Lilac spoons

Yesterday afternoon I cut out the first spoons from the lilac wood I was recently given. Today I cut out some more and ground the ones I cut yesterday into shape, so my project for raising the money to get the land cleared is underway! If other people send donations, that will make the process that much faster.

I also have given a friend who is much more experienced with blogs access, so that she can put some pictures on and improve it however she can think.

Someone suggested or asked if I was going to charge money to walk it. I said no. I think that is contrary to the very spirit of labyrinths. It should be available to anyone who wants it or needs it, whether they have money in their pocket or not. If it costs anything substantial to keep up, I suppose it would be fair to have a notice saying donations toward the upkeep will be accepted, or something like that. But lilac bushes don't grow so fast that they will require frequent pruning, and they survive for decades in total neglect. I have seen an abandoned farm on which the house had completely fallen and rotted away. There was only the cellar hole in the ground. And a lilac bush and a row of rhubarb.

The man who is talking to you

I should tell you who I am, so you know who is speaking here. My name is Terron (My mother made it up.) I was born in Seattle in 1942, and grew up north of there, looking out over Puget Sound. I have a degree in botany, but have worked at many things: building houses, cutting pulpwood, teaching Grade 4, working in the office of a rare book dealer, &c.

In 1964 I first visited Cape Breton Island. I moved here in 1969, and in 1973 bought an old farm with no buildings standing. I lived here for years, raised 2 daughters, mostly on my own, moved out west with them in 1985 and didn't move back except for visits of a few months until Dec.2004. I have now been making my living as a woodcarver since 1979, going to fairs and markets to sell my creations, mostly wooden spoons. I now have a website showing my work: www.terrondodd.com . (On it, there are ways to contact me.) Now that I am collecting Social Security and a little Canada Pension, it is not so important to make every dollar I can by spoons, but I still do it.

I have gotten disabled with MS, or some variety of it, in the last several years to the point that it is a serious hindrance to almost everything I do, but I still try to grow as much of my food as I can.

I have always been interested in dreams, and in spiritual subjects in general, but I have seldom had a lot of success in understanding my dreams. So, when a friend who is inclined to research everything I mention on the internet came up with the dream class mentioned in my previous post, I joined it.

Terron

The Vision

In January I posted the following middle-of-the-night experience on the dream forum that is a main feature of Robert Moss's online dream classes:

I think this is on the fringes of what this forum concerns itself with, but it came to me in the night, in between dreams. Night before last I was lying awake in the night a lot, and I kept thinking about how to make wooden handles for the drawers and cupboard doors on my new cabinets, but that was nothing strange, because I was thinking about that before I went to sleep. What is somewhat strange is that I started thinking about making a labyrinth of lilac bushes on my place, thinking of how big it would have to be and how many bushes that would require and how much that would cost at the rate for hedge lilacs, &c. I figured it should occupy at least a whole acre, and I wish I could walk around well enough to go out scouting for a good place. I have over 100 acres here, so I could do it. Hmmm. How big are the ancient labyrinths? It seems like somebody on the dream forum is likely to know a lot more about labyrinths than I do, their design, their use, their significance. Would a labyrinth of lilac bushes make sense?
If anybody can tell me or point me in the right direction for finding out, I'd appreciate it. If I can manage, I think I might really do it.

I got enthusiastic responses encouraging me to do it. One of the people on the dream forum is a certified labyrinth facilitator, and partly just by my own blundering searches, partly by help from her and others, I found out something about labyrinths. I began to check out sources of lilac bushes, and found a place through which I could order 200 fit to use for hedges at a price of $2 each. So I ordered 200 of them, and paid for them.

Then I called a guy I know who has a bulldozer. He came, bringing with him another man who has a machine called a mulcher which grinds wood up into chips. He said that machine would be more suitable than just the dozer, and I guess it would. The place I think of making it was cut over not long before I bought this place and has brush and stumps and scrubby small trees. After examining it, they said it would cost about $4oo to clear the road and then it would take 4 or 5 hours at $150 per hour for that machine to chew up the stumps and brush. So I am looking at $1000 to $1200 or so for clearing.

I was inclined to tell them to go ahead, but when my daughter heard of it she had strong objections. If I suddenly needed more money than I had, say for car repairs, she would feel obliged to help me. But if the reason I didn't have it was because I'd spent my savings on something I didn't really need, such as the labyrinth, she would be pretty unhappy with me. She does have an important point there, so I told the equipment operators to hold off til I had another way to finance it.

People on the dream forum began offering me donations and a couple of them advised me to spend nothing but donations on the project. I am doubtful about that, but after stewing over it, I have decided I will accept donations, if anybody wants to give them. I really don't want to be one of the millions of voices crying for people's money, but if anybody really would like to be part of this creation, I guess I should welcome them.

I make wooden spoons and other articles of natural wood, which I sell at markets and craft fairs and I was recently given the wood of a lilac bush. I have decided that everything I make out of that lilac will go to support construction of the lilac labyrinth. I will put all the money for the labyrinth into a bank account I will use or nothing else, until I have enough to pay for it.

I live in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, a place that has kept to old-fashioned ways longer than most in this country, and some things that are more "new age" have taken much longer to catch on here, but I have found there is one labyrinth 15 miles or so away. I hope to meet more people who are interested. If I am lucky, a few of them will come to help me plant it. Maybe some will bring some of the side shoots from old lilac bushes, which can be dug up and transplanted to make new bushes.

I have been thinking of making an 11 circuit labyrinth, which means, at the size of path I need to make and the amount of space a lilac bush takes up, it will occupy 1.26 acres and require over 800 lilac bushes. But I could change my plans and make a smaller one. Whatever I do, it can't help but be large as labyrinths go.

I put this blog here at the urging of some of my friends from the dream forum, for a place they can advise people to go to see what I want to do, because the dream forum itself is only for people who have signed up for that class.

What do you think?