Labyrinth at Colonel Summers Park
Portland, Oregon, United States
In southeast Portland's Colonel Summers Park, a community-built permanent labyrinth lies in the neighborhood park's lawn, maintained by volunteers who repainted and repaired it across the years. It is the city's best-known outdoor public labyrinth walk.
In southeast Portland's Colonel Summers Park, a community-built permanent labyrinth lies in the neighborhood park's lawn, maintained by volunteers who repainted and repaired it across the years. It is the city's best-known outdoor public labyrinth walk. The Labyrinth Locator's record lists it as Medieval; installed 2017.
Every labyrinth is a walking practice, not a puzzle: a single path winds to a center and back out, and the walk is done slowly, as prayer or meditation. The pattern descends from the medieval pavement labyrinth at Chartres, and the modern urban revival began in the 1990s when Lauren Artress brought replicas of that path to American congregations and public grounds through Veriditas and the Labyrinth Society, whose World-Wide Labyrinth Locator now catalogs thousands. There is no branching and no trick to the path; walkers of every religion and none use it.
Visiting
portland.gov carries the site's own information and schedule.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colonel_Summers_Park_pavilion.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
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