Earth Sanctuary: A Nature Reserve, Meditation Parkland and Sculpture Garden

Watch this video to learn more about the site of the future earth mound which is also known as a chambered cairn.

The Celestial Trail at Earth Sanctuary is a beautiful trail going through a variety of habitats with 200 feet of elevation gain and loss. This is a real trail and a “hike,” so wear please wear hiking boots or safe shoes.

Chuck Pettis loves to take pictures of the birds and wildlife at Earth Sanctuary. Watch this video to learn some snazzy photography tricks.

Chuck Pettis explains his motivation for creating Earth Sanctuary.

Today is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication day. Rocketboom has made a great movie that explains how to subscribe to RSS feeds to get your favorite content delivered to you everyday! Go watch it and then subscribe to our feed. You can sign up for feedblitz to send you the latest posts via email or you can cut and past our feed into itunes or your favorite aggregator!

The Earth Sanctuary Feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/earthsanctuary

In the beginning of November (2005) I counted over 40 mallards on the Middle Pond at Earth Sanctuary. Male Mallards have distinctive plumage as in the photo above, which for some reason is my most viewed bird photo on Flickr. I learned from Yvonne Palka that juvenile Mallards all look like the females until the first breeding season when males will develop their distinctive plumage. Did you know that the males go into “eclipse” plumage this time of year - looking a lot like the females except with a rustier breast and a slight blackish sheen to their heads if you catch them in the right light? They will get their breeding plumage back come December-January, which may be when the juvenile males will get their plumage as well.

In 1977, I helped create the first energetically aligned stone circle in the US - The Ellis Hollow Stone Circle at the Foundation of Light in Ithaca, NY. The Fen Stone Circle is built of the same stone as used in the Ellis Hollow Stone Circle (only smaller!): Llenroc stone. Llenroc is “Cornell” spelled backwards. This Llenroc stone was used to build many of the buildings at Cornell University in Ithaca. There is a second stone circle within the Fen Stone Circle, a buried circle of rose quartz cairns. Come and meditate in the Fen Stone Circle!

The Earth Sanctuary Fen is the ecological masterpiece of Earth Sanctuary. Surrounded by a marsh and moat of water, it is the largest peat bog in Island County. It is a wetland ecosystem comprised of four major plant communities: marsh, dwarf shrubs, sedges and a bog forest. The floating mat of consolidated peat quakes when walked upon. For safety and ecological reasons, no one is allowed on the bog. The central region of the Earth Sanctuary bog is raised in elevation approximately 5+ feet above surrounding marsh surface area. Raised bogs are unique in their rarity in western Washington.

A few days ago, an Earth Sanctuary vistor asked if we glued the rocks in our cairns together. I assured him they were all naturally balanced. We balance our stones to last for months without falling. If you want to see some incredible rock balancing like the one above by Bill Dan, check out this web site

I have a passion for old-growth forest and am committed to filling the Earth Sanctuary property with thousands of conifers that will grow into giant trees in the next 500 years. -Chuck Pettis