I circled the array of brightly coloured tiles, feet making soft squelching noises on the moist earth under my weight. The air, icy and rich with the smell of wood smoke as people hurry to start their evening fires, the sun casting an auburn hue all across the cloudless sky.

The Labyrinth lay at home in the ground now, it's seen enough setting suns and full moons for moss to decorate its trim. For footprints to have flattened the gravel and prospective magical folk to have left their subtle mark. This place has made countless people in the community very happy. Whether it be the addition of the polished benches that now provide a welcome place to rest in the park. The elaborate winding path, a curiosity to children passing through. The colourful, hand made tiles attracting the eyes of man and bird alike. For others it is the totality of the creation that draws them in, the mysterious invitation of a Labyrinth, a truly sacred place by any definition, but this one is here.

Circling its sweeping circumference I look at the names, shapes and symbols upon those beautiful handmade tiles. Each time I do, I swear a new one reveals itself. Each creator celebrating, exclaiming or representing something important to themselves, immortalising it for a time, in clay. Each tile a fine example of magical symbols, loving, healing intentions, expressing well wishings and family names and depicting animals of many species. Gradually I find myself at the entrance of the Labyrinth, the world quiet and composed all around, except for the distant echo of construction workers and the odd voice or bark carrying on the wind. 

There are so many people inside their homes right now, kept away from one another, kept from what is important to them or from the responsibilities that keep them sane, well, fed and functioning. Many are looking for any excuse to get outside.

This new, sacred place serving as my excuse to leave the house and exercise, but more pressingly facilitating the need to ‘exorcise’ and release.

As I walk slowly, deliberately, between the bricks, and between worlds I consider the disposition of this world. This world lay in a sleeping, contemplative state, that grumbles and snores with the tossing and turning of the confused, hurting masses and the traumatised and agitated Earth.

I walk the twisting path, meditatively. I dream of far away places. Surrounded by old, watchful trees just like the ones in this park. I imagine, for myself and for others like me, a place where one does not need an excuse to walk out his door, where the madness of an evergrowing city and all that comes with it, is reserved to other far away places with other far away problems. Places like that do exist, I remind myself as I make my way, unhurriedly, to the centre of this pensive maze. Each step a contemplation, each frustration, stripping away with each new foot foward. 

I find myself contemplating the hurt that people are feeling. The distrust. The confusion. Contemplating the urgency for normalcy, understanding it may never return in the same state as before. Watching the divisiveness of this world is burdensom, hearing the voices of friends, truly aching within their homes, within their bodies, within their minds. This pandemic may be the thumb on the trigger point, but it is not the cause of all the madness, the labyrinth reminds me. Or perhaps I reminded myself. Or the Earth whispered it to me as my foot splashed down in one of the small pools of water, shimmering at the half way point of the Labyrinths path, my face quavering back as I look down at it. 

I stop for a moment and gaze up at the sky, a waning moon finding its height, the new moon days away. The sun now striking lustrously over the distant mountain ranges, purple and red gleaming in the fading light and the silhouette of the city turns black beneath, hidden from view.

The centre approaches as I walk the outskirts of the labyrinth reminding me of a retreading of sorts, the sensation of being on the outer rim of the solar system, the sun, the warm and inviting centre. I always have that visual as I walk a labyrinth, we get so close as we enter and then the path takes us farther and farther from our objective, before finally bringing us home. 

My own objectives used to seem very far away, just like the centre of the Labyrinth seemed from the outer paths, when I was younger, but old enough to start to consider what my objectives and my intentions in life were. I remember times when I would walk, desperately, into nature. Several times a week. Many times alone and sometimes with likeminded people. These trips were a band-aid solution to a deeper hurt. Running from the world, its problems, its money, its noise and its people. Even in my relatively happy life, my objective was to find something sacred amidst a larger chaos that I perceived.

I miss those trips and intend to take more when the times allow, but with a fresh, reverent perspective. My objectives then, were to hide or find sanctuary and right now hiding is all there is. Hiding somewhere safe doesn’t solve complex problems, it just creates all new ones somewhere else. No, my objectives are very different now as I remember a particular day years ago, looking into the eyes of someone who understood me too.  

