention is sent out in to the World.  It is a popular destination for island residents and visitors.  On the Prayer Wheel is an inscription by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu.  It reads; "I have just three things to teach: Simplicity, Patience, Compassion".

The Community Prayer Wheel

The original labyrinth

A simple labyrinth had been installed by a local landscape company that is an extension of Savage Plants, a nursery on the Kitsap Peninsula.  Granite blocks were set in a lawn in a pretty glade in the forest with views of the water.

I've worked on a lot of projects in the last 25 or so years, and it has been very seldom that I have been asked to build something sacred.  I even had a client ask me in a sarcastic way when I finished her patio if she would have to meditate out there.  Heaven forbid.  But I happen to know that when you build intention in to a landscape playing on its connection to the natural world and the cosmic forces that influence it that it actually has a presence that could be considered sacred.  Animals are attracted by the energy these places emit.  I've had a Cougar, a Rattlesnake, a large banded lizard, a Great Blue Heron, and Bald Eagles visit the places where I've intended them to be magical.  As they are used over time for ritual and introspection they become loaded with memory and history that can trigger consciousness on a profound level.

Years ago I was approached by the TKF Foundation (http://naturesacred.org) based in the Washington D.C. area to give a lecture on building sacred spaces.  TKF is known for installing Poetry Benches in troubled parts of the region, like Baltimore.  They also build labyrinths and gardens, sometimes in prisons.  After my presentation the architects in the audience and I focused our discussion on the ethical gathering of materials as a basis for creating sacred landscapes.  They were interested in having me build a labyrinth for them but there was no real idea of how laborious it would be to build a pebble mosaic labyrinth.   Eventually they asked me if I would do one in recycled asphalt on a roof top in Washington D.C.  It would be the first of its kind, for good reason.  I declined.

The most popular style of labyrinth within the organization seemed to be an 11 circuit path based on a Medieval walking labyrinth at the Chartes Cathedral in France, which was built in the 13th Century.   http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html  This has become the most famous and therefore the trendiest model.  There is a copy in the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco that is the most frequently walked in the world.

I've since walked a rustic 7 circuit labyrinth on a beach on Sauvies Island near Portland several times.  The paths are lined with beach stone.  The beach is clothing optional so I have always walked it naked.  I don't always get in to it on a deep level but its alway a sweet experience and I can feel a special energy from doing it.

My design for the labyrinth

It took three days for me to get organized to drive up to Bainbridge Island, a four hour drive to the north of Portland. I gathered tools, lots of buckets, packs of new gloves, rain gear, a shade structure in case it rains while I'm working, a pile of work clothes, and plenty of extra food.

I drove to Tacoma and crossed the Narrows to the Kitsap Peninsula, and stopped at a wide stone beach not far from the highway that is a great place to pick rock.  I've seen a few men fishing here over the years but that is all.  It is usually deserted and there are a lot of stones to pick through.  Because the wave action in Puget Sound isn't big like it is in the Pacific Ocean, the stones tend to keep some of the flat surface where they split, so that the corners are rounded and soft.  These can be a great shape to use in rock work.  The rectangular raised pond in my garden is built with Puget Sound beach rock.  It is some of the loveliest I've encountered in my travels.  Glaciers during the last ice age dragged a huge variety of stone in to its moraines and left them to line many of the beaches in the area.

Rock collecting on the beach in Purdy

When I arrived it was full tide, and the beach was small, so I rolled up my pants and took off my shoes and waded in, parting the seaweed to see what I was looking for.  Little waves soaked my pants and shirt sleeves and made for slow picking.  Silvery clouds rolled in making for a gorgeous sky I will remember whenever I think of the days I spent gathering stone for this project.  These stones are special.

Buckets of hand picked beach rock

I'm looking for particular shapes, with a flat top and 90 degree or more edges, and enough depth that they will stay in place and not become dislodged from the mortar I'm going to set them in.  I often put two stones together to see how they would fit.  Over a four hour period I gathered over 1000 pounds.  All these have to be carried by the bucket up a steep rough trail through a thicket of poison oak.  I gouged my shin on the burl of an Arbutus Madrone tree that had fallen across the path so now blood was running down my leg.  Penance.  My other penance is that I pick up trash and haul it away.  It is appalling how much trash washes up and is tossed on our shores.  When I am done collecting, nobody would ever know I was there.  If there are little crabs under a stone I put it back.  I wipe the tiny snails off so they can grab on to another rather than die in my buckets.  I consider it the gentlest form of resource extraction.

It was dark when I got to the island, but I stopped at the site, which has been prepared to my specifications in advance after my first visit.  At 36 feet in diameter, this is the largest mosaic I will have ever worked on.  8 granite boulders have been placed at the cardinal points outside of the 36 foot diameter circle, around which they installed a steel ring to keep me in line.  This is filled with perfectly compacted gravel.  The granite boulders are meant to be places to stand or sit and meditate on the whole of the design.  It is like a dream to have something so exactingly prepared for me in advance..

The beautifully prepared site where I will build the labyrinth

I unloaded the buckets of rock in the dark so I could get my luggage out of the back of my pickup, which is covered with a decaying old canopy.  I have to crawl in on my hands and knees to load and unload it.  How many thousands of times have I done that since I bought this '86 Toyota Pickup!

The following morning I hobbled out to the site and prepared to draw the design for the 11 circuit labyrinth.  It is no surprise that my measurements in the design were not accurate and the center circle will be considerably smaller than I originally thought but I love the way it looks.  I used a line connected to a spike in the center of the circle to draw the rings, and then laid out the cross lines that align with the cardinal directions where the paths will make their turns.  Then I drew in the bends to the path.  This was a lot of bending over to draw and my back is letting me know it hurts.  I walked the labyrinth in both directions to make sure it works and to see how it felt.  It is dauntingly long, and will take a great deal of time and stone to manifest, but it is going to be magnificent.

Spreading out the stone I collected in Purdy over the design etched in the compacted gravel

After that I had a great meeting with the people who are arranging everything for me.  It is wonderful to have whatever I need to proceed taken care of.  I often have to do everything myself, or arrange for everything to happen.  I wanted a copy of the plan laminated so I can use it in the rain...done.  I needed steel strips for forms.  They'll be there tomorrow.  There is a pallet of mortar and 20 lengths of rebar on site for when I am ready to start setting stone.  While I will push myself relentlessly, there doesn't seem to be pressure to finish the project this year.  We had a profound conversation about sacred design and what that can mean.  I'm so inspired to be doing this!

My project manager Gregory Glynn, the man that makes it all happen!

In the afternoon I drove out to White Pier Point to collect rock.  This is a narrow stone beach in a beautiful setting right next to the road with houses on the other side.  Men were fishing on the pier and everybody was in a good mood.  Silvery clouds reflected in the clear water.  The tide was high again but receded in the evening, so worked my way back and forth along the beach filling my buckets as more stone was exposed.  The rock on this beach is small to medium in size with a great mix of colors and shapes.    I got a good haul. collecting about half a ton which I delivered to the site at dusk.  There will be a great many trips to area beaches to gather what I will need to finish this project.

Collecting rock at White Pier Point Park

A beautifully colored dead crab amongst the stones on White Pier Point

I checked the tides the next morning and hit nearby Rockaway Beach at low tide.  This is a wide, obviously rocky beach that I am told was where stone ballast was unloaded from frigate ships that were loading up with lumber from Blakely Lumber Company, which at that time was the world's largest mill.  A number of ships were built here for the lumber trade.  I would imagine much of the ballast came from California.  The sizes tend to be larger than the beach I picked from yesterday, and I want large pieces to frame the paths.

Collecting rock on Rockaway Beach

The beach is lined with houses so I felt like I was picking from people's back yards but all the yards have stacks of collected rocks in them and the people I talked to didn't mind at all.  I picked another 1,000 pounds or so (12 full 5 gallon buckets), focusing on red, white, and black stones to improve my selection.  These larger stones make for marvelous habitat for shoreline creatures and I have to be careful not to disturb them.  I put the rocks back if they have limpets on them or are covering a swarm of tiny crabs.

A 20 foot and two 10 foot lengths of steel strips 4 inches wide were delivered and I used 12 inch coated steel nails as spikes to support the curve of the strip making a perfect form.  Then I made measurements for placing the 12 moons around the perimeter circle.  I have to decide if I will make white pebble mosaic disks, or trim white round stones.  The full Harvest Moon rose this evening over the water and was quite breathtaking.

Steel strips make a sturdy form for setting the mosaics

There are Pileated Woodpeckers in the surrounding forest and I am serenaded by their call throughout the day, which I love.  This is a link to a recording of these gorgeous birds: http://www.pugetsoundbackyardbirds.com/pileated%20woodpecker%20vocalization.html
Flocks of Canadian Geese fly over from time to time.  The sound of a Loon on the water is my favorite of all the bird calls.  Humans on the other hand mow lawns and weed whack to keep nature at bay.  Oh Humans.
After three days of gathering rock, about 3,000 pounds, I felt that I was ready to start setting stone.  A pallet of mortar had been delivered to the site and 200 feet of rebar.  I started by sitting on one of the 8 directional stones and doing the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra 18 times.  This is an ancient Hindu Sanskrit mantra that I learned with a group of friends when we would gather on the full moon and chant the mantra 108 times.  There is a description of what the mantra means at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamrityunjaya_Mantra

I then read the chapter in a book I've owned for many years called 'The Medicine Wheel', written by Sun Bear and Wabun (Prentice Hall Press).  This is a book of Native American astrology that I have used to develop my methods for incorporating Medicine Wheel ideas in to may mosaic work, mainly through orientation and the coloration of stones.  I was starting in the eastern direction near where the labyrinth will be entered, building the outer ring.  I am making 12 small white moon shaped mosaics and each moon represents a seasonal moon throughout the year.  The first moon I would be creating would be under the title of the 'Frogs return Moon'.  The animal totem for this moon is the Beaver.  I brought a few beaver chewed sticks that I gathered the week before from a beach I go to on the Columbia River in Oregon so I inserted one of these outside the circle at the point where the moon mosaic would be created.

Setting stones in mortar

Then I mixed two 80 pound bags of mortar in my wheel barrow, one at a time, and filled in a section of the form I had built the day before.  It was time to start placing stone.  I first set larger stones to frame the edge of the path and then made three flower shapes with green stones, leading up to the moon, which I made with white quartzite and granite pebbles.  Green is the color I use in the Eastern direction as it represents Spring, which is the greenest time of the year in the Pacific Northwest.  The animal that presides over the East in the Medicine Wheel is the Eagle.  While I was looking for the valve box to turn on the water so I could wash the salt off the stones and mix mortar, I found an Eagle feather in the bushes, an auspicious sign.  I placed this at the center of the labyrinth where a kind of altar is beginning to take shape.

