Photography by Rimas Zailskas
Poets from Emily Dickinson to e.e. cummings have described their gardens as spiritual places where the cycle of life, ubiquitous and pervasive, affirms a higher power. Local gardener Nancy Ackermann Cole chose to honor the spirit in her garden by building a labyrinth, an ancient form of pathway that’s been a feature of both gardens and churches for centuries.
Walking the labyrinth’s winding circuits is said to inspire a meditative state and lead to greater insight. “I’m a bit cynical,” Cole says of her first experience walking a labyrinth at a conference more than a decade ago. “But something happened.” Since then, she’s walked the famous labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France and others in the US. When she and her husband bought their North Asheville home nine years ago, she finally had the space to build a labyrinth of her own.
Ackermann Cole’s labyrinth is unicursal and reversible, meaning that there is a single route in and out of the center. Covering a space about 40 by 30 feet, its circuits are lined with river stone and its bed laid with river gravel. There is a larger stone at the center and ordinal stones as markers in each direction. Ackermann Cole designed the labyrinth herself and built it over the course of about nine months with the help of local gardeners Christopher Mello and Ed Cawley.
The space itself inspires contemplation, but that sense of being in a meditative place is elevated by the stained-glass “window” suspended from two nearby trees. Ackermann Cole found the glass in an Illinois antique shop and knew she could find a place for it. Pat and John Horrocks at BlackBird Frame and Art created a frame and mounting system for it which allows it to withstand the trials of being outdoors without breaking.
The labyrinth is just one “room” in the sprawling one-and-a-half acre garden that Ackermann Cole has reclaimed from surrounding woods. Here on the edge of the forest, there are dozens of little spots that inspire contemplation and the opportunity for insight, great or small.
