Kids in the Labyrinth

Sorry, no picture.

James's class from school came to see the yin-yang garden today. They all tramped through in single file behind me, and several of the boys seemed to think it was cool. Then they continued on their tour with Arcola's area historian, Adrian Paton. They paused at the end of the yard and I listened in while he told them about the brick ponds. Apparently there were drying sheds just south of our place, and kilns beyond that, close by the tracks so the finished bricks could be loaded onto rail cars. I wonder how far they went.

I may have mentioned this before, but if you know of some old Arcola bricks that could be had, fairly close to here, please let me know. I only need about a thousand . . .

Tai Chi Labyrinth Update #2

If you're following the development of my Tai Chi Labyrinth garden, you might want to check my latest post at the Daily Bed.

Contrary Goddess has dubbed it a "yin yang garden," and I'm thinking that's a much more comfortable name for it. Thanks, CG.

Tai Chi Labyrinth Update

To thread your way back through the maze of previous related posts, start here.

Ruth thought my project looked a bit spooky at this stage.


The gaps are narrowing . . .


As of this writing, I've actually connected the garden arc right through the sod in the foreground, and filled in the wedge of bare soil in the background with sod. Those are chives in the garden dot just right of centre.

I've still got a lot more digging to do. In the background at left, you may be able to pick out a semicircle outlined with blue flags. It's the same size as the sod semicircle in front of the chives. That whole semicircle in the background has to be deep dug to turn the sod into garden soil, and there are some narrow arcs out of sight (visible at the left in the top picture) to be deep dug as well. Meanwhile, the weather is looking beautiful this week, so I think I will put the digging on hold and plant the beds I've got.

Arc-ology

Or is that too dignified a name for it? As I was digging up curved pieces of our back lawn, I found myself daydreaming about being asked what I was up to. My answer? "Removing all doubt that I'm insane!"

You might recall my Tai Chi Labyrinth post from last fall, about a labyrinth for meditative walking, with its design based on the Tai Chi symbol. I know, it has nothing to contribute to self-sufficiency, but I just can't let this idea go.

I originally imagined it built on grass, with stone borders outlining the paths. Garth said he didn't want rows of stones all over our yard, and I secretly agreed with him.

Then I thought about painting it onto a floor somewhere, but never quite got up the courage to approach any owners of big empty floors.

I set the idea aside and plodded on through winter. It wasn't much of a winter, in some ways, since there was almost no snow to shovel, but in other ways it was pretty dreary, since there wasn't enough snow to bother getting the skis out. Most of the time I couldn't even use a sled to get the groceries. All in all, the winter did its best to keep me in that dogged waiting-for-spring mood.

Mom dropped off a seed catalog so we could do our garden seed order together. I pulled out my Harrowsmith Northern Gardener and started reading about different styles of garden beds, trying to figure how much extra garden we could cram into our existing plot.

All of a sudden I saw my permanent wide beds bending into arcs. There was my labyrinth. Instead of broad footpaths separated with narrow lines of stones, I saw narrow footpaths winding among broad borders of garden. A fusion of two passions. It had to happen.

I sketched, and I plotted, and I calculated. I worked from both ends: how much garden I would get if I widened my labyrinth borders into garden beds, and how much garden I would need to grow the vegetables I had in mind. To my amazement, the numbers came out in the same range.

My mom told me I couldn't possibly want that many vegetables.

Garth told me I couldn't have the whole yard.

I listen to my mom. Sure, if I want to be self-sufficient, I should grow an even bigger garden than she and Dad do, but it's not wise to try to do it all at once.

I listen to Garth, too, although I don't like to admit it.

So, I asked Mom to pare back the seed order to something reasonable.

I tried to pay attention when Garth talked about neighbours that might lend us some garden space.

I put my sketches away (well, tucked them deeper in one of my paper piles), but still, I pulled them out and looked at them sometimes.

I started some seedlings.

When the snow went off the garden, I wandered around the edges of the muddy plot, pausing to gaze at it, but somehow, my mind refused to picture those orderly straight square-bound beds.

I noticed the grass of the adjacent lawn greening up, noticed where it seemed more lush, wondered what parts of the yard might respond best if converted to garden.

And then I saw the arcs again.

Only this time, the garden was just half of the labyrinth, just the black sweep of the Tai Chi symbol. The white sweep would be lawn, with some kind of subtle outline marking the paths . . . I'd figure that out later.

Garth said okay. In fact, he said something like, "I think you should do it."

Mom, hearing me explain at band practice why my hands were so tired from cutting sod, said she thought it was a good idea to make gardening more interesting. Really? My practical, keep-it-simple mother, endorsing my grand artsy self-indulgent scheme?

James, hearing me talk about the details of the design, asked if there would be a dot of garden in the lawn part, and a dot of lawn in the garden part, like in the Tai Chi symbol. "Yes!" I exclaimed, delighted at his curiosity and insight.