An altar developing in the center of the labyrinth

The mineral of the 'Frogs return Moon' is Chrysocolla , related to turquoise.  This is a bluish stone related to turquoise.  I've only found one stone on the beach that may have this mineral in it and placed it in the mosaic near the moon design.   The plant totem for this moon is Camas, which has blue flowers and was an important food staple of native peoples.  You can read an essay I wrote about Camas at: http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com/2013_04_01_archive.html

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As I made my way around towards the next moon cycle, the colors of the stones begin to take on shades of gold/green and orange.  The next moon that I set, about 12 feet from the first moon is the 'Corn Planting Moon'.  The deer is the totem animal of this moon.  Yarrow is the plant totem, and moss agate is the mineral.  I flanked this moon mosaic with two rust, yarrow colored flower bursts.  The day ended having completed about 16 feet of mosaic work.

The first day of setting stone in the outer ring

It seems to have been a productive day but when I climb up on the tallest stone in the perimeter for an overview it looks as if I have barely begun, which I have.

From above, it is clear that I have a very long way to go to complete this project

Up close it looks like a substantial amount of work!

The next day I built another 8 feet of mosaic, including the 'Strong Sun Moon' at the Southern Cardinal Point.  The colors of the stone have gone from golden to pink and red.  The totem animal for this moon is the Red-shafted Flicker, the most common of the woodpeckers in the west.  There is a well pecked dead Douglas Fir trunk about 12 feet away.  The mineral in this cycle is Carnelian, which when opaque is Jasper.  I believe that many of the reddest dense stones I have found on the beach are Jasper.  The moon's plant totem is a wild rose, of which there are many varieties.  I flanked the moon with two 5 petaled wild roses made of round red stones around a round gold center.  I've started to make these flowers, or starbursts when I hear the bell ring when somebody is turning the prayer wheel.

The Strong Sun Moon

A woman came down the path today seeming to be in a serious hurry to get to the prayer wheel and hustled past without looking at this huge undertaking to her right.  I heard the bell ring and less than a minute later a car sped off.  I dedicated the roses to her.  Most people stop to see what is going on and I'll explain the ideas behind some of what I am building.  Some of them get the most blissed out looks on their faces.  Sometimes I take their picture.

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It started to rain this evening and I set up the frame for a pentagonal shelter that I take to Burning Man every year.  I hope it keeps me dry.  I've run out of good red and purple stones but the tide was very high this evening and the beach was completely submerged.  I would be nervous if I lived in one of these homes.  Sea levels are rising, right now, as we speak.  Fall is coming to the Pacific Northwest on Sunday, September 22, 2013, at 8:44 in the evening.  I am going to try and mosaic my way to that point this weekend, the Harvest Moon.

I focused the next day on finding enough red, purple, and brown to extend the outer ring to the western cardinal direction.  The Ripe Berries Moon is surrounded by red stones.  The mineral for this moon is Garnet and Iron, and the Sturgeon is it's animal totem.  Wild Raspberries are the symbolic plant for this time of year providing sweet sustenance to the peak of summer.

The Ripe Berries Moon

The stones now transition to Violet and Purple, encasing the Harvest Moon.  I have been fortunate to find a good selection of these unusual colors on Rockaway Beach.  Amethyst is the Harvest Moon's mineral, the Brown Bear it's animal, and the Violet it's flower.  It was a beautiful moon rising over the water earlier this week.

The Harvest Moon

On the first day of Autumn I moved worked past the Western cardinal point and the Ducks Fly Moon, which is the moon I was born under.  The color surrounding this moon is brown, and the paths will make a turn in both directions rather than connect in the outer ring, so I left the space open until I can build the forms for this.  I will make the Ducks Fly Moon when I come back in October, working up to my birthday.  Jasper is the mineral for this cycle.  The Raven is this Moon's animal totem and Mullein is the plant.  I always let a seedling or two of Mullein grow in a gap in the patio behind my house, which was the first mosaic I ever built.  And I have had some very interesting interactions with Raven's.  They  are very smart birds.

The following day I made the Freeze Up Moon, which is a point where a gravel path comes down the hill to the labyrinth.  The color of the stone around this moon is orange, and the mineral is Copper and Malachite.  A snake is the totem animal so I made one in orange stones although it is very subtle.  Thistle is this moon's plant.

The Freeze Up Moon

I had a pretty good selection of black and white stones gathered so I was able to do this section fairly efficiently.  I transitioned between the two with black speckled white granite and black stones with white veins of quartzite.  Black is the color surrounding the Long Snows Moon, and obsidian is the mineral here.  I have found very black dense stones on the beach that can attain a kind of polish due to their fine structure.  Obsidian is volcanic glass and these stones seem closely related.  The Elk is the totem animal and the Black Spruce the plant.

The Long Snows Moon

The Earth Renewal Moon is surrounded by white stone so I made it of the brightest white quartzite I gathered that morning and surrounded it with speckled granite so that it would read well.  This moon is located in front of the boulder on the North side of the labyrinth.  I used up the rest of the pallet of mortar here.

The Earth Renewal Moon resides on the North Cardinal Point of the Labyrinth

Just as I was adding the last stones to the wet bed of mortar a friendly man named Mike came down the path.  While talking he said he had brought his kids to the previous labyrinth for a walking meditation.  I told him I would make a flower for him if he rang the bell on the prayer wheel, so he went back and did that, and I made him a sweet little flower that I have named 'Mike's Flower'.  He came back and I showed it to him and told him to make a note of where it is so he would remember it when he walks the labyrinth.   This made us both very happy.

Mike stands by a beautiful grouping of stones on the north side of the labyrinth

Making Mike's flower

I packed up my things and went to Rockaway beach to continue collecting stone.  Gregory, who has been my liaison on this project met me there and took me to see the Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church's labyrinth across the island.  It is made out of red and gray concrete pavers.  We walked it at dusk.  It was nice not to have to carry buckets of rock.

The Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church Labyrinth on Bainbridge Island

The next morning was the last of my first installment on this project.  I gathered 4 buckets of stone from Rockaway Beach, looking for silver, bluish, and yellowish colored stones for the last three moons.

Three quarters of the outer ring are set

Then I drove the 4 1/2 hours back to Portland in time for a massage and four days of catching up at home.  It was a beautiful day and horizon was walled with huge billowy clouds illuminated by the sun.  It is supposed to pour rain all weekend.  It rained mostly at night and I was gifted pretty good weather for most of this first installment on the project.  The night before I left I wrote a  description to be printed for a sign to put up by the site.  It reads:




I'll be posting additions to this story as they happen.  Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

A Moonbow over Seattle from Bainbridge Island

This is the second essay about the Halls Hill Labyrinth Project.  If you haven't read the first, scroll down past this one and you will find the first one.  Thanks, Jeffrey

"If we really wished, if we actually dared to devise a style of architecture which corresponded to the state of our souls, a labyrinth would be the building we should erect.  But we are too cowardly to construct anything which would be such a complete revelation of our hearts." Nietzsche

I guess I'm taking the dare.

A gardening friend of mine, Diana Goings sent me a picture of the beautiful labyrinth at the Shrine of Saint Therese outside of Juneau, Alaska.  The paths are lined with stones gathered from the beach, encircled by a lush border of sheltering shrubs.

The Labyrinth at the Shrine of St. Therese in Juneau, Alaska  Photo by Diana Goings

While looking at the website for the Shrine I came across this video called Labyrinths through the ages:



It gives a visual history of labyrinths from many parts of the world created over a span of thousands of years.  I've been fantasizing about having some of the petroglyphs shown in this video carved in to the granite boulders that mark the cardinal points.

I went home for 4 days to rest my body, a 4 1/2 hour drive.  I traded massage with two friends an hour after I arrived home.  Its something I have been doing for 28 years with my dear friend Evelyn and a number of third persons, who at present is a recent devotee named Holcombe.  2 on 1 massage is the best massage ever.  We pull and twist and roll your body in to a variety of positions to expose muscles and lengthen the spine and limbs.  I got another one two days later from my friend Mikey who has recently completed his certification as a massage therapist.  Both massages were brutal and deep and reparative.  I love the waves of endorphins that kick in after a painful grinding with an elbow under my scapulas.  Massage basically heals you proactively and immediately.  Most people rarely or never get them.  This baffles me because it is always the highlight of my week.  Because we trade it is free, and we have developed a pantheon of wonderful techniques derived directly from experience.  All three of us get a great massage.  Mikey said he put his foot on the wall for leverage as he ground in to my back.  If I could get one of these every day I would.  If I didn't do it weekly I doubt I would be able to continue to be a stone mason.

I lead what many believe to be a very good life, in large part because I make a point of traveling every winter.  With miles I earned buying materials I've gotten round trips to Rome, Istanbul, and Barcelona for a couple hundred dollars each.  This fall I got one to Athens, stopping in Paris again for a week.  Yippee!

Graffiti in Paris

My plan is to visit Chartes Cathedral near Paris to see the labyrinth that I am basing the one I'm building on.  I have read that it is usually covered with pews so it is only walkable in the summer.  Oh well, I am going anyway.  A week later I will fly to Athens and spend the winter exploring islands. I hope to rent a small place on Santorini and explore Rhodes.  I also want to spend time in Crete and visit Knossos, where the Labyrinth that once held the Minotaur captive was said to have been built.  Who knows what will actually happen but I have 3 months to explore.  Then I will return and finish this project, hopefully in conjunction with the Spring Equinox.

Visting the Acropolis in Athens 4 years ago

It poured rain but occasionally the sun found its way through the clouds on my way back to the island.  My spirit is greatly boosted by those sun breaks.  It was raining hard when I pulled off to the beach at Purdy north of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but there was a patch of blue sky positioned to pass over soon so I stopped and gathered four buckets of stones from this beach that I have picked from for years.  The tide was in so I put on my 'Brit Middies' (they are really called that) made by Muck Boots, my favorite garden work footwear.  This enabled me to step in to the water, but had to dodge little waves or get a shoe full.  I had 2 buckets of rock by the time the next squall hit and I drove to Bainbridge.  The sun was out again there and everything was washed down and vibrant.  They had had 5 inches of rain over the weekend while I was home.

Seattle across the water, with a Monet sky

I drove to the site and unloaded my rock, washed them, and sorted the colors I will need for the upcoming week, silver and blue green and yellow.  I will then have nearly completed the outside ring. That should happen in the next couple of days.  There is a full pallet of mortar and 200 feet of steel rebar waiting for me.  I put up my shade structure frame to be prepared for rain.  I also brought better rain gear and glove liners this time.  I was thrown a little when I found that all the saw cut stones I had found on the beach were gone from the center altar, along with some metal pieces and shells.  It seems like a strange place to pilfer things, but I am sure I will find more and passed it off as another sign of duality in the universe.

When I got up in the morning it was pouring rain, monsoon style.  I wanted to go back to bed, but by the time I was finished with breakfast the rain had stopped and I was blessed with a dry day.  Whenever the sun broke through the clouds the temperature went up a little and my mood elevated.  The skies have been so beautiful.

A break in the weather

I started by gathering four buckets of rock from Rockaway Beach as the tide was out.  Then I went to the site and spent the entire afternoon setting the Rest and Cleansing Moon (Jan. 20 to Feb. 18), which is flanked by silver stones.  I used artistic license on this one.  The mix of stones gives the appearance to me to me of shades of silver.  The totem mineral for this moon is silver as well.  The animal here is the otter, both fresh water and sea otters, which I've heard visit the shores of Bainbridge Island.  Sea otters were driven to near extinction by fur trappers at the beginning of the 20th Century.  The plant for this moon is Quaking Aspen, which have silvery bark.  This would be the Aquarian Moon.

