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David Sand building the Labyrinth

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Labyrinth: The Saga Begins...
Excerpts from David Sand's On-the-road News & Photo Journal

by David Sand

I'm on my way to do sound at a PAT in Victoria, Canada, after doing sound for 2 family Retreats and Pat I, II & III at Lake Arrowhead. Lots of Light's been pouring in.

Whistler and surroundings

On my way up to Victoria, I land in Vancouver, British Columbia. In the airport I see a sign that says, "You're only a 2 hour drive from Whistler." Heard a lot about it--a spectacular drive sort of like Highway 1 on the California coast, mountains coming down into the sea. I'm going. Into a rental car.
I arrive in Victoria 7/30, 10:30 at night. Beautiful seaside town on Vancouver Island accessible only by ferry. Picked up by Paul Smola in "La Bamba", a '66 Plymouth Fury convertible that he and his son "PJ," nephew Connell, and friend Ryan drove from Denver to Victoria in two days. ("These things that I do, you too shall do and even greater.") 13-year-old PJ and Connell sit on La Bamba's trunk trying out 13-year-old pick-up lines on any and all females in the central hub of Victoria (the intersection in front of the Empress Hotel, a gargantuan gingerbread Victorian landmark, complete with hordes of tourists, street performers, and other forms of quaint, unthreatening Northern Canadian street life). I hop in and La Bamba roars off, out of town and into the coastal pine forest.

Paul Smola building the labyrinth

Paul is a personable, cherub-faced veteran of last year's Victoria PAT III who during the training spontaneously started fixing things around the property, a peaceful seaside Catholic retreat center run by the Sisters of St. Anne. And this year he decided to come out a week before the PAT III and really work on the place. He sent an email to former Victoria PAT participants to round up some more help, and that's why I'm here. Top of the list: building a labyrinth on the retreat grounds.
(A labyrinth is a maze-like structure that is used in a type of walking meditation to open up to spiritual guidance. You walk through it from the periphery to the center to experience an inner centering that mirrors your outer movement. It has been used in the Doctor of Spiritual Science class and although it is centuries-old, it has become quite popular in the last few years both in traditional religious settings and in newer spiritual movements.)
Workers include Paul, his son, nephew, friend Ryan, local MSIA-ers Corrinne Kidd and Kevin McGinn, and yours truly. More are expected later. We're off to an impressive start, laying out bricks to form the concentric circles of the labyrinth. Each brick has to be placed carefully so that we create a flat surface on ground that is actually slightly sloped. So we're piling up sand to compensate for the lay of the land, tapping in each brick like medieval stonemasons (supervised by Paul, whose business is construction and who claims to know what he's doing) plus any kibitzer who happens to pass by.

Retreat Center in Victoria, Canada

We stay in the simple but comfortable rooms of the retreat center, our medieval stonemason lifestyle balanced by the teens' excursions into downtown Victoria in La Bamba. The nuns are sweet, loving, and attentive, and take good care of us. A bald eagle flew by my window this morning. It's August 1st, 5 days until the PAT starts, and photos follow of the stages of progress so far.

Day 2

Everything is progressing quite well. The labyrinth is starting to look like a labyrinth. (We dumped a lot of sand today and the levelling process is close to done so that the bricklaying can get going in earnest.) Kevin McGinn is doing an unbelievable job clearing trails. The 13-year-olds have found girlfriends in town and are busy moussing their hair as we workers go catatonic after a hard day. (They tried to convince Dad to drive La Bamba into town so they could sit on the back of it in front of the Empress Hotel and preen, but Dad, too tired, told them to take a bus.)

Labyrinth in progress

The nuns ply us with strawberry-rhubarb pie & homemade wines. There is a lot of calculating and tape-measuring and re-measuring going on with the labyrinth, as the facility's groundkeeper corrects and refines Paul's interpretation of his design, and bricks and sand are moved a few inches back, no, a quarter inch down, no, a bit to the left to line up with the other side, no, now it's not flush with the other line....I tell them I'm here to take orders and enjoy the scenery. Reinforcements come tomorrow, we hope.

Day 3

10-point buck visiting labyrinth

A very satisfying day. We're getting to be much more adept bricklayers. At least 60% done. Tapping in those bricks, putting down layers of sand, then topsoil, and sod will come at the end. The teens devloped a new way to pack down the dirt: boards taped to shoes. Much of the heavy work is over, and work is getting much more refined: the art of getting lines of bricks perfectly even & level. Reinforcements arrived: Faith Murphy, Laila Virding; more tomorrow, as the PAT approaches. A 10-point buck visited us twice today.

Day 4

Completed labyrinth

Done! (Well, almost). Laid in the final bricks today, so the structure is complete and all we have to do is put down sod tomorrow and we're done. A full day sitting in the dirt laying brick. The Sisters will do a blessing on it tomorrow. We've got quite a crew now --at least 10, as more people arrive for PAT III -- and many spent the day refinishing the Chapel's pews.