CREATING A LABYRINTH
Jo Russell
We have a beautiful, big bush garden and I got the idea to create a labyrinth in an open area of the back when I heard and read stories of labyrinth experiences.
In my usual Gemini fashion I wanted to rush out and mark it out immediately. Then I realised I knew very little about labyrinths. (I didn't even know how to spell it at first!) So my education began. I surfed the net. Friends lent me books and magazine articles and the more I read the more I knew I was on the right path. It was like I was being led.
The open space in our back garden wouldn't fit the eleven-path, Chartres labyrinth, but when I read about the classical seven-path, Cretan design, I knew this was the one for our space. A friend sent me an article complete with diagrams, measurements and the materials needed, as well as a beautiful account of how the author created her own labyrinth. The instructions were very clear but I couldn't have done it without my son. I needed his mathematical brain and his eye for aesthetics and symmetry. He knew exactly when the entrance needed to be so that it would fit perfectly between the existing trees and shrubs.
The man at the local hardware store didn't laugh at me when I came asking for 125 30-cm stakes, a 60-cm measuring rod and two spools of plumber's line. He even offered to cut points at one end of the stakes to make it easier to hammer them in.
As my son measured the spaces and hammered in the stakes, I followed with the string, winding it around, stooped over like a woman working in the paddy-fields of Vietnam.
I've planted native poa grasses to mark the paths and I'm waiting for the autumn break to complete this planting around the outside paths. I have two beautiful white stones to mark the entrance and in the centre a small egg-shaped stone. It nestles in its own groove and I often pick it up to feel its satin smoothness.
As I write, I'm sitting at a table half hidden in the trees and watching a magpie wander through the labyrinth. Sometimes I see a pair of pigeons follow each other around the pegs.
The labyrinth has settled into our garden now. It belongs! Right now it's in dappled shade from the gums and pepper trees. When we first made it I loved the stark symmetry of the radiating lines and the contrast in the brown pegs and the iridescent yellow string, but it's evolved its own form of camouflage now.
It's given me a strong feeling of belonging to the earth. That's how I feel when I walk my labyrinth in the chill and stillness of the early morning or by torchlight under the stars at night. This is not in the sense of ownership or possession, but rather a feeling of connecting deeply with this patch of ground.
I'm very grateful. I always pause when I finish my walk, to thank all those who helped make it possible and all who touch my life in any way. It's a wonderful form of meditation—a prayer space—and each time I walk it can be different experience. One thing I have noticed: when I walk away there's a difference in my step and I feel calmer and more centred.