The Rest and Cleansing Moon

From there silver transitions in to blue green stones for the Big Winds Moon.  I was able to find enough in this color range to make it read as such.  Turquoise is the mineral here.  The cougar is the animal, and plantain is the totem plant. This would be the Pisces Moon.  From here I am beginning to transition in to the color yellow.  I've been collecting yellowish stones, iron stained granite, quartzite, and sandstone that I will mix together at the entrance to the labyrinth.

The Big Winds Moon

I started just past the boulder in the middle today...good progress

The 11th Circuit is nearly complete

I had an hour of light left so I ran over to Rockaway Beach and filled four buckets of stones.  I am starting to look for larger oval stones to make a 108 stone mandala in the 10th ring.  That is 27 stones in each quarter, nine stones for each moon.  The paths will make their first turns to link to the 10th circuit.

Sunset on Rockaway Beach

In the morning I returned to the Rockaway Beach, to a boat ramp at a house I was given permission to use.  This makes it a shorter schlep for carrying buckets of rock from the middle of the beach.   I focused on larger sizes of stones for framing the paths, and looked for large ovals to use as Mala stones.  This can be exhausting work and my arms ache after 4 hours of picking.

I later worked until dark setting the eastern 'Budding Trees Moon', where the outer ring path turns towards the center.  The color for this moon is yellow, which took a lot of searching to come up with enough stones in this color range to do the work.  The mineral for this moon is the Fire Opal, the animal is the Red-tailed Hawk, and the plant, the dandelion.  This is the Aries Moon of the Spring Equinox.

My project manager Gregory came by for a visit, and afterwards he went to use the prayer wheel to send a much needed intention out in to the world.  I made a big yellow flower for him in the turn in the path, the first of the 108 large stones that will be set in the 10th circuit.

Gregory's flower, the first or last Mala stone

The next day he took me to a house down the beach where the owners have graciously offered to let me collect rock where they have access to the shore line.  There are larger stones in this section and I was able to gather over 1,000 pounds before the tide came in.  Sorry body, I push you so hard.

I unloaded and washed and sorted the rock to the various color piles.  The site is getting a little messy as I bring in more and more rock, but I need to spread them out to see what I have.  I finished setting up the forms for the entry and a 180 degree turn in the outer ring.

The Budding Trees Moon at a turn in the path

My friend Jan Hilmer, an artist who lives and works in L.A. and New York, and Bali in the winter came to visit on his way to do some creative wood carving with a friend up on Orcas Island.  He is an inspired and talented man in many mediums. It was fun to share this project with him.  The park had been pretty quiet since my return but the sun came out and a steady stream of people passed through while we visited making it seem a busy place.

A friend comes to visit

I slept in the next morning and did a lot of stretching and self massage to get the body rolling for another day.  There was a blanket of fog obscuring the view of Seattle, but the most romantic dream like image of a schooner with white sails was just visible like a ghost in the mists offshore.

The morning view

I went to the site and started working on the entry to the labyrinth as the fog burned off.  The entry is in the east and adjacent to the Budding Trees Moon so I used more yellow stones.  A really nice guy named Chip came to check out the work and stayed for some time talking about the project.  I told him about my habit of making flowers when people turn the prayer wheel and he told me he would do it for his cousin, who had just been diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer.  So I made her a flower at the very beginning of where you enter the labyrinth, a healing flower filled with compassion and positive but pensive energy.  Good health is a treasure that should not be taken for granted.  But then mortality can be the greatest teacher, and the labyrinth is in many ways a path of life and its dual opposite, death and transformation.  At a lecture I attended years ago by the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya, India (the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment), he made the impressionable statement that Death is the most important thing you can prepare for in life as it will be the most important transition we will make.  I use this ideal to motivate me as I navigate the path of life.  Make the most of each day.

Chip blessing the flower made for his cousin

As I place the 108 stones in the 10th circuit I've been explaining to people some of the meanings behind this number.  There are 108 Mala beads in a Hindu or Buddhist prayer bracelet used for counting while chanting or reciting a mantra.  This could make for a very slow circumambulation of the 10th circuit if you are to express something on each of the stones as you walk the path.  There is potential for great focus, transformation, and healing if a person were to fully actualize this practice with a conscious intention in mind.

The diameter of this labyrinth is 36 feet, which when multiplied by 3 is 108.  There are 9 Mala stones between each of the 12 moons and 27 in each quarter of the circuit.  The individual digits of 108 represent 1, an individual thing or self, 0, nothing, and 8, the symbol for infinity.  54 stones will be set on each side of the axis to the right of the entrance.  This for me represents the force of duality in constant flux to maintain the balance that regulates the cosmos.

In Hindu mythology, the creation of the cosmos is sometimes described as a story called the Churning of the Sea of Milk.  This is a cosmic tug of war between the two opposites of all things pushing and pulling on each other to create motion.  Devas (demi Gods) and Asuras (Demons) pull back and forth on Vasuki, a seven headed Naga Cobra and the king of serpents.  Vasuki is wrapped around the holy Mount Meru, which is used to churn the Sea or Ocean of Milk to create Amrit, the elixir of immortality that had been lost to the Gods.  The God Vishnu directs the proceedings in two incarnations, one as a turtle, Kurma, who supports the mountain to prevent it from sinking.  In the other he sits on top of the mountain and inspires the churning.  In the duality of the process, a powerful poison is produced, perhaps to balance the Amrita.  Lord Shiva is said to have drank the poison in order to save the universe, turning his neck blue.  One of the gifts produced in the churning was the Moon.

Angkor Wat in the 1990's

At Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the entire temple complex is a giant model of this concept.  The vast surrounding moat is the Sea of Milk.  The railings surrounding all of the terraces are the Vasuki like Naga serpents.  The central tower of the temple is Mt. Meru, the churn.  I have visited Angkor twice, spending nearly a month all together exploring the ruins.  This is by far the most profound architectural complex I have ever visited.  Everything has a reason and is inextricably connected to the greater universe in time and space.  The stories are laid out in vast exquisite bas reliefs, the greatest being 'The Churning of the Sea of Milk'.

Bas relief of the Churning of the Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat

I am borrowing some of these ideas and alluding to sacred stories to incorporate in to the labyrinth, that it might attract divine energy.

My first attempt at a turn in the path from the 11th to the 10th circuit

Krishna, the Blue God and eighth incarnation of Vishnu in the Hindu religion has 108 Gopis or devoted milk maids who danced a circular dance called the 'Rasa Lila'.  This dance is considered to be transcendent of time.  To walk the labyrinth as a dance, contemplating the 108 stones in the 10th circuit, the lunar cycles in the 11th, the orbit of the 8 known planets around the sun in the inner 8 circuits, and the seasonal changes that occur as the Earth circumambulates the sun in all of the circuits has the potential to connect the labyrinth walker to the greater universe, and the divine consciousness represented by the spirit of Krishna.

An embroidered depiction of the Rasa Lila

Finding the right stones for this purpose has required a lot of searching for larger oval stones with a wide flat surface in the right colors.  It seems to be another kind of penance.  It is a great endeavor to seek out all the stone I need to continue building the paths.  At this point I've gathered well over 4 tons.

Larger stones create a Mala bead bracelet of 108 stones in the 10th circuit of the labyrinth

The weather has become lovely again and I am pushing to make as much progress as possible while it is pleasant out.  I dread the cold rainy days that probably lie ahead.  The sunshine and the weekend brought out a lot of visitors to the park, and I've had some very engaging conversations.  Making the flowers has made the labyrinth personal for a number of people who seem to be truly enchanted by the space that is taking shape.  A lovely couple named Brian and Shelley came by in the afternoon on Saturday.

Brian and Shelly

I made them a beautiful flower when they rang the prayer wheel, between the 21 and 22nd Mala stones so they could find it later.   By counting the stones they can become a kind of address.

Bryan and Shelly's flower

As we were talking the Douglas Squirrel that lives in the surrounding trees came out and ran around on the path, not far from where we were standing.  They are adorable little brown chattering characters, who live primarily on the seeds in the cones of conifers.   I told Brian and Shelley about seeing a Bald Eagle, and finding the feather, and the deer that came the day I made the Corn Planting Moon, and the frogs that croak in the direction of the Frogs Return Moon.  I explained that the labyrinth is permeable, so that and water can soak in to the Earth and life can blend in to the gaps between the paths.

In perspective the half farther away looks so much smaller than the closer half

Sunday was warm and sunny, and couples, some with young children came by to check out the progress.  Everybody wants to know when it will be finished.  Sometime next Spring.  I want to incorporate the Spring Equinox in to the paths and perhaps manifest a Summer Solstice walk.  I've been working in the Summer moons part of the 10th circuit from the south to the west today, using up much of the red and purple I've gathered.  Its harder to make nice flowers because the space between the Mala stones is restricted.

Today, October 6th was my Mother's 80th birthday, and she had asked me if I would make a flower for her.  I want it to be very special, and so I decided I would make the last moon in the 11th circuit, the Ducks Fly Moon that lies in the gap between the turns on the western side of the labyrinth, the point of the autumnal equinox, in her honor.  We were both born under this Libra Moon.  I had to return to the beach to collect more purple stones and find more Mala stones.  There are 9 between each moon passing through the range of colors in the Medicine Wheel.  Large oval purple stones are hard to find.  I also need brown, orange, black, white, silver, blue green, and yellow Mala stones to finish this circuit.  I have about 60 more to set before the paths turn to the 9th circuit.   I worked until dark and wasn't able to make a suitable flower for my Mother, or reach the point where I could create the moon, which was frustrating.  When I called her that night I promised that I would do the work soon.  Her favorite color is turquoise blue, so I would like to make her a splendid flower when I get to the blue green part of the color wheel around the big winds moon.  But I will make a sprinkling of flowers thinking of her throughout the entire project.

My Mother feeding a peacock at Peterson's Rock Garden in the early 50's

The following morning I was fortunate to have dry weather again and was able to finish the first half of the 10th circuit, connecting a turn from the outer ring on the western side of the labyrinth.  My body is feeling run down and exhausted, and I haven't been sleeping well as I think about the project all the time.  I had planned to take the afternoon off but ended up at the beach collecting another 500 pounds of rock so that I can continue my way around through the Autumn months with the colors of brown, orange, black, and white.  I have found most of the Mala stones for these colors but would like to find some with transitional blends of colors.  I've only found a few silver and blue green stones that will work for those areas so I will need to do an intensive search for those once I make my way around the circuit.

After I rolled the buckets of stone down the hill in my wheel barrow, and washed and sorted them to the areas they will be set, I sat and did a series of chants to clear my mind and ground myself.  I feel like a mosaic machine when I am working in full mode and need to reclaim the joy of the work.  I love seeing the progress but the exhaustion dampens my mood.  So I went down the to Prayer Wheel, which I haven't done since I started and sent out three different intentions, including the wish that I survive the process of manifesting this project.  The circuits get considerably smaller as I move inward.  The first two are a substantial percentage of the entire project (I'm saying that to comfort myself).

