So I am blessed to live in a wonderful house owned by the church where I serve. One of my favorite things about this house is the backyard. Here’s a view of the backyard.

As you can see, it opens into a rather deep wooded area. My daughter loves to play in there — she has “hideouts” and such. In my first year here, I built a trail that leads to the church; I walk that way to get to work on nice days. I also built a firepit, and build campfires from time to time.

A few weeks ago, I had an idea that perhaps there was a place in these woods to build a labyrinth. I scoped it out, and found an area that just might work. It is fairly clear, and should only require minor terraforming to welcome a labyrinth. I hemmed and hawed about it, but finally this afternoon, I went back in and started.

So here’s the spot, lightly raked.

It’s my intention to clear it out some more, and then mark the perimeter with a circle of rocks. Once that’s done, I’ll figure out how many circuits I can comfortably walk in a circle this size, and then start marking the labyrinth walls with rocks. I don’t know if I’m just out of shape, or if this really was hard work, but 45 minutes of working out there really wiped me out. I cleared some brush, cut down a few small trees with a saw, and raked the whole area.

Then I started the real work. One blessing of living where I do is that there are rocks everywhere. (I guess this is where a glacier stopped in the last ice age, maybe?) But it’s also a curse, because those rocks are everywhere. When I built the trail a few years ago, I abused a shovel and my back to remove lots of rocks from the middle of the trail, and then used those rocks to mark the sides of the trail. In addition to the cruelty I do to my body, I also left holes in the ground that make wonderful booby traps. I actually filled a lot of them in with ashes from the fire pit.

So that’s where I am. I identified an area, and started clearing out a few small trees and lots of detritus. The next step is to make a bunch of holes by trying to pull rocks out of the ground. I got maybe a dozen out today, but there are another dozen dozen left. I don’t know when I’ll get to that. I have a feeling this is going to be a looooong project.