Ruth, watching me digging, wandered back and forth, looking from different angles, and said, "I don't get it. There's a sharp corner here." I explained that it would disappear as I took more sod out. She continued to wander back and forth, asking about other points of confusion, until she caught the gist of the design. I was cutting sod from one part, and using it to fill in a corner of the existing garden plot that would become lawn. To my astonishment, Ruth started helping me dig garden soil into the wheelbarrow to make way for the sod.

This might work.

Laying out the arcs

How much lawn can I take? (Note blue flags farther back in the picture)

Developing . . .

A Tai Chi Labyrinth

I hesitate to post this design, because I might just leave it at that. Please encourage me to go ahead and build one.

During the week that we were learning about and building a labyrinth last summer at Calling Lakes Centre, we were also playing some Tai Chi on the same piece of ground. Somehow the two concepts got mixed up in my head.

I remember standing in the Centre's bookstore, leafing through a book about labyrinths, and stopping short at an old engraving of a labyrinth of stone walls, in which the tops of the walls were the walking surface. It was an imaginary scene, meant to represent the perilous journey of pilgrims through life.

The image seized me, because as I looked at it, I saw a way to build a labyrinth based on the Tai Chi symbol. It was a complex plan involving a two-level structure, above and below ground. The path would start on the upper level, following the outline of one swirl of the symbol and then working inward in concentric swirls to reach the central dot, where a ladder or steps would descend to the lower level. The path would then work outward from the central dot to the perimeter of that swirl, and as it traced the 'S' through the centre of the symbol, it would lead into the other swirl. The whole process would repeat in this other half of the symbol, except that it would be starting on the lower level and the central dot would take the walker back up to the upper level. Then the path would work its way out and exit the labyrinth.

I started sketching, and the design went through several simplifications.

First, instead of two levels, there were just some low walls, perhaps 20 cm high. Walkers would start out walking on top of the walls, then go down a step or two at the first dot and walk between the walls to travel back out of that half of the symbol and into the second half, where the dot would return them to the wall tops for the journey out.

I simplified it again, by replacing the low walls with some sort of pavement surface, and grass between, so that walkers travelled first on the pavement and then on the grass, and finally on pavement again.

I don't know why it never occurred to me that the design could be done with a single path, instead of two levels or walking surfaces. All that was needed was to outline all the boundaries between one walking surface and another, and then the spaces between the outlines would be the path. I guess I couldn't get my head around what would happen at the margins and the dots. The solution came to me after I saw the Baltic variation of the classical labyrinth, which has a little S-turn at the centre and a second path travelling out between the circuits of the first.

This made the idea much more practical to build. It bothered me a little that the black-and-white distinction between the two halves of the symbol would be lost, but I pressed on, intending to deal with that problem later.

Even after I sensed that the design would work, I fumbled around for some time trying to actually draw it. I finally got it when I started constructing a Tai Chi symbol in CorelDraw, using three circles as I had seen in a diagram somewhere. I began playing with sets of concentric circles, and gradually figured out that I could construct all the arcs I needed for the entire design from just three sets of circles: one working inward from the border of the design, and two working outward from the dots. As I worked, I made the border-circle set a different color to help keep things straight. Once I started connecting the arcs, though, new arcs took on the color of the border arcs, and this color started flowing inward through the design. There was a thrilling moment when I realized that the path borders were actually just two lines, and if each line was a different color, the underlying pattern of the symbol would be appear.

Here it is:

I think I will outline the paths with rocks, either painted black and white, or simply chosen for their dark and light colours. Here is the same design with some perspective added to give an idea of how it might look as you approach it from the south:



If you want to take the design and build one, please go ahead. You might want to read a bit about the influence of location and compass orientation and so on, or find someone with some Feng Shui or dowsing experience to help choose the spot. I'd love to hear how it turns out.

Golf courses as labyrinths

Back at the end of August, James went golfing with his Grandpa. He came home excited to show me his score card from the Lampman course, and how difficult (long) Hole 3 was. He pointed it out on the little map, but (sorry James) I was distracted by a flash of recollection. The sketch of the course powerfully reminded me of the layout of a labyrinth.

This summer we spent a week at the Calling Lakes Centre (or Prairie Christian Training Centre, PCTC for short). Garth and I were helping Anita Warriner of Alameda area to lead the "Summer at the Centre" program, which is sort of a cross between summer camp and a rest-and-renewal retreat. Among activities ranging from nature walks to home spa sessions to watersliding...

(the water is just pumped up from the lake;

the plastic is used again and again)

...we also offered participants a chance to help build a labyrinth for the Centre. The labyrinth is a tool for meditation, laid out with a single path leading through many curves and turns (but no forks) into the centre. You can't get lost; you simply walk until you reach the goal, perhaps pause there to reflect for some moments, and then retrace your path back out again. The labyrinth we built is a classical 7-circuit design, laid out on a grassy area with stones marking the boundaries of the paths.

I discovered today that there is a variation on the classical design, called the Baltic type, which has one path in and another path out, allowing a continuous procession without the necessity of meeting other walkers on the return trip.

How different is that from a golf course?

I wonder if the similarity has been noticed by any of the numerous authors writing about the spirituality of golf.