Well, I made a whole post listing things I like beginning with the letter “R” yesterday, and rocks did not make it into the selection. I am at a loss to explain this complete amnesia, considering my long term love affair with rocks.
There is not a single place that I have lived that did not wind up with some sort of rock work done there. Usually this has showed up in the form of garden terraces, but I have installed riprap and constructed sundry paths.
By far the biggest project I have undertaken was the construction of the labyrinth that graces the eastern acre of our place.
This is a picture of the labyrinth, procured by the lineman from our electric company who happened to have a cherry picker truck here so they could replace our transformer. He very kindly took my camera up and got a pretty good aerial view of it. This was taken in mid summer at a time when it desperately needed its paths mowed. But you can still get glimpses of the rocks that form those paths. There is 1/3 of a mile of path in that circular installation, and every bit of it is outlined in rock.
We hauled it from my mother’s farm. There are 21 pickup truck loads of rock out there, my husband estimated that it required 18 tons to make the pattern. I placed every single rock myself.
The center circle is the most magical place. That is where I have been placing the special rocks I have acquired from all over the world. Some of them I picked up myself, some of them were brought by other labyrinth walkers. And many of them were acquired for me and given to me for the inner circle by friends and acquaintances.
The two black rocks in this picture are probably by far my favorite two of the whole collection: they came from the McMurdo Valley in Antarctica.
The next group of rocks were collected from various places in Colorado. I have a lot of rocks from that state because we lived there for a while. My parents keep going there and Dad keeps bringing me offerings. Can’t turn ’em down, no-how.
This next group came from New England. The little jar contains sand from the beach in New Hampshire. Yes, they actually do have some beach in that state, not a lot since it has about 15 miles of coast total.
The next pile of rocks is a group of pebbles from Siberia which were brought to me by the friend of a client. They are piled on a very flat piece of slate from Greenland which my older sister picked up outside Thule.
There are lots more, and I have received more since I took these pictures. I am still looking for a rock from Delaware in the USA, that is the only state I do not have represented.
I guess in my rather bizarre, energy conscious way, I feel like the rocks in the inner circle act as connectors to the places they come from. I sit in the center of the labyrinth after I walk the paths. There I meditate on world peace, an item in my Universal Shopping List that seems unavailable at this time. I try to send healing.
I don’t know if it works, or helps the world, but it makes me feel better. And I know that I am rich in rocks, if nothing else.
the havens 