The final turn of the path had me thinking of those old faces, friends and loved ones. Some of those whom have gone and some whom have passed. I ask them, silently, for their wisdom. For their comfort and guidance as I reach the centre, both the centre of this spiralling path and the centre of wherever I’m going. I feel them close sometimes, In a way that you can feel the ocean is near even when you can’t see it. Sometimes a smell permeates through your nostrils, a perfume or a smoulder. Sometimes they appear out of the corner of my eyes, but they are there when I ask them to be. 

I encourage you to ask too. 

A magpie spies me, his yin and yang colours resting in the fig across the way, singing a goodbye song to the sun and watching my procession and arrival at the centre. A Raven caws too, he’s sitting atop an aerial on a distant house, his feathers puffed and his plume readied for the freezing night. A Galllah tosses at the grass and claws at the dirt, he was here when I arrived.

I already feel lighter here. The path seems to have me grounded and my feet are warm with blood. I feel something deeper that reaches beneath the man-made rocks and stone and clay into the coursing thrum of Earth. Its subtle, but it is there.

The worlds, all of them, available and receptive in the centre. With clear thoughts and exorcised hurts, what I seek is clear.
So I speak it and I ask for it. With a clear heart, what and who I love is clear. So I give thanks for them and each and every thing. Time moves differently here, especially at different times and yet I have a stark awareness this place is ‘just’ a walking path, paved with clay and decorated with trees. But it is also not, ‘just’ that.

That is the nature of the sacred, I think;

It lays nestled between the mundane with a tight-lipped ambience, waiting for those who will listen to wander near. Waiting for them to listen to itself and to them-selves. I found many places like that wandering in the wilderness, hiding from the world. I found many strange and curious people too, on their way toward and away from such places. What I’ve learned from my cave in these strange days is the true expansiveness of the sacred. It is not reserved for the centre of labyrinths, distant parcels of land or nature reserves on the outskirts of cities that threaten to swallow everything.

The sacred is both within ourselves, complex and hurting, loving and reaching - we mirrors incarnate of the echoing Earth and the mystery beyond even her. 

Some places sing a little louder, emanate a little stronger, that energy of the sacred. In the same way some people seem to walk around with a deeper knowing in their eyes and an aura inexplicable. But it is up to us to circle, circles, long wrote and closing. Up to us to walk the paths and embellish them with what we deem special, whether that be in colours and clay, ribbon and rocks or in secret. 

It is up to us to gather, in reverance of the sacred and stand in defiance in the face of its destruction. For now, here, we do what we must, I, what I can. Perhaps a little farther from our objectives than we’d like, but inevitably on our way to our centre, whatever that looks like. The world on the edge of its sleep, the cool air filling my lungs, winters awakening. Intentions set and the path out, quiet, thoughtless and peaceful. The circle open and yet unbroken.

What happens between the worlds affects all the worlds, the Labyrinth reminds me, or I remind myself? Either way, I whisper that softly, so that it is said.

The Magpie flies toward the top of the tallest tree in the park and the Gallah walks along the tiles, seemingly seeing that I have finished. The grass is wet under my feet as I walk up the incline, the trees up the hill are old and beautiful and have seen so many walk this same route, long before the Labyrinth and long before me.

One day the trees that stand framed around the Labyrinth will hold that place beneath their reaching arms, they will be home to birds and creatures and the sun will set just as it did today and illuminate their leaves and darken their silhouettes. Many of those who made their tiles and built the labyrinth will be gone. Someone new will walk that path in another, very different world to this one. They will have different fears and different worries and the Ravens will watch them too as they think about their life on their way into the centre.  

I look back, the Gallah the colour of a blooming rose in the fading light, dipping his head up and down as he walks on the outer rim of the labyrinth. Smoke drifting in a transparent haze across the clearing as the flame of hopeful possibilities roars to life within me.

So mote it be.

Author and Photography: Daniel Watts.

Featuring photos taken at Campbelltown Community Labyrinth, Hurley Park. NSW, Australia.