Another Labyrinth

Yesterday, I observed a after-solstice convention of some years' standing when I pottered into the hamlet of McDonalds Corners in the Lanark Highlands and walked the Living Willow Labyrinth behind the hamlet's former schoolhouse, now headquarters of the McDonalds Corners/Elphin Recreational Association (MERA).

The MERA schoolhouse is an active community organization with a lending library and enthusiastic working groups of weavers, potters, artists, musicians, writers, poets and playwrights. A local band called Bubonic Plaid play there occasionally attired in flannel workshirts (or T-shirts depending on the season), tartan kilts, woolly socks and work boots. The puckish and the eccentric are alive and well in the highlands, and I so cherish the place and its blithe spirits.

It was a classic summer day, and I was alone in the labyrinth with only young crows for company - marvellous companions they were too, calling to each other raucously and hopping from branch to branch of the old tree which raises its green arms skyward on the grounds near our leafy seven circuit Cretan labyrinth. The ritual pathway was created by the community as a millenium project using living willow specimens underplanted with creeping thyme, and at the centre is a small circular plot which was a gift from the Prince of Wales' own garden at Highgrove. A walk through the place is quite an experience on a fine summer day with the heady scent of thyme wafting upward as one makes her way carefully along. Now, six years later, the willows of which the labyrinth was formed are healthy and several feet high, waving fluidly to and fro in the summer breezes. In the autumn, the willows will be pruned back, and their branches used in the creation of artistic projects of one sort or another, masks, sculpture and furniture. Our green labyrinth is constantly renewing itself.

The sign in the third photo (which lists slightly to port now) seemed to me to be a perfect metaphor or mantra for this old life of mine, and from time to time I could be heard muttering it to myself as I went along yesterday. As I left the labyrinth, a Great Blue Heron flew overhead down to the river, and a pair of draught horses in a field nearby tossed their heads and nickered farewell. All in all, it was a quiet, sunny and thoughtful morning, and this morning I find myself thinking that the sign at the entrance to the labyrinth is perhaps a Zen koan of sorts, one which holds out food for thought, wry humour and a terse pithy wisdom — just stay on the path, Cate.