Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a thin ribbon of a park following Minnehaha Creek down a narrow river gorge. Paths run from the Falls until the creeks slows and broadens, and floods into the Mississippi. In a deep spring flood, much of the park may be under water; in an August drought, the shore can gain 25 feet of beach, as this photo shows.

For many of the Twin Cities’ pagans, the park is sacred ground and ritual land; many say it the Little People, either native or come over with the settlers from the Old Country, claim it as their own. Some of my own strangest, and most vividly beautiful – and sometimes frightening – spiritual experiences have taken place down in those green shadows, or by the conjunction of the rivers.

By sunlight, though, the park is claimed by the boisterous Mexican immigrants of the Twin Cities, picnicking with families of 50 at the head of the park or down where the waters meet, fishing on the rivers’ shores.

I don’t know the story of this labyrinth, or who built it, some time in August 2007, but there is a least one pagan group in Minneapolis that regularly does labyrinth rituals, so it’s probable they built this one, some summer evening as the moon was rising across the river. And the next day, the fishermen came back, probably stared at it for a minute, shrugged, stacked a couple rocks on top of each other, and cast out their lines.

Minnehaha Falls

[mappress]