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Sacred Sites: An Old Quarry
Part Three: Life and MagickEven after the warmer Willamette Valley has seen the last flower wilt and die, there are still wildflowers blooming in The Basin, the lower portion of the quarry, even through the winter snow. Life has returned there, even more strongly than the upper quarry, and highly accelerated over the pace of growth in other portions of the mountains, even in wide-open spaces.
Flowers bloom in The Basin year round.
The photo of the daisy shown above (as well as the photo of the foxglove at the bottom of this page) was taken on October 22, 2007. What's more is that while the surrounding mountains can be bitterly cold, the quarry typically feels much warmer than the reported temperature in the area. Students, and even my own children, have bundled up in coats and warm hats against the chill of the mountains, only to take their coats off again once they're within the embrace of the quarry.
A plant grows in the center of large boulder that I used as my altar.
One of the interesting discoveries in both the quarry and the site where I did my vision quest is that there is a new life in each place growing in the center of where I would work my ritual magick. In the Nestucca River Valley, where I undertook my vision quest, there's a tree growing in the middle of the ledge where I worked my rites. Here, a large plant grows in the center of the table-sized boulder that I used to use as my altar.
Lower left: a natural circle of standing stones. Background: new life.
Where once the entire area was nearly barren - and had been that way for decades - the plantlife in the area has exploded since the days when I worked earth healing magick to reconnect the energy of the site that had been severed during the quarrying. In the above photo, the insert at the lower left shows a natural circle of stones on a floor of mosses. You can see that, with the exception of a handful of small trees, there isn't much plantlife in the area. However, since the energy has been reconnected and the spirit of the land has been healed, massive ferns now fill the same location.
Foxglove blooms in late October in the heights of Oregon Coast Range.
Is it magick? Coincidence? Life has not only returned to the quarry, but flowers bloom year round, even through the mountain snows. Is it part of a natural process? Is it because of the earth healing magick that was done there? Is it because the fae have returned, either on their own or drawn to the energy that is raised during magickal rites? It's impossible to say. All that I'm sure of is that the quarry is a very magickal place.