On the nicest day of the year yet, I finally had a real opportunity to go visit the labyrinth at UNE here in Portland for the first time in mid-April. No rush, no fuss, just early spring sunshine and a couple of good friends... and a woodchuck committee of one to herald our arrival!
I have seen hand-drawn labyrinths before, small on paper and large in sand, but there is something unique about the presence of a labyrinth built in stone, laid in to the earth before you. It feels like a stone labyrinth manifests "labyrinth" in its truest form.
Walking a labyrinth is a unique experience too - fully grounding and at the same time intentionally disorienting. When you stand before it, the center looks so close and within immediate reach from the entry point, but as soon as you set your feet on the path, you are required to suspend your portion of humanity's built-in impatience to complete something, and instead give yourself up wholly to the process itself.
It is a lesson that we as humans must relearn over and over again.
We are always in a rush, always looking forward, looking for the next prize. Perhaps a labyrinth is, as part of its intrinsic purpose, designed to thwart and disrupt that constant forward-looking momentum, and draw our attention inward, with the result of gifting us a wider view outward at the end.
We each, one at a time, took a stone from the small pile near the entry and walked it to the center, leaving it there and pausing before turning around and repeating our path back outwards in reverse.
The participatory stones are a recent addition, part of a performance described in small booklets left in a holder near the maze. [Activating the Labyrinth: A Performance for Two People in Three Parts by Elana Adler and Patricia Brace, performed on site Sept 6th, 2025]
It was good to see that the labyrinth continues to be of use to the community. In fact, even if the event programs hadn't been present, we would have known the circuit was frequently used because of the way the ground was trodden in along the pathways between the stone rows, the unmistakable mark of the passage of many careful human feet over time.
This labyrinth, now approaching its 15th year, has certainly been in place long enough to give it a settled feel. For those who have not encountered it in person, it lies in a piny glade behind the University of New England's Payson Gallery, on their Portland campus at 716 Stevens Avenue. The site backs onto the edge of Evergreen Cemetery, which can be seen clearly through the wood fence running behind the campus.
Crafted of local fieldstones by Ethan Stebbins, a Maine based master stone carver and wood crafter, the labyrinth follows a 5-circuit medieval pattern. Stebbins' current sculpture/sculptural furniture work is also gorgeous, and unites his stonework into wood furniture, with breathtaking results:
ethanstebbins.com or on IG: @stebbinsdesign
Stebbins completed the site work over the course of a couple of months during the autumn of 2011.
The field stones were hand-picked from a gravel pit, in the nearby town of Gray. He worked from the giant crater there, where "they had a pile of like-sized stone, but I spent a lot of time picking through it."
"It's granite, glacial till, and they were selected for the right size and shape (flat tops, enough depth to bury in the ground and be stable). I mapped it all out to scale on graph paper before starting."
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| The labyrinth trenched and ready for its stones, 2011 [Perennial Stone] |
Stebbins told me in an email that he trenched the whole thing out by hand, "Just me and a shovel and pick!" He worked alone, and each stone piece was set by hand, with a careful eye that is evident in the still-beautiful patterns found in the stone rows today, fifteen years later.
He laughs about the amount of labor now, and how "I never allotted myself enough time or got paid enough back then! [...] I was younger and dumber. But it was a fun creative challenge at the time and I was always looking for the more interesting artistic jobs." Regardless, the results are gorgeous still.
Stebbins may have done the hard digging and lugging himself, but the project did have collaborators: "I worked with Anne Zill, who was the gallery director at the time, also Joe Wolfberg who taught at UNE was very involved." I will be reaching out to these two to find out their views of the labyrinth, so please do look for more updates here in the future.
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| The labyrinth in mid-April 2026. [M.Y. Souliere] |
Next up will most likely be another Portland labyrinth -- the one on the front lawn of St. Luke's church on State Street, just a short stroll from the Green Hand Bookshop! (thanks again, Rudi!!)
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| Local low-riding woodchuck processional escort. |