It was getting dark, but I sat on the swinging bench for a while and stared at the bay.  This is such a beautiful place.

The view from the swing

October 8:  It poured rain this morning and there were flashes of lightning and thunder, so I procrastinated getting myself to the site until the rain let up.  I removed yesterday's forms and set up the next area.  I only had a bag and a half of mortar left so I mixed those and made the second turn at the western cardinal point.  I was fantasizing taking a break from the project when the new pallet of 80 pound bags of mortar arrived.  So I pushed onward.  After mixing two bags and spreading them in the form it started to pour rain.  I grabbed a tarp and crawled under it using my head as a tent pole.  I have a structure set up to attach the tarp to but it is on the other side of the labyrinth and is hard to move by myself.  Halfway through setting the stones the rain let up and I was able to emerge from under cover.  It was sort of funny and sort of not.  For some reason whenever I am wet and I set the hose down the spray nozzle goes off and soaks me.  This has been happening for years.  A jet of water shot up my pant leg, and profanities rang out.  I'm glad nobody was around.

Laying out orange Mani Stones in the 10th circuit

Now there was blue sky so I continued to work.  A gardener who does maintenance down the hill came by to visit.  He does stone masonry himself, and we talked for a long time about the local beach rock and various projects.  I love using stone collected from these beaches.  The colors are so varied and rich, and many of the pieces I'm using are absolutely gorgeous.  I worked my way through the brown and orange sections of the Medicine Wheel and transitioned in to black, mixing in stones that have orange and black veins or spots.

Luke stopping by for a visit

I ran down to the beach at dusk as I need more black and white stones to carry on tomorrow.  The tide was in so I had to dodge waves.  In the end I took off my pants and waded out in to the water in my undershorts to access the pieces that were calling to me in the rising tide.  I cant imagine how many stones this project will take.  The sunset over Seattle from the water was grandiose with thunderheads heading for the Cascade Range.

A gorgeous late afternoon sky

October 10:  This morning when I started work I made two small white flowers, dedicated to two people,  Jadin and Joe Bell, using mortar mixed with a copious amount of tears.  I had read a news story before leaving for work that Joe Bell, a man who was walking cross country as a way to deal with his grief after his son had committed suicide from incessant bullying in high school, had been struck and killed by a semi truck.  They were from La Grande, Oregon a small town in the eastern part of the state.  Joe Bell's journey was one inspired by the desire to speak in the towns he passed through about the need to end the bullying that is all too common in our public schools, especially directed at young people who might be different.  His walk was a kind of penance strong enough to address his tragic loss.  Here is a link to a story in the Denver Post, and a beautifully written article  by Pauls Toutonghi published in September for Salon.com a month before Joe's death.
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24282181/man-walking-memorialize-his-son-is-fatally-hit
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/08/“they_ripped_him_apart”_searching_for_answers_in_the_suicide_of_bullied_teen_jadin_bell/

Two white flowers dedicated to Jadin and Joe Bell, on either side of the 79th Mala Stones

The flowers are white and in the northerly direction on either side of the 79th Mala Stone, near the Earth Renewal or Capricorn Moon.  It is my hope that these two small flowers will emit a feeling of acceptance, understanding, loving compassion and strength to all who pass over them while walking the labyrinth.  They are for me a pledge to be a kinder person.

The sign was delivered today that describes the project so that people who visit will have a better understanding of what it is that I am building here.   Gregory will mount it on posts to the side of the entrance to the labyrinth.

A sign describing the Halls Hill Labyrinth Project

I had a great meeting with people involved in the project who suggested the idea of making a 'Community Circuit' using stones given to me by people who would like to contribute something to the project.  So I will make a sign to post describing what I am looking for in terms of shape, size, and color and provide a place for people to drop them off if I am not there.  For a description of the kinds of stones I use; they should be somewhat like blocks, squarish in profile, with a flat top and ideally 90 degree sides so that they fit tightly together and are comfortable to walk on.

When selecting stones it is good to look at them from the side, turning them to find the plane that would be the top, ones that don't have bumps on the sides that would make them difficult to fit tightly together with other stones.

An ideally shaped stone, with a nice flat top and square sides

A good way to test them is to put two possibilities together to see how they look.  They can be small or large but should be at least 2 inches thick in the direction that will be imbedded in to the mortar so they wont pop out later.  Thin pancake like stones have the tendency to become dislodged over time, which I really don't want to have happen.  I'll use the stones you bring me in the mosaic if they pass those requirements.  These will probably go in to the 3rd circuit from the center, which will represent the planet Earth orbiting the Sun.  I will be building this circuit next Spring.  If you do bring stones to the site and I am not there you can leave them next to the sign.

I also finished the 12th moon in the outer circuit, the 'Ducks Fly Moon' which is the moon for the sign of Libra which my Mother and I were born under.  It lies in the western direction between the two turns in the outer ring.  I dedicated this moon to my Mother and I call it the Mary Lou Moon.

The Ducks Fly Moon, dedicated to my Mother Mary Louise in honor of her 80th birthday

As usual I needed more stones to continue the Mala circuit.  So I went to the house at the far end of Rockaway Beach where I was given permission to collect rock because there are larger sizes of stones there and I hadn't been to that section of the beach for a while.  I think I found what I needed and worked until dark continuing along my way setting stones in mortar.

I didn't sleep well again, probably because I my body is so sore and my mind if full of rocks, but I had a very productive day. As the project progresses and I meet more people, the Labyrinth seems to become more meaningful and profound with each passing day.  There is a strong sense of gratitude from the people who visit this park as it is a place of beauty, solace and peace.  When I describe the meaning of various parts of the design and how the labyrinth could be used it resonates with the richness of possibility and generates a lot of excitement for visitors.

Gregory was at the site when I arrived today, installing the sign for the project.  It is perfectly placed.  I love how conscious every element of this project is.  It is a pleasure to work on such a level.

Gregory installs the sign

My friends Terry Moyemont  and Terri Stanley came to visit today and shoot some video in the afternoon.  They live up in Kingston and specialize in Mediterranean plants.  It was great to see and spend time with them again.  We talked about travel, and Greece, where I will be spending the winter.  They have a long history and connection to that ancient country.  They are truly kindred spirits, bringing to my attention a number of people and works of literature that I would like to know in regards to this project and life in general.  Terry recently had his second hip surgery and is regaining his mobility.  I made them each a flower as I entered the blue green realm of the Strong Winds Moon.  The colors of these stones are so pretty.  Some of the individual stones are works of art on their own.

Nancy and Dave came along just as the Terryi's were leaving.  Dan is blind and Nancy brought him over to feel some of the stones I am working with, and the texture of the mosaics.  I made them each a flower on either side of a gorgeous piece that looks like a blue heart, with dark blue veins.

Nancy and Dan's flowers and the 'Blue Heart' Mala stone

Nancy's radiant smile and the sweetness of their visit will stay with me for some time, and may those who pass over this spot when walking the labyrinth feel some of the joy inspired during our visit.

Dave and Nancy visiting the site

Another couple from the island came by after that and again were very excited about what is manifesting here.  Its gratifying to be working on something that can mean so much to people.  For years I have built beautiful gardens and works in stone but they have mostly been private.

Happy Visitors

I worked until dark and brought the 10th circuit to where it will bend and parallel the entry path.   This part of the path is centered on the East West axis along with the one leading in to the circle in the center, which will be the sun, with a moon in its center.  This 13th Moon in the center will represent the Blue Moon, and solar and lunar eclipses.  The eight circuits leading out from the sun will be the paths of the known planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.  Pluto will  be interspersed in to the 9th circuit between the four elements, in reference to the Greek God of the Underworld.  There is an excellent explanation of who Pluto represents at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(mythology)  Pluto in the 9th ring represents the riches and fertility of the Earth that lies beneath its surface.  Pluto, a God of the Underworld was a benevolent form and caretaker in the afterlife.  Wedded with Persephone, who reemerges in the Spring from beneath the soil,  when the Earth is awakens from the darkness of winter.  Pluto and Persephone symbolize the guardians who care for those who have passed and gone back in to the fold.

The Planets in our Solar System

I finished the 10th circuit just as it got dark, except for the turns in the path that I will connect when I build the 9th circuit.  I'll add the 108th Mala stone when I construct the turn at the end of this circuit.  I've been working on each ring in a Sun wise direction.  I will begin the 9th circuit on the other side of the entry path next.

Reaching the turn at the end of the 10th circuit

In the morning I removed the steel forms from yesterday's work.  I do this very carefully so as not to loosen any of the stones along the edge.  But today one came out.  So I used my screw driver that I go over the work with shaping the mortar to chisel with a hammer a layer of mortar so I could put in a new stone.   Then I put the forms together for the 9th circuit from the east to the south.  The distances are getting shorter between the axis.  I bent two rods of rebar, which run through the entire labyrinth, and placed them inside the form.

Forms for the 9th circuit

Then I mixed two bags of mortar and spread those in the form and then set the stone.  The element in this direction for me is the East, Springtime, lots of rain.  So I went to Point White Pier and picked four buckets of smaller sized stones I could use to make flowing lines with.

Rocks on the beach at Point White Pier

It took 2 1/2 hours to collect these stones

The water element mosaic is made of various shades of green stones flowing between the ones that line the edges of the path.  This is meant to have the feeling of a small stream, the river of life, or the waters of Puget Sound lapping on the shores where I am gathering the rocks.

The Element of Water

Beginning the 9th circuit

In the south will be Fire, in the west Earth, and in the north Air.  I want to make some white clouds in the north so that you may walk on them and feel what its like to walk on clouds.  When traveling the 11th circuit I recommend stepping over the moons rather than on them to have that experience as well.  If you like you could jump over the moon.  'Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.' That and walking on clouds could add a certain amount of fairytale enchantment to the journey.  The Labyrinth is a garden of flowers, a lush green forest, a stroll in the sun, and a path through the snow.  The natural colors of the stones speak to the cycles of the seasons, imbued with meaning linked in time and space.  If you pay attention to the path itself, the beauty of the stones, their great age, and the details in how they fit together knowing that everything means something, then walking this labyrinth will be a rich adventure with many discoveries.

Two lovely visitors

 Just as I was finishing my work two women came along to see what I was doing.  The woman on the left had a labyrinth like medallion around her neck.  I made and dedicated a flower to her son Peter who is had passed away.  It floats in the stream I am making to represent the element of Water, which when combined with the elements of Pluto, could be called the River Styx.

A flower dedicated to Peter

 I then cleaned up the site and prepared to leave.

The stopping point until the next installment

I'm taking a much needed break and going home to celebrate my birthday.  I'm turning 55 on the 15th, so I'll be eligible for senior discounts.  Joy of joys!

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

October 17:  This is the third installment in a series on the making of the Halls Hill Labyrinth.  If you haven't read the first two I recommend scrolling down past this one to see those.

I'm getting ready to leave for Bainbridge Island again, and have been studying the amazing Neolithic monument at Newgrange in Ireland that was brought to my attention this morning by my friend Nancy Heckler, who lives in Indianola across the water from the island.

