This “Man in a Maze” basket by the Akimei O’odham (Pima) people of Arizona is in the Fruitlands Museum collection in Harvard, Massachusetts. Though baskets like this are called, “Man in a Maze,” the design is actually a labyrinth, a teaching tool. Mazes have false turns and dead ends, and the sojourner must often retrace their steps and start over. A labyrinth is a continuous journey, a winding path with no wrong turns, no wrong decisions. The basket’s fine weave expresses stillness and balance, virtues that walking a labyrinth are said to restore.
In 2006, I installed an outdoor labyrinth for Fruitlands Museum inspired by the design of the Pima basket. I remembered this labyrinth while I was writing about our current situation—each of us isolated, walking our individual paths through the pandemic.
Walking the Labyrinth at Fruitlands Museum, 2005
For the Fruitlands’ labyrinth, I used round New England field stones placing them on a flat and grassy hillside. The measured concentric circles follow the contours of the land. Once the installation was completed, I wondered, what should we put in the center? A plant, a flower, a special stone? Nothing felt right, and I left it empty.
A question many people are asking is what the return to normal will look like. Many have discovered a new attentiveness in their daily lives—cooking special recipes, baking bread, taking long walks. And with this attentiveness, gratitude for what we do have naturally arises. The question is will we be able to carry this mindful pace with us as we re-enter the busy marketplace?
When walking a labyrinth, reaching the center is the goal. Perhaps, however, the return is more important. As we walk back out, we have the opportunity to consider what we have noticed along our journey. Quite possibly, we walk back out of the labyrinth with more confidence. We may feel the freedom of not worrying where we are going.
Some of us don’t want to return to normal; for isn’t normal what has polluted our rivers, clearcut our forests, and created social and economic inequality? We aren’t going to change the way international corporations operate—let alone our own government—in a few months, but we can make personal decisions about how we want to walk our labyrinth. Are we walking with attention and with gratitude, or are we hurrying, trying to get somewhere? Are we fully present to the moment of walking? We each have a path to walk, there is no other. We change our lives by what we bring to our walking, and the only thing we truly bring with us is our heartmind.
I see now why it was right to leave the center of the labyrinth at Fruitlands empty. There is a journey, but there is no goal to achieve, no pot of gold, no rainbow, no anything. We may be spiritual beings, but we are on a human path we each have to navigate. Let’s imagine the joy of walking. The labyrinth is no longer at Fruitlands, but I offer you a walk-through Louise Berliner’s poem inspired by it.
Journey
Imagine the wind
Midwife to the basket
Seeds delivered to soil
Subversive act of survival
The seeds take root
Cattail willow devil’s claw
Call to the Pima women
Come gather split soak coil
The basket grows
Tells its story in pattern
Elder Brother in the maze
A journey to the center
The seed becomes artifact
Sold or bartered shipped carried
Arizona story going East
Against the traffic
Imagine the glaciers
Midwives to the landscape
Stones delivered from soil
Subversive act of survival
New England’s best crop
Schist granite fieldstone
Call to the hands of an artist
Come gather map place illuminate
The labyrinth grows
Tells its story in pattern
Any stranger may begin
A journey to the center
Imagine the artist
Midwife to the sculpture
What the hand made
The feet now travel