Labyrinths of San Francisco

In my memory the embedded design guards the revolving doors of California Pacific Medical Center. I'd have sworn I had crossed it scores of times on my way into and out of the hospital. In actuality, although the labyrinth is inlaid into the patio on the Buchanan Street side of PCMC, it is well back from the busy entrance.

That's the way memory, works — everything shifts and jumbles, expanding disproportionately in the mind's eye, becoming a maze of mis-remembered connections.

I knew that CPMC had commissioned the thirty-six-feet-wide labyrinth during their initial drive to integrate natural healing with traditional Western medicine. I remembered walking its sinuous path with my son on the way to a pediatrician’s visit. He’d skipped ahead to the rosette center and gravely counted the six clover leaves.

San Francisco hosts to more than a dozen labyrinths. The most well-known are the two at Grace Cathedral. Like the labyrinth at CPMC, the two at the cathedral are inlaid stones. The design is a replica of the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral in France. Every Tuesday evening yogis and yoginis gather on the indoor labyrinth for an hour-long practice. The Sunday evening Eucharist occurs on the indoor labyrinth and once a month, the Cathedral also offers a candlelight labyrinth walk with music. Their guidelines for walking a labyrinth suggest quieting the mind and opening the heart. The outdoor labyrinth is open to the public twenty-four/seven.

The labyrinth at Lands End is another reproduction of the Chartre Cathedral’s design. Unlike the inlaid labyrinths, the Lands End, McLaren Park and Bernal Heights labyrinth have a more temporary, living feel to them, built by individuals from local rocks laid on the natural landscape. The Land End labyrinth, a creation artist Eduardo Aguilara, has been destroyed and rebuilt on multiply occasions. It is not officially sanctioned by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which operates Lands End park. The labyrinth is maintained by locals, or as one Yelp reviewer put, “California hippies,” who are drawn to the wild beauty on this bluff at the end of a continent.

The Duboce Park labyrinth replaced a dilapidated play structure, which has been enshrined in a mosaic on a nearby bench. The Duboce Park, also known as the Scott Street Labyrinth, was built by Friends of Duboce Park in partnership with CPMC. Like the other labyrinths in San Francisco, it offers a quiet respite from the hurried busyness of everyday lives.

Whenever I walk a labyrinth today, I recall the feel of my son’s small hand tucked in mine as he asked me if I feared getting lost in the maze. Ever the mother grabbing a teaching moment, I explained that a maze has false turns and dead-ends and is designed to deceive. Unlike mazes and memories, labyrinths don't trick you. They always lead to the center. All you have to do is stay on the path and follow it no matter how much it twists and turns.