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This Neolithic tomb has the most extraordinary carved stone at its entrance, which was oriented to the rising sun so that it would penetrate the mound's interior on the Winter Solstice.  The building of this ceremonial space was a significant undertaking predating the Pyramids in Egypt by 500 years.  It is older than the Mycenaean culture Knossos on the island of Crete, which I will be visiting this winter, and the existing form of the more famous monument at Stonehenge.  Its worth reading the online encyclopedia story on this monument at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

The restored entrance to the Newgrange Monument in Ireland   photo by Michael Weck

The spiraling designs on the stone at the entrance reminds me of a wonderful water channel carved in to a terrace in the ruins at Mandu in Madhya Pradesh in India that I visited many years ago.

Spiral water channel at Mandu, Madhya Pradesh, India

I came home again for a few days to rest (didn't happen) and celebrate my 55th birthday with friends.  We traded another incredible massage where I was able to indulge in asking, if they started grinding on a particularly sore spot to do that 20 times.  The dull headache I had for 5 days from stiffness in my neck went away.

The morning of my birthday a very dear friend named Lord Huckleberry passed away.  He was an icon of hard living and truth and was loved by a great many people.  He lived in San Francisco and was the figurehead of the legendary Burning Man Camp Dustfish, which is the family we have been adopted by and camping with for many years now at that festival.  He loved to garden and had a beautiful sanctuary in the city.  His passing made for a very pensive and bittersweet day washed with copious amounts of tears.  I took a bath in the garden and drank champagne, toasted his life, had a couple of extravagant gourmet meals with good friends, and spent hours looking at pictures and reminiscing.

Today I decided to head back to Bainbridge Island via Tahoma, or Mt. Rainier, where there used to be a bridge crossing the Nisqually River as it flows out of the National Park, filled with white granite stones that I will use to make the clouds in the north of the 9th circuit.  These will be the clouds of Heaven built with my friend Lord in mind.  It was a beautiful day minus the brutal clear cuts on the way up through the logging town of Morton.   I passed a terrible auto accident and several speeding paramedic units.  Then a bird hit my windshield.  I was feeling a kind of menace and uncertainty on this journey, and considered turning back.

I hadn't been to the park in 8 years.  The Nisqually River had changed due to a massive flood in 2006, washing away the Sunshine Campground and the bridge downstream where I used to collect rock.  This made my search much more laborious as the banks of the river outside the park have been rip rapped with heavy basalt boulders to protect houses.  Gathering and carrying the buckets up bouldered slopes after a weekend of partying did not go over well with my body.  I filled 8 five gallon buckets of white speckled granite and then drove up to Paradise, which is at timberline on the mountain.  It is one of the great drives of the Pacific Northwest, climbing through thick forests to revealed views of the majestic mountain.  The jagged Tatoosh Range demonstrates the carving of once massive glaciers, now receded to a mere fragment of what was there even 50 years ago.

The Nisqually River below the rapidly disappearing Nisqually Glacier on Mt. Rainier

When I got to the top there was a good 6 inches of snow on the ground.  Lord's hair was as white as snow and it was as if he were the mountain itself, gleaming in the lowering autumn sun.  A nearly full moon rose over the ridge.  I was so glad I had made the journey.

Mt. Rainier from Paradise

I didn't arrive at Bainbridge Island until almost 10:00 PM.  I stopped and unloaded the buckets of stone and walked down to the labyrinth, which was bathed in moonlight and the shadows of trees.  I'll have to prepare some kind of simple ceremony for the Duck's Fly Moon, the Mary Lou Moon that I dedicated to my Mother.  It is also called the 'Hunter's Moon', and will undergo a prenumbral or partial eclipse tomorrow night, although it will probably not be noticeable from the Western United States.  There is a telescope in the house where I am staying so I'll have to take a look as it rises over Seattle across the water.

I dragged myself back to work, setting up the forms for completing the first quarter of the ninth circuit.  I moved the granite from Mt. Rainier down the hill and piled them in in the northern part of the labyrinth, and cut and shaped rebar so I could start setting stone.

I then gathered big leaf maple leaves that had fallen on the site and arranged them around the Ducks Fly Moon in honor of tonight's full moon.  I also acid washed most of the 10th circuit with a mixture of Muriatic acid and water which I just poured on to remove the mortar film that obscures the colors of the stones.

The Ducks Fly Moon on the day of the full moon

Then I mixed up two batches of mortar and continued where I left off when I left for a break, with Peter's flower in the River Styx.  One of my oldest and dearest friends Cheryl arrived at the site on her day off to spend the afternoon visiting while I worked.  We studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon together.  We had deep philosophical discussions about relationships and life's journey while catching up as I worked my way from a watery green mosaic in to the more fiery pinks and reds of the southerly cardinal point.

Cheryl and I studied Landscape Architecture together at the University of Oregon over 3 decades ago

A really nice couple named Jean and Dave came by for a pleasant visit and to watch me work.  Jean had a little dog in a shoulder bag, who's name just happened to be 'Little Dog'.  I made them a nice, simple flower when they went to ring the prayer wheel.

Jean and Dave and Little Dog

My friend Nancy Heckler from Indianola came with her dear friend Cristie to visit as we were finishing lunch on a granite boulder in the sun filtering through the trees.  I gave them a tour and explanation of what was evolving and then we walked to the prayer wheel.  It was a wonderful visit on this beautiful day that filled us all with happiness.

Christie and Nancy

I made each of them a wild rose near the turn in the path by the Strong Sun Moon which I finished as the evening faded in to darkness.  I cranked this part out but was so happy having accomplished my goal for the day.  Tomorrow I can reset the forms and begin the next quarter of the 9th circuit.  I used up most of the pink stones that represent this section of the color wheel so I will need to go to the beach and make a determined effort to find enough to move in to the red section of the Ripe Berries Moon.

3 rather funky 5 petaled wild roses hiding amongst a jumble of  pink stones

The full moon was rising magnificently over the Sound with Seattle sparkling across the gloss black water.  Cheryl and I drove in to Winslow for dinner and then she caught the ferry back to Seattle.  Then I drove back to Blakely Harbor where I am staying, stopping at the site to see it in moonlight.  It was beautiful seeing the rays of the full moon passing through the silhouetted Madrones.  I knelt down by the Ducks Fly Moon and said a prayer for my Mother.  The stones were hard and cold against my knees.  Just then I heard a flock of Canadian geese flying over the water, right on cue.

The Full Moon over Seattle

October 19:  I went to the beach during low tide and collected 9 heaping buckets of stones, focusing on pink ones to finish the southern end of the 9th circuit.  Some interesting people came by, a couple from Cape Cod, another from Corpus Christy Texas, and a few people from the island.  I moved the forms and made the second bend in the path at the Strong Sun Moon and mosaiced my way in to the red part of the circuit by the Ripe Berries Moon.  It will be interesting to see if the beach can continue to churn up these colors as I make my way around and around with each circuit.  It was foggy and grey all day.  It gets dark at 6:30 now so I get home and eat dinner earlier.

Two turns in the path from the 10th to the 9th circuit

October 20:  There is a marvelous shelf fungus growing nearby on a dead tree trunk that is thoroughly pecked full of holes by woodpeckers.  The fungus seems to grow more colorful as the weather gets colder and damper.  The rings on it remind me of the colored rings of the labyrinth.

A marvelous shelf fungus growing on a woodpecker tree near the labyrinth

I got up earlier this morning and went down to the site to reset the forms for my work later today.  A lovely couple named Shannon and Art came by and told me they usually stay in on Sundays and read the newspaper but today they decided they should come to the park and turn the Prayer Wheel, calling the four directions.

Art and Shannon

My hosts Len and Stella had prepared a beautiful brunch for an amazing group of illustrious people so I left the site to join them.  The conversations were rich with experience, and I felt like I should be documenting their stories about island history and architecture.

Stella made a labyrinth frittata!

I got to meet the Tom Jay, the bronze artist who created the prayer wheel.  There is a 300 pound bell inside the wheel.  His description of its fabrication and meaning brought new appreciation for this magnetic work that has been spinning out blessings and intentions for 6 years now.   A strong connection between it and the labyrinth is forming as I add more and more flowers to signify the moments of enlightenment and hope sent outwards with the bell that rings when the wheel has been turned 9 times.  There are four panels on the Prayer wheel, as the labyrinth is divided in to four parts.  Multiply 4 and 9 and you get the diameter of the labyrinth in feet.  There are 9 Mala stones between each moon in bordering circuits.  Both speak to nature in an intimate and symbolic way.

Discussing the Prayer Wheel and Labyrinth over brunch

Len's flower

After I told the general history of what I am doing everybody walked to the site and I gave them a tour.  John Paul Jones, a native architect from the firm Jones and Jones in Seattle and his wife Marjory discussed medicine wheels and architecture.  We visited his firm  on a field trip when I was in studying at the University of Oregon over 36 years ago.  It was a very special gathering and an honor to spend time with and get to know these people.

This project is so rich in meaning and has such good energy that always seems to resonate and touch people in a deep and profound way.  I feel some kind of sincere connection to everyone I talk to while I'm working.

My hosts Len and Stella have been so gracious.  Thank you for everything you've done.

After Brunch, we visited the site

This couple live on the island in a historic home with a turf roof.  I would love to see it sometime.

This is how I hoped the boulders would be used...beautiful

I wanted to make a flower for each of them to commemorate this gathering but I had to go to the beach to collect more red and violet and purple stones to make them with.  These are tough colors to find in reliable shapes.  So after 3 hours at low tide I had gathered another 7-800 pounds of rock. The higher tides of the full moon washed ashore a dazzling mix of different colors of seaweed.  Small flocks of teals have been foraging from the offshore rocks.

A breathtaking array of seaweeds

I was only able to finish 5 flowers before it got dark and have four more to go.  I hope to make great progress tomorrow.  As I was wheelbarrowing the stones down the hill two women, Jeanine and Jane came by.  One of my jobs is to make people want to be a part of this project.  They promised to bring stones for the Community circuit that I will build in the Spring of next year.  If you come by and I'm there I'll show you what I'm looking for to build it with.  If everyone brought me at least one beautiful stone that is the right shape, flat and block like in any size, I would have a nice selection to build the 3rd circuit with.

The 9th circuit from South to West is finished

I went to the beach once again to pick 4 buckets of whatever was handy, focusing on purple flower petal shapes and brown stones for the western direction.  I set stone all afternoon, first finishing the 9 flowers for the people who had come to brunch yesterday.  It is a nice little garden.  4 are slightly wonky Medicine Wheels.

The Brunch Flowers

From there I mainly just filled in the spaces with a variety of shapes of stones in purple shades.  A woman named Susan appeared from the woods as if by magic.  When I looked up she was fairly close, having come from the obscure little path through the bushes people sometimes wind up on.  It always surprises me when they arrive this way.  Susan was dressed in three of the more prominent colors in the labyrinth, blending beautifully with the surrounding landscape.  Yet another lovely encounter.  I made her a brown flower to go with her outfit, which she asked me to dedicate to her sister Kelly.

