Alex Champion is renowned world-wide for his extraordinary designs that sculpt the earth into spiritual art. In 2003, Champion created the earthwork labyrinth at the Old Mill Farm in Mendocino, where he enjoyed an enthusiastic crew. "There were three organic farmers in their early twenties, and lots of other Mendocino people there to help," he remembers. Hundreds of daffodils have been planted on our labyrinth.

In addition to building labyrinths, Champion makes himself available for lectures on the history of the labyrinth and sacred symbols. The experience of walking a labyrinth is both visual and kinesthetic, explains Champion. A labyrinth can serve as a focal point for ceremonial groups, retreats, and walking meditations, he adds. "And by bringing people together, the labyrinth creates a natural feeling of community."

That being said, Champion adds that many of his clients appreciate these earthen sculptures as art. "I'm cautious talking about the metaphysical," he smiles. "I'm a dowser, and I'm also an earth sculptor. I see my work as based on the simplest geometric patterns of nature. The earthworks are similar to rose windows, medicine wheels, crop circles, and stone circles."

As Champion states in his book, Earth Mazes, "The labyrinth symbolizes the cyclic journey that each of us must take daily, seasonally, in life, and in death and rebirth."

Champion and his wife Joan are members of the American Society of Dowsers. Alex chooses where to install his labyrinths and how they will be oriented on the basis of dowsing, which he does with a right-angled metal rod. "Dowsing is active intuition," he explains. "We all get hunches or other kinds of gut feelings that guide us every day. It uses those same feelings, focusing them. When I dowse for a labyrinth, I contact the local spirits, and ask permission."

Excerpted from Amazing Labyrinths: The Earthworks of Alex Champion, Story by Margi Gomez.

For more information about the earthworks and labyrinths of Alex Champion, visit at www.earthsymbols.com. To make an appointment to view labyrinths, you can e-mail Alex Champion at earthsymbols@earthlink.net or call Alex at 707-895-3375.

"The walk started slowly, deliberately. I asked my questions and got my answers. Every time I stood for a moment or two I could feel the energy come up through the soles of my feet. Towards the end I began to feel at one with the pathway. Some unexpected answers came through..."

"Tenion and self-absorption slid away from me as I walked... Suddenly I found myself in the hub of the labyrinth and I wanted to stay forever. Utterly peaceful and deeply "rinsed", I sat in that extraordinary calm emptiness... "

As the writer and director of "Sense of Direction", I used my twenty years of experience as the Visual and Performing Arts chairperson at an all-girl high school to depict the longing for spiritual connection in contemporary teenage girl's lives. Children's internal and external sparks are being suffocated through our modern lifestyle. It is that disconnection and the subsequent isolation that I reveal in my film.

The film illuminates the four main psychological/spiritual needs of an adolescent which are: the need to make sense of the world, the need to deeply connect with another human being, the need to create/express one's individuality and most importantly, the need to have a sense of direction as one leaves childhood and enters adulthood.

The film is a 30-40 minute poetic/experimental drama DV structured as two days and one night of two sixteen year girls intersected with many flashbacks of their shared mystical weekend from childhood. I will create a labyrinthine journey for the audience. A voice-over will be speaking from the future as the character Janen at 80 years old. The film's plot is as follows:

Two eight year old girls meet by chance on a vacation farm (filmed at Old Mill Farm, near Mendocino) and over the next two days Elizabeth and Janen are inseparable. On the second evening, under the setting sun, the girls joyfully run, dance, and roll on the grass, before realizing that they have been playing for quite some time on a strange and magical ground with circular patterns made with small hills and rocks. Enchanted by the twists, turns and folds they follow the path's patterns together. When the full moon rises, with childhood innocence, they create a spontaneous and sacred "ritual" with candlelight and song.

This scene is the starting point of their "anam cara" friendship. A Celtic phrase translating to "friend of the soul" this relationship will be able to transcend time and space, and will support them throughout their lives. This relationship was consecrated the moment they surrendered to the farm's 60 foot mystical labyrinth, a divine circular imprint, found in all religious forms around the world.

The film has a strong feminine influence in two major components. Producer, director, editor and all main characters are female. The central symbol of the labyrinth and the non-linear way of perception are also part of the female psyche that need to once again flourish in our modern society.

Marybeth Tereszkiewicz - Producer/Director/Writer

Special thanks to the Film Arts Foundation, film sponsor (quite an honor).