This summer I took my girlfriend at the time to the quarry, which was a place special to me. It was here, on the fringe of suburbia, that nature began to run wild and free. The brick company had stopped mining here only six years ago, yet nature was already begining to reclaim the land: deer footprints now crossed over eroding machine tracks, and tall reeds sprouted through the holes in weathered bricks.
No sooner had we entered than my girlfriend stubbed her toe on a brick, causing it to bleed. Though she was not seriously hurt, we did have to turn back and go home.
Call it coincidence, but after reading some of Lane's work on sacred places, I began to wonder if the accident was something more. "Sacred Place is not chosen, but instead it chooses". Perhaps the place had rejected her. Perhaps the treacherous brick was a message to us, that she was not ready to experience this place. You could say it was an omen.
We came back a few weeks later, and the Quarry yielded passage to us, this time giving us a radiant sunset to watch. "Now you're ready" it said.
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