Susan

I tried to make something that would look like craggy mountains before the Ducks Fly Moon, and used striped brown stones to insinuate sky, but I don't think it reads at all.  Neither did the flames I made in the south.  They're there, they just aren't obvious, even to me after making them.

Kelly's flower

I must say again that for me what makes this mosaic work marvelous is the stones themselves, not so much the way I am putting them together.  If I had a table saw I could be trimming the stones and making them fit better, but that would require a generator on the site, making a big noisy mess.  There is a quiet peace that comes with working here with the local beach rock.  It has some lumpiness and contour, but the array of minerals is stunning

Big leaf Maple leaves on a pile of collected stones

Torres del Paine

Orange stones blending in to black

John and his Mother Julie

Pileated Woodpecker on the Woodpecker Tree

Lord's stones

Pearl's Flower

Lord and Ketil's flowers amongst the clouds

The Labyrinth at Lands End, San Francisco

I had decided to dedicate the inner 9 circuits in the Labyrinth to the planets in our solar system when I was finishing the 10th circuit.  Pluto, the ninth planet has since been downgraded to a large 'Plutoid' by definition.  I was fascinated by the descriptions I read of the God of the Underworld and wanted to venture there as I built it.  It is a circuit where we can honor our ancestors and departed loved ones.

The 8th planet from the sun is Neptune, named for the Roman God of the Sea.  It is the 4th largest planet in the solar system.  57 Earths would fit inside its mass.

An image of the planet Neptune from NASA Voyager

Neptune is the Roman incarnation of the Greek God Poseidon.  He rules over both fresh waters and the sea.  His brothers are Jupiter and Pluto.  His consort, Salacia, the Goddess of the sea who bore three children, including the half man, half fish, Triton.  Neptune is traditionally depicted holding a Trident and is frequently associated with horses, as he assisted the Goddess Athena in building the chariot.  Because of this I am dedicating this circuit to the Sea, and all waters, with the intention of caring for them and helping to make them cleaner and healthier.

The Neptune Fountain in Piazza Navona, Rome

October 25:  I set up forms to start the 8th circuit, making a loop from the 9th to the left of the entry path.  This path will loop into the 7th circuit at the southern cardinal point.  I use a dense flexible plastic lawn edging material to make the forms for loops.

Mortar fills the forms in the loop from the 9th to the 8th circuit

Instead of making flowers in this circuit I decided to make Starfish or Sea Stars.  Starfish are Echinoderms, which is the same phylum as Sea Urchins, Sea Cucumbers, and Sand Dollars.  Known fossil records of Starfish date back as far as 450 million years, making them one of the longest reigning living organisms to still inhabit the planet.  This indicates the incredible ability for Starfish to survive every type of planetary change up until now.   We could only hope as a species that we may last a tiny fraction of that.  Different species live in the intertidal shoreline zone down to depths of 20,000 feet beneath the sea.  Most Starfish have 5 legs, but Puget Sound is also home to the Sunflower Sea Star, the largest species in the World.   Capable of growing over 3 feet across here, they do not come in to shallow waters because their bodies wont tolerate exposure to air, so you wont see them in tide pools.  If you'll pardon the corny music, this video has some interesting footage, especially of the scallops and the clam at the end.


Sadly when I did some research on Puget Sound starfish I found out that populations are dying off at an alarming rate only recently.  You can read about this at http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/index.html

Starfish come in a wide range of colors befitting of those in the Medicine Wheel in the Labyrinth.
I'm going to stick with the 5 legged variety as it would be very difficult to make a 24 legged one.

A simple 5 legged sea star in the transition area between green and pink stones

Terry and Terri came by again in the afternoon from Kingston to shoot some more video and share stories.  Its really nice to spend time with them.  We talked about the many types of stones I've found, and tips on traveling in Greece, and the wonders of Nature.  I made them each a Sea Star after they left.

Terri and Terry in forest colors

I worked my way towards the south and then headed for Rockaway beach at low tide to collect four buckets of stones before it got dark.  I need more green and pink stones to make my way to the southern cardinal point.

Surf Scoters have been gathering along Rockaway Beach

The sun was out in the morning when I went to the site.  It was surprisingly quiet for a nice Saturday as I mixed mortar and set stone.  My cousin Libby and her husband Bob and their son who live on the island came by to see how the project was progressing.  I was low on mortar and the next pallet wont arrive until Monday so I drove to Winslow in the afternoon and bought 10-80 pound bags to cover me until then.  I got a flat tire after I loaded it.  Once that was fixed I was driving back to the site, but stopped to photograph a wonderful stone fireplace that stands along the edge of Eagle Harbor.  The house it once warmed is long gone, replaced by a mossy lawn.  Somebody had artfully placed a punch and fold paper model of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow inside the hearth.  It was a wonderful piece of whimsy on a beautiful fall afternoon.

A fireplace is all that remains of an old house on Eagle Harbor

I then returned to the site to set more stone up to the end of the forms, which I will move tomorrow.
A group of four women came by.  They got excited by the idea that I would make them Starfish and wanted to know how many they would get.  I was only able to make 3 with what was available in the pink area I was working in.

Four friends visiting the site

An hour before dark I drove to South Beach, which I haven't visited before.  It is a beautiful area over a hill reached by the humorously named Toe Jam Road.  I was able to gather four buckets of mostly red stone before there wasn't enough light to see anymore.

South Beach

There is beautiful brown striped bedrock here with a colorful array of beach rock strewn across it.  There is a lot of tumbled man made debris mixed in, red bricks and brown tiles.

Veined Bedrock and Beach Rock

People with homes across the road have teetering ledges with row boats and deck chairs and bleached wood stair cases to access the shore.  They are often nicely arranged and decorated with washed up artifacts and brightly painted skiffs.

A blue and red rowboat on South Beach

Sunday was a busy day at Halls Hill Park.  It was drizzling when I got up but by the time I got to the site the sun was trying to come out and it turned in to a beautiful fall day.  Lots of people came by to see the progress and I found myself being something of a tour guide explaining what has been going on over and over.  I had some repeat visitors who came to visit their stone flowers.

Cindy and Pat

I made three starfish for John and Bonnie and their daughter Annie.  John told me they came to the park rather than going to church, as he thought it was the nicest church on the island.

Bonnie,  Annie, and John in front of where I am making their Starfish

Katherine and her Starfish

I met Katherine today, who had that look on her face that people often get when contemplating this project.  The idea for me is that it becomes a vehicle for expanding the mind, becoming more conscious, and practicing compassion for the Earth as a whole, and not just humanity.  The Labyrinth is a record of these moments, points of realization experienced on a planet orbiting around the sun in great ovals, which when looked at from a certain angle become circles.  I was happy to make her the sweetest little starfish.

Later a man named Rick came to visit and told me that the boulder that is on the western side of the Labyrinth was placed there as a memorial to his Mother, Joy when the original labyrinth was installed in a meadow like lawn.  The Stewartia tree, in full fall color behind the boulder was planted in her honor as well.  I had no idea of this previously when I incorporated the boulder in to the cardinal points of the new design.  I told him that I had dedicated the Ducks Fly Moon that is directly in front of the boulder to my Mom when I built it in honor of her 80th birthday.  It feels serendipitous to have the two gifts to our Mothers unintentionally placed next to each other.  Perhaps this stone would be a fitting place for others to honor their Mothers and Grandmothers by placing offerings or flowers.  I would like to see the labyrinth used for a variety of rituals.  I've conjured visions of groups chanting while sitting on the 8 stones at auspicious times of the year.  A Circle Dance would be lovely on the Spring Equinox, or even a May Pole on Beltaine or May Day.  I'd like to maybe do some kind of Summer Solstice event here next year.

Rick sitting on a boulder dedicated to his Mother Joy

Len, who does mowing and blowing in the park came by and we talked about not blowing the labyrinth area anymore, at least not when I am on the site.  While it is a nice easy way to keep the site clean, the noise and exhaust from the blower and the removal of the beautiful leaves that have been falling on the site seems inappropriate to the energy that is evolving here.  He was fine with that.  If it gets buried I'll ask him to come and take care of it.  As the winds picked up it appeared to be snowing Douglas fir needles, golden brown and fine textured.  They mix in with the mortar without being a problem, and fill the spaces between the stones in a beautiful way that conceals the uncleaned mortar joints.  I have a fantasy idea that people would come and sweep the labyrinth as a ritual or hand pick the leaves to care for it in a loving and gentle way that doesn't pollute the air with exhaust and noise.

Noah and the family dog

I made a lot of progress today and talked several people in to going out to search for stones to use in the Community circuit that I will build next year.  I wrote about this in the second installment, about the Mala circuit.  I'm looking for block like stones with a flat top and perpendicular sides that would fit well together, in any size and color.  Ideally people will bring beautiful stones that speak to them rather than just whatever they find.  It is an opportunity to look at stones in a more observant way, studying the shapes and colors and differences between the great variety that can be found on the area beaches.  They do not have to be from the region but do need to be flat on top with 90 degree or more sides and be deep enough to stay put when I set them in mortar, about 2 inches thick or more.

I'll probably leave a container out and a sign explaining what I am looking for over the winter while I'm gone.  There is a large flat topped boulder to the left of the Labyrinth entrance that people can leave stones on until then.


I completed about 12 feet of mosaic today, working through the red and purple areas, which requires a lot of diligence to find enough stones in those colors in order to make my way from the south to the western cardinal points.  Tomorrow I should be able to pass the half way point in the 8th circuit.  There will be two loops into the 7th circuit at the West and Northern axis.

The sun is back out today, but I had insomnia so I am exhausted and hope I don't collapse on the site while I'm working with less than an hours sleep.  I moved the forms and set the stones on either side of the Western cardinal points.  It was a quiet day in the park.  One man came by who lives on Rockaway Beach.  I'm sorry I didn't take his picture because there was something special about the encounter.  I told him I would make a Starfish for him if he rang the prayer wheel, which he did.  I could see him through the trees as he was leaving and we waved at each other in recognition of his deed.

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It was windy and cool when a group of women came by who had gathered together for the weekend.  They brought me some rocks they had collected on the beach and we went through the tote bags to pick the ones that I could use in the mosaic.  A lot of them were of the right shape and depth, and brown, which is the area I was working in at the time, so I was able to incorporate some of them right away.

Labyrinth Stone Gatherers

I used up all of the mortar that I had bought and the next pallet I ordered hadn't been delivered as I had hoped.  That was fine because I had an appointment to get a much needed massage later in the afternoon.   It was marvelous and helped relieve some of the chronic pain that was developing in my right shoulder.  Its important to consider regular massage if you ever decide to undertake this kind of work so as to not permanently damage your body.  Since I was near Winslow I decided to drive over to Manitou Beach, which I had heard has a rocky shoreline.  The view of Seattle from here is beautiful with the Space Needle centered on the horizon.  The light was so dim that I was feeling the surfaces of the stones to determine if they were the right shape.  I have no idea what colors they are, but I gathered more than 200 pounds before it was too dark to see anything.

