Saturday, May 14, 2011

Stone Knoll Spiral in Calvander, NC

There's an interesting place on the side of the road on the way to Carrboro from I-40 on Old Hwy 86.  It's a stone spiral that was built by architect John Hartley at the entrance to Stone Knoll neighborhood.

Stone Knoll is  a very nice subdivision with large, interesting houses on large, wooded lots that tend to be ornamented with flowers, gardens, yard art, hammocks and comfortable lawn chairs, play sets and a general air of happy, affluent families.





The side closest to the highway is a field of wildflowers and there is a little turn off from John Woods Road into the field.






 There are 4 tall standing stone in the cardinal directions and a flat stone in the middle.  These five have plaques with poems on them.  Hotlinks are to other websites that have the texts of the poems.

In the East is Maya Angelou's Inaugural Poem  written for Bill Clinton in 1993



To the North is Wilderness by Carl Sandburg

Wendell Berry  has a poem in the West.

And in the South, Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi



There's a memorial tree over to the side but still within the spiral.


 It appears that Donna Lotstein was a lover of horses.



The stone in the center has the Navajo Way Blessing Prayer









I've seen a couple of places online refer to this installation as a "stone circle", but it isn't a circle.  If you are actually in it, you can see the spiral winding into the trees and outward, eventually petering out in the direction of Old 86.

You can even see it in Google Maps.

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