My spare time today was spent working on my Sketchbook Project sketchbook with the theme, “Mysterious Mapping”.  The basis for the project is a labyrinth.  I’ve yet to fully realize the end-product.

For me the labyrinth is a symbol for pilgrimage and a tool for moving meditation.  Several summers ago I created the Trotabout Labyrinth: a seven-circuit, seventy-foot labyrinth that is large enough for two people to walk side-by-side or for a horse and rider.  It is dedicated to working in tandem.  The Troutabout Labyrinth was part of a much larger project that involved riding my horse, Myst, across the state of Michigan.  I serendipitously made the decision to come home the day before tornados went through the forest that I would have been riding through the next day.  Safe at home while the storms raged outside, I wrote an essay about this trek.  The text from this essay will be the crumb trail through the sketchbook labyrinth.