I don't have a television at home but there is one where I am staying and I finally turned it on for the first time.  I ended up watching Public Broadcasting and saw an interesting story about how local municipalities are working on bio-swale technology to filter storm water from urban areas that otherwise can add significant pollution to Puget Sound.  A underwater photographer came across an Seattle storm drain outflow pipe billowing a continuous column of black water, which when sampled and tested, killed fish fry (baby fish).  When they filtered that water through a swale, enough toxins were removed from the water by sediments and plants that the fish fry lived.  Disconnecting our downspouts and increasing the permeability of the pavements around our homes is one of the best ways to reduce our impact on water quality.  Fix oil leaks on vehicles and don't use pesticides or herbicides or chemical fertilizers, and make sure that excess nutrients in gardens doesn't wash in to surface water.  And don't pour toxic substances down storm drains.  I once saw a maintenance person casting granular fertilizer on a landscaped slope along the Willamette River who was so careless that he was throwing fertilizer in the water.  Maintenance crews and many gardeners could benefit from learning to be better stewards of the land in regards to the impacts they have.

I pick up garbage whenever I am at the beach, and even when I walk to my local store.  I'm always recycling discarded plastic bottles tossed in the gutter, and have picked up literally thousands of cigarette butts to keep them from being washed out to sea.  An Australian environmental organization once made the general estimate that some 4 trillion cigarette butts end up in our oceans every year.

Cigarette butts on a flooded sidewalk

Picking up and properly disposing of garbage you come across as you travel through the world makes for a better planet, instantly.  I've never gotten sick from touching garbage with my bare hands.  Carry a bag and a gloves to make it easier and more sanitary to pick up litter when you come across it.  A line from a favorite children's book is 'This is what would happen if everybody did", with more positive consequences.  Teach your children to be conscientious about litter.  We had Hooty the Owl when I was a kid and the program taught me to care about the planet.  "Give a hoot, don't pollute."

Conserve energy, and it doesn't need to be produced.  The power plant doesn't need to generate electricity for a light that has been turned off.  Leaving the door of the refrigerator open while you do other tasks in the kitchen uses a lot of electricity to cool it down again.  This is the most energy consumptive appliance in most homes.  Electricity is often produced by coal fired power plants that add an enormous amount of carbon to the atmosphere, and causes acid rain.  Increasing acidity in our oceans is one of the biggest threats to sea life.  The mining and transport of coal is also environmentally devastating.  Nuclear power obviously has its issues, and hydroelectric power, one of the main sources of electricity in the Pacific Northwest is responsible for the devastation of what was once the largest salmon run in the world up the Columbia River.  Some dams are being removed in the Pacific Northwest to restore dwindling salmon runs.

Take reusable grocery bags to the store.  Every time you avoid getting another plastic bag is one less bag that might end up in the ocean.  Grow and buy local organic food.  Recycle.  Use biodegradable soaps and cleaning products.  Most importantly, how can we cut back on our driving?  Be proactive and you will have made a change, rather than just talking about making them.  The Sea is suffering because we aren't taking enough care in our personal lives.

If you live on the shoreline, make sure that your landscaping is suitable for maintaining good water quality.  Many homes have a large lawn running right up to the sea walls.  I can only imagine that fertilizing these lawns leaches directly in to the sea water only a couple of yards below.  During really high tides the sea water can actually wash over the tops of the walls.  Appropriate landscaping, which can actually enhance the coastal environment is an environmentally healthier option.

Various types of landscapes front Rockaway Beach homes

In the foreground of this photo is a home with a more naturalistic landscape that allows higher tides to break on the rocks.  Driftwood logs help to anchor the patio.  Further down are more traditional landscapes with bulkhead walls that waves crash in to at high tide, with lawns and gardens that probably require fertilizers and irrigation to maintain them, which can pollute the waters of the Sound.  All of the concrete bulkhead walls have drain pipes in them so that runoff from roofs and driveways and landscaping drains directly on to the beach.

There is an election coming up in November and on Bainbridge Island there is a candidate who is running who vehemently opposes the Shoreline Master Program because it requires limits on development and land use.  The shores of the island are heavily developed with residential homes as the water views are highly desirable.  The impact of building on the shoreline is great as there usually needs to be substantial amounts of fill, with bulkhead walls constructed frequently directly over the shore line itself.  There is very little land left to be developed at this point, usually parcels that are more difficult to modify for building that will have greater impact.  The shoreline plan is required by state mandates.  Voting for a commissioner who opposes the plan usually means that this person is very much pro development without regard for the environment.  Dick Haughan is that candidate from the research I have done on the internet.  He is strongly opposed to the restrictions on the plan restricting the building of more private docks, land filling, and intrusive architecture.  I don't live here, but his opponent Val Tollefson has stated that he would work to make the plan functional.  It is clear in reading the plans guidelines that it is intended to protect the health and visual quality of the island's shorelines.   An article on this issue can be seen at http://www.bainbridgereview.com/news/222876561.html

The seafood you buy also affects the health of our oceans.  There seems to be a sushi restaurant on every corner these days.  This has increased tuna consumption to the highest levels in history.   Giant trawlers have made it possible to harvest greater numbers of fish to meet the demand with terrible consequences.  Many are outfitted with satellite monitors that can locate remaining schools of fish.  Tuna may very well become extinct in our lifetime.  Billions of other fish are killed in the process every year, only to be discarded.  Dolphins and whales are also a casualty of indiscriminate trawling.  Our oceans are being stripped bare.  Large fish now contain high levels of toxins such as mercury and should be eaten sparingly anyway, if at all.  Consider buying smaller more sustainably harvested fish.

Shrimp is a good example of a seafood that can have devastating ecological impact in the methods it is farmed.  Mangrove wetlands in many tropical countries have been destroyed by the development of shrimp farms.  This photo, from the World Wildlife Fund is of a new shrimp farm on Mafia Island in the Indian Ocean, a part of the country of Tanzania's fabled Zanzibar region.  When I looked it up I found that the island is touted as the finest diving in East Africa.  The landscape surrounding the farm looks like it is pristine wilderness.  The inexpensive frozen shrimp you buy at the store may very well come from a facility like this if it is imported.  Read the packaging or ask the person in the fish shop where the seafood is sourced.

A Shrimp farm on Mafia Island in the Indian Ocean obliterates the natural landscape

Why is it important to preserve our oceans?  Read this and you will understand.  http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken

A photo of Sharks Fins being prepared for the Taiwanese Market to be made in to soup

October 29:
Now that I have totally bummed you out, consider it an honor to be a Steward of the Oceans.  It truly matters.


Back at the site I reset the forms for today's work.  The pallet of mortar I ordered still had not been delivered so Gregory drove to town and brought me 6 bags of mortar to keep me busy until it
arrived.  A beautiful young buck deer walked around the labyrinth barely perturbed by our presence.  The weather was so nice I had to take advantage of making as much progress as possible.  I worked my way from orange in to black and then in to white in the north.  It was a pretty quiet day with not many visitors until late in the afternoon.

A woman named Lynn came over to see what I was doing.  She came to ring the Prayer Wheel because she said she had been in a bad mood.  I told her I didn't hear it.  She said thats because somebody was using a leaf blower nearby.  They are so loud that they can totally destroy the peace of the park.  If I was king I would ban them.  I love the old fashioned rake and broom.  Lynn loves stones and said that her bad mood had gone away being here.  I made her a sweet little white starfish and she promised me she would bring me some stones for the Community circuit.

Lynn visits the Labyrinth

Lynn's Starfish

A couple who are renting a cottage on Rockaway Beach came by on their bicycles.  I was telling them about the labyrinth and the Neptune circuit and its relationship to the sea, and that I was writing about ocean conservation in this essay.  The told me that they worked as ocean conservationists and that they had seen a pod of Orca Whales from their place on the beach today.  There is a website called Orca Network where you can track the movement of area Orca pods.  While looking at the website at http://www.orcanetwork.org I came upon another article about Orcas in Puget Sound.  This essay stated that Orcas have the highest concentration of toxic chemicals, including PCB's, of any mammal on Earth.  This, and changes in the availability of their food sources has led to population declines that could place Puget Sound's Orcas on the Endangered Species List.   This is the consequence of being the top predator in the ocean's food chain.  This interesting article appeared in a recent issue of the Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022162797_apxpugetsoundorcas.html



Another woman I had met before came by next bearing gifts.  She brought me a bag of assorted colors of beach glass she had collected from a place called Glass Beach near Port Townsend.  The glass came from an old dump located on the shore.  I placed several pieces of clear white glass in the area I had just  finished at the loop on one side of the northern cardinal point of the labyrinth.

A gift of beach glass

She also brought me the most beautiful cookie I have ever seen.  She and a friend stayed up all night baking and decorating cookies for Day of the Dead.  This is a Mexican holiday honoring those who have passed, celebrated from Halloween until November 2nd.  I photographed the cookie on the orange Halloween like stones of the 9th circuit.

A wonderful Dia de los Muertos cookie gifted to me

I had another hour of daylight so I drove to the boat ramp where I can reach the center of Rockaway Beach and collected 5 buckets of rock before it got too dark to see.  A flock of Surf Scoters, Melanitta perspicllata were swimming along the shore line.  Mount Rainier was colored pink by the sunset filtered through a heavy layer of Seattle's air pollution.

Surf Scoters, with Mt. Rainier in the background

A large dead Fried Egg Jellyfish was turning purple like a big blob of goo on the rocks.

A dead Fried Egg Jellyfish on Rockaway Beach

I went back to the beach in the morning and collected several buckets of stones.  I saw four other dead jellyfish on the beach.   I don't know if this is normal or the cause of water pollution.  I focused on silver and blue green stones to finish the 8th circuit.  Then I moved and reset the forms so I could work my way to the end of the 8th circuit.  I made the second loop at the north cardinal point with the rest of the white granite stones I had collected on Mt. Rainier, and worked until dark trying to get the rest of the circuit done so I can go home for a few days tomorrow, but I didn't quite make it all the way to the end before it got dark.  If it isn't raining in the morning I'll finish it up.

The second loop from the 9th to the 8th circuit at the Northern cardinal point

Two young bucks came by twice today.  They are eating all of the white mushrooms that have been growing in the fresh bark that was spread around the plantings when I first started working here.

A pair of deer visiting the site

October 31st:  Happy Halloween!  This is the time of year when the veils between dimensions becomes particularly thin.  Its an excellent time to honor dead loved ones, and to actualize fantasies of identity.  I've always thought it strange that people always ask when I dress up for Halloween, "what are you supposed to be, a Genie?" So I am driving home and hopefully will have the energy to dress up in something fabulous and go to a big dance party tonight.

I didn't sleep well at all.  Maybe those thin veils between worlds had something to do with it.  So I had to drag myself down to the site in the morning.  First I picked a bucket of dahlia flowers from the farm across the road, to use to decorate the cloud mosaic and center of the labyrinth.  Then I went and mixed two bags of mortar to finish the 8th circuit and began setting the stones there.  Jorunn, the woman who does gardening in the park came down and said that Ketil's stepson and his wife and their son were coming to see the labyrinth.  They had just returned from Norway where they had attended Ketil's funeral.  I had made clouds in the northerly direction and having finished the second loop there yesterday, the clouds were complete.  I had planned to arrange the flowers around the clouds to honor the recent passing of my friend Lord and had dedicated the Clouds of Heaven to him, and Ketil, a Norwegian man who I never met.  You can read about that in the essay before this one, "Pluto and the Four Elements".


