When asked to design a labyrinth to honor the sister city relationship between Saint Paul and Nagasaki, I was charged with representing a relationship between two cultures, literally and metaphorically a world apart.  Finding parallels was clearly the first step.  Nagasaki is a city built on mountains by the sea.  Saint Paul is built on seven high hills along a great river.  Citizens of both cities spend time walking up and down their beautiful slopes.  Both have convoluted street systems that accommodate the topography and confound newcomers who mutter about all the twists and turns.  Mankind’s inadvertent labyrinths.
 
As I worked on the design for the Global Harmony Labyrinth, the metaphors that emerged were about pilgrimage, a universal theme; walking a path to peace, to spirit, to health, to growth, to joy, no matter how arduous the journey.  My husband and I had just returned from living in Japan and my mind was already on the remarkable similarity between climbing a sacred mountain to its peak and back, and walking a labyrinth to its center and back.  The mountain path, with its twists and turns, would look, in plan, very much like a drawing of a labyrinth path.  As one climbs the mountain, the peak appears, disappears, reappears.  As one walks a labyrinth, the path comes close to the center, turns away from it, comes back again.  In either model, there are many parallels.  One’s view at the journey’s beginning changes as one moves forward.  The view from the peak or center offers insights.  The journey down the mountain and back into the world of daily patterns can have the same effect as the walk back through the labyrinth to one’s familiar routine. 
 
Yamadera is one of a group of sacred mountains in the Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan.  There are a number of sacred mountains in Japan; some see every mountain as sacred but a few mountains have evolved as especially significant for a variety of reasons. Yamadera is the mountain that I experienced with the most depth of feeling and joy.  It is forested, rich in history, frequently steep.  These photos show the range of paths along the way to its summit.  Because the experience of it is in my memory bank, I suppose I should not have been surprised to see giant cryptomeria trees along the path when I first walked the labyrinth in Como Park.  Each person brings one’s own sensibilities with them, to a mountain or to a labyrinth.  Different days may bring different images and insights.  May this labyrinth bring you images, insights, peace.