The long and winding road to rebuilding Sebastopol's Teen Labyrinth of Life
The new labyrinth is located behind the Laguna Baseball Field
In September 2023, we reported that the Sebastopol Teen Labyrinth of Life, which was located on a grassy area between the Youth Annex and the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center, had been removed by the community center for safety reasons.
This past weekend, 30 volunteers got together and rebuilt it in a nearby location. It is now located behind the Laguna Baseball Field.
The original labyrinth was built to honor several teens who lost their lives in the late 1980s. The teens’ names—as well as those of some teens who died later—were set into benches that surrounded the original labyrinth. Those benches and the sign that explains what the monument is about are being moved to the new site by the Sebastopol Public Works this coming week.
The person most responsible for bringing the Teen Labyrinth back to life is Councilmember Sandra Maurer, who fought for months to get council approval to rebuild it.
Maurer said she was first tipped off to the disappearance of the original labyrinth in June 2023 by Sebastopol resident Judith Iam. Maurer spent more than a year trying to get the labyrinth on the city council agenda—requesting it over and over again from the Agenda Review Committee, but it was never agendized, something she commented on at several council meetings.
Interestingly Councilmember Neysa Hinton was having a similar problem and proposed a change to the council protocols to allow any councilmember to place an item on the agenda of the next council meeting, as long as they can get one other council member to vote to support them.
In the end, Maurer got the labyrinth project added to the city council’s list of goals and priorities during a day-long meeting in April, where the labyrinth was unanimously approved by her fellow councilmembers. It finally hit the city council agenda as part of the 2025-26 budget discussions, where it got included as part of the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center budget at a cost of $6,000.
Not everyone was happy about this. At a council budget meeting, Councilmember Jill McLewis decried the addition of “pet projects” to the budget. She said the only reason she voted for the labyrinth at the goals and priorities meeting was because Councilmember Maurer said she intended to fundraise the money for the labyrinth and not use city funds. McLewis was a thumbs-down on the labyrinth when the rest of the city council agreed to fund it through the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center budget.
“I’m so grateful the city finally decided to fund it,” Maurer said, noting that it was complicated enough organizing the rebuilding of the labyrinth without having to fundraise for it.
In the meantime, Maurer met with Kenyon Webster, Sebastopol’s former planning director, now president of the board of directors for the Community Cultural Center, and former mayor Diana Rich. The three worked together to find a new site for the labyrinth and coordinate its rebuilding with the Teen Labyrinth’s original designer, Lea Goode-Harris, Ph.D., of Creative Labyrinths, who had offered to donate her time to create a new labyrinth for Sebastopol.
Sebastopol’s original Teen Labyrinth of Life was the first public labyrinth Goode-Harris built, and she had learned a lot about building labyrinths in the intervening years. She told the Sebastopol Times last September that she’d do it differently now.
“What I know now that I didn’t know then is that bricks and sod for that area does not work—because of gophers, because of maintenance,” Goode-Harris said. “That type of grass just grows right over the top of the brick so fast, so the maintenance is huge on a labyrinth like that. With a little more hardscape, it would be doable,” she said.
On Saturday, Sept. 20, it all came together.
“Six or seven of us laid out the design of the whole labyrinth under Lea’s direction,” Maurer said.
Maurer said that Goode-Harris planted a stake in the middle of the area where the labyrinth was going to be built. To that stake, she attached a long chain that, when pulled out straight, defined the radius of the labyrinth. The chain was marked every few feet with colored tape, indicating the placement of the various rings of the labyrinth.
“She kept moving the chain every so many feet, and we would draw the lines with lime chalk coming out of a plastic bag with a hole in it,” Maurer said. (See the video below, filmed by Diana Rich)
Then the building of the labyrinth began in earnest.
“All the volunteers showed up, and the mayor made his comments, and then everybody was instructed to line the rocks side by side, starting in the middle and going around. It was just amazing how fast it went,” Maurer said. “Lea told me that we moved 21 tons of stones!”
“It was just really magical,” Maurer said.
“Saturday was truly spectacular,” Goode-Harris wrote after the event. “So many people came together to make the labyrinth and plantings happen on Saturday and all the prep before. The Hessel Church volunteers were amazing. With their help, the rock placement (with the exception of the outer ring) was completed within an hour!”
Maurer said they’d planned to do a dedication that day, but as they reached the outer ring, they ran out of rocks and had to wait for more to be delivered. By the time the second batch of rocks arrived, most of the volunteers had already gone home. Maurer, her husband and a handful of others finished the outer ring.
“I had a whole list of appreciations to give for everyone who had helped,” Maurer said. “Lea, who donated her services, and Kenyon and Judith, and the council who approved the money, and Public Works, and Mary Gourley—everyone who had pitched in. It was just a really special event, and now it’s there ready to be walked.”
She also gave a shout out to Diana Rich for her help in the project.
Goode-Harris thanked everyone involved for involving her once again. “Thank you, each one of you, for your expertise, public service, enthusiasm, and support. I am so grateful to get to be a part of this community 26 years ago and, once again, in the present,” she wrote.
“I hope those of you who haven’t seen the space yet will be able to walk over and see it soon,” Goode-Harris wrote. “A friend who was there said, ‘It all came together…from a humble plot of land this morning with almost nothing on it.’ That humble plot of land is going to be a beautiful space for generations to come.”
Maurer said the city will schedule a dedication of the labyrinth after all the benches and sign have been moved to their new home. Once it’s scheduled, we’ll be sure to include that event in our Monday column, “What’s Happening this Week in Sebastopol?”
How to find the labyrinth
Photos by Laura Hagar Rush
Eventually, I’m sure there will be official signs leading to the teen labyrinth, but for now, here are the directions:
Park in the dirt parking lot behind the Sebastopol Youth Annex at 425 Morris St. Once there, you’ll see a chain across the access road that leads to the labyrinth. It’s meant to keep cars out, not people, so just walk around it.
Walk on the path that goes past the lawn where the original labyrinth once stood and Sebastopol’s rather ramshackle Peace Garden. This path, most of which is paved, then skirts the baseball field.
When you reach the back of the baseball field, you’ll see the labyrinth in a field off to your right.
And here it is!
What a wonderful and beautiful project. People working together to make it happen. Thank you to all!
I am SO grateful to all who helped rebuild this. Thank you.