So I finished my work and made starfish for Ketil's stepson and his wife while she and Jorunn arranged the flowers around the loops in the mosaic.  I had planned on just using white there and placing the colored flowers around the center of the labyrinth but they told me that Ketil had always worn bright colors and loved purple, and that people who attended his memorial service in Norway were asked to wear bright colors in remembrance of him.  So they mixed the colors together and shed some tears, and told me sweet stories.  It was such a lovely closure to this phase of my work here, and totally unplanned.   More serendipity.


When I return I plan to build the 7th circuit,  dedicated to Uranus, the Greek God of the Sky.

The 9th circuit, dedicated to the God Neptune and all Waters and the Seas

River God of the Tiber at the Capitolino in Rome

Time for the most dangerous part of this job, the four hour drive home.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

"Show not what has been done, but what can be.  How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths." Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Saint Colomba's Bay, Iona, Scotland

Uranus is the 7th planet in the solar system and I am dedicating the 7th circuit of the Labyrinth to the 3rd largest planet.  While all the other planets are named after Roman Gods, Uranus, is the only one named after a Greek deity, the God of the Sky.  The planet turns on an axis that is perpendicular to the other planets, so that its poles are located where our equator would be.  Photographs from the Voyager Spacecraft show a featureless atmosphere of pale sky blue, perhaps inspiring its name.  It was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope, even though it is visible with the naked eye.  It has 27 moons, and takes 84 Earth years to orbit the sun.

The Planet Uranus, photographed by the Voyager spacecraft

The God of the Sky, or Heaven, Uranus is the Latinized name for the Greek God Ouranos, the father of Cronus (Saturn), who is the father of Zeus (Jupiter).  Uranus is the planet of the sign of Aquarius.  He is considered to be the son and husband of the Earth Goddess Gaia, who begat a number of troublesome offspring in their union.  You can get a sense of the mayhem that ensued by reading this post:  http://www.pantheon.org/articles/u/uranus.html

You'll have to read the Pantheon.org link to understand what is happening here

It is befitting that the illuminated night sky was so dramatic on my return to the island to begin building this circuit dedicated to the sky and the heavens.

Seattle at night across the water

When I returned to the site I was delighted to see that somebody had made a wreath of fallen fir boughs around the altar in the center of the Labyrinth.  It is gestures and blessings like these that bring sacredness to the space.

A wreath of boughs around the central altar

I started by moving the forms to start the 7th circuit.   The curve from the entry path to this circuit is formed with a piece of flexible lawn edging and lots of spikes inside which I set the yellow stones that correspond to the western direction of the Budding Trees Moon.

The entry path turning in to the 7th circuit

A man and his nephew came to see the project.  I made them a yellow starfish in the section of the path passing the Neptune circuit, the last one in that series.  They know the family who came and placed the dahlias I brought to the site before I left for my last break.  They talked about how moving the experience was for them.

Rainy day visitors

When I made the turn in to the 7th circuit I decided to make flying birds for people who come to visit and ring the Prayer Wheel.  I chose swallows as they have a simple streamlined shape and are the bird cast in bronze on the top of the wheel.

Swallows on the Prayer Wheel

I've always loved watching swallows dip and swerve over still waters, catching insects and sipping water on the wing.  So I look for stones that have a slender shape for the body and tapered ones of the wings.  Two small triangles make up the scissor tail.  Sometimes I add a head if it looks appropriate.  It is not easy to make a readable swallow with the kinds of rock I find on the beach, which usually don't come in slender shapes.

The first Swallow flying around the 7th circuit

I made a run to the beach at low tide and gathered 8 buckets of stones to supplement the green and pink I need to make this arc from Spring to Summer.  It gets dark at 5:00 now because of daylight savings time, which is frustrating as I would like to continue working.

The next morning I moved the forms again and set the stone up to the southern cardinal point, where I left a gap so that I can add the loops to the 6th circuit that will happen here.  Then I returned to the beach again to collect pink and red and purple stones for the Summer to Autumn arc.  Red stones are really getting rare on the beach I usually collect from.  I went all the way down to the end today where the landslide took out the road.  The repair is terrible to look at, and the beach has been compromised by the construction.  This is near the point where a Creosote factory was located, the largest in the region at one time for making treated wood for railroad ties and power poles.  The polluted floor of the harbor is listed as the Wykoff-Eagle Harbor superfund site due to the severity of the contamination the plant left behind.  Cleanup is still in the research and planning phase even though the site was listed in 1987.  Superfund sites are usually impossible to clean.

Slope stabilization to rebuild Rockaway Beach Road after a landslide

Rising sea levels due to Global Warming will endanger a great many homes and roads around the island in the years to come, causing erosion and more landslides like the one here.  But people on the island seem to prefer to drive large vehicles rather than smaller more fuel efficient ones, so those on the water will eventually have to pay the Piper.

The tide was coming in and the steep stone steps leading down to the beach from the home I am accessing this section of the Rockaway Beach from is partially covered during high tide.  The ferries come in to Eagle Harbor close to the shore here and the wake from the boats caught me against the bulkhead wall and soaked my pants, so I had to go home and change out of my wet clothes and shoes.

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Then I returned to the site and worked until dark setting the red stones I added to my selection.  The red section of the labyrinth is very rich and beautiful, with lots of Jasper in the mix.


The next morning another pallet of mortar and 200 feet of rebar had been delivered.  My body moaned in anguish, but it gives me the goal to use up this material before I quit for the winter.  There are 50-80 pound bags of mortar on a pallet, weighing in total two tons.  I think this is my 5th pallet so I will have mixed 20,000 pounds of mortar this fall!  No wonder I'm so sore.  Some people brought me a galvanized bucket of stones to use in the Community circuit, which I went through and picked out the ones I could use.

A donation of stones for the Community circuit

The next day it was windy and raining and the power was out, and there was no running water at the house, so I went to work without the benefit of hot tea or being able to wash my face.  I had to set up my modular structure to attach a tarp to and had a fairly miserable day setting the path to the loop on one side of the western axis.  The power was still out so I had to wash my hands in the toilet, and drove to town for dinner as the lights were still on at this part of the island.  I went to bed that night without a shower.  The power came back on just before midnight.

I made the second loop in the west and proceeded on through brown stones in to orange.  Another trip to the beach was needed to gather orange and black stones to carry on.  The lousy weather makes for fewer visitors and I have been listening to music to get me through the drearier times.  Still the weather hasn't been too bad overall compared to what it could be.

Loops in the path between the 8th and 7th circuits in the west

I continued on in to the orange and black areas.  Each circuit is a slightly smaller deja vu of the last one as I go around and around.   A woman walking her dog who lives below the park on the harbor came by and invited me to access the beach there via their garden to collect rock, so I made a trip down to see what was there.

Blakely Harbor

The sky was gorgeous but the stones here are very small and not what I was looking for, so  I ran down to Rockaway beach while the tide was out to collect more black stones, which made it possible for me to continue working.  I need larger flat pieces to form the edges of the path, and always seem to be running out of these.  I made a small flock of black swallows for people who came by the site.

Can you find the Swallows?

October 9th:  I haven't been sleeping the past few nights.  Something is going on out there that is keeping me awake.  So I was thoroughly exhausted when I went to the site this morning.  I picked up a cold from working in the rain which may have something to do with it.  Terry and Terri came to shoot more video today.  They filmed a tour of the park while I ran to gather some larger white stones to work my way in to the northern part of the labyrinth.  We talked about the lives of Greek God's while I worked and it turned out to be an enjoyable day in spite of my fatigue.  My cousins Libby and Bob came by with a couple of friends, making for a social afternoon.

The Terry's, my cousins, and their friends

Even though I was sleep deprived and surrounded by guests, I made great progress, mixing 8 bags of mortar and setting about 18 feet of path.  I hauled gravel down the hill that had been delivered and filled some of the gaps between the paths after it got dark since that happens at 5:00 PM now.  I'm using the same gravel that was spread on the paths so that they match.

The next day was Sunday and I had several visitors.  The first couple, the Piraino's, were particularly fun to meet.  We laughed a lot, which helped lift me from my delirium as I didn't sleep much again last night.  We talked about Sicily and the town which is their namesake, and the famous Capuchin Catacombs where the bodily remains of departed souls lie in a grisly display of our mortal impermanence.  Its an incredible thing to see first hand.  I told them the story of how Ouranos' overly fertile wife Gaia had one of her many offspring castrate her husband after tiring from bearing so many hideous children, one of which was the Cyclops.  When his testicles were flung in to the sea, there was a foaming from which Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love was formed.  Such an interesting way to manifest love, out of pain.  We had a good laugh when I commented on how much more fun Greek mythology was than Christianity.  I made them a pair of Swallows after they left.  In fact I ended up making a flock of swallows as more and more people came by.

The Pirainos

Rich, who's mother Joy is memorialized in the boulder and Stewartia tree at the western end of the Labyrinth brought his wife Amy by to see the project and we had a nice visit.  He told me I would surely be going to Heaven for the work I am doing here.  I laughed and said "We'll see..."

Rich and Amy

Next, a very nice woman named Jenny came to the park to turn the prayer wheel for her son Nolan.  We had a lovely talk and I made Nolan a Swallow, with his Mother's wish that he metaphorically learn to fly.  Blessings to you Nolan.  I'm eternally grateful that I was born in a generation that didn't have access to computers and cell phones until I had formed a grander vision of the World.  It seems a great tragedy that the wonders of the universe have been eclipsed by cellular devices.  May this Labyrinth offer a path to reconnect us to the spirit of life.

Shelly points to the Swallow dedicated to her son

A little while later, the happy trio of ladies, Tiffany, Veronique, and Wendy came along and peppered me with questions.  Their energy reminded me of the flocks of giddy robins feasting on the Madrone berries in the trees overhead in the morning, when the forest is alive with happy twittering.  They were delighted to each get a Swallow as I finished the 7th circuit.  Another one down!

Wendy, Veronique, and Tiffany pointing to their Swallows

The days are so short but I need to begin the process of gathering more stones to make my way around yet another circuit before I quit for the winter, so I raced off to the beach and collected four buckets of about 300 pounds of stones before it was too dark to see anything.  I was only going by shape in the end, so I won't really know what I have collected until tomorrow.  At any rate, the center is beginning to fill in and the Labyrinth is really taking shape.


May a flight around the 7th circuit be filled with the brilliance of a heavenly sky, lofty with muscular clouds, or a clear day sparkling on the water, or a star filled night hung with the the porch swing of crescent moon, encompassing all the aspects of the magnificent realm of the God Ouranos.


Next I will begin the 6th circuit, dedicated to the Planet Saturn and its namesake God, who represents the concept of Time.  A woman asked today what would go in the open center where the inner circuits have not yet revealed themselves.  At first I was baffled by the question, but later while standing on the high boulder where I take the panoramic portraits of the Labyrinth each day, I envisioned a giant globe filling the rock strewn center, surrounded by the rings of Saturn.  And that made me smile.

Thanks for reading always, Jeffrey