Sacred Sites of the Great Story


Passenger Pigeon Monument, Wayalusing State Park WI.
Connie Barlow made a pilgrimage here in 2003, where she read aloud the essay
"On a Monument to a Pigeon," by Aldo Leopold, in his Sand County Almanac.

What are sacred sites?

Sacred Sites of the Great Story (or Epic of Evolution) are particular places that are locally, regionally, nationally, or globally significant for commemorating an event in cosmic, Earth, life, or cultural history.

How are Great Story sacred sites different from religious sites?

Because the Great Story embraces all human stories, including all religious and sacred stories, sites that are traditionally held sacred by a particular people or faith are automatically sacred sites of the Great Story too. Our long-term Sacred Site project is intended, rather, to expand our sense of what constitutes a sacred site.

Examples of Sacred Sites

  • Lake Missoula / Scablands / Columbia Flood Basalt
  • The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs SD
  • La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles CA
  • Dinosaur Ridge, CO
  • "Wall of Diversity", American Museum of Natural History, New York City
  • Coelacanth, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, Cambridge MA
  • Meteor Crater, Winslow AZ
  • The Great Unconformity, Las Vegas NV
  • The Grand Canyon
  • Little Colorado River, AZ
  • Passenger Pigeon Monument, Wayalusing State Park, WI
  • Sand Path at Down House, Darwin's Home in England
  • K/T Boundary exposures (various places)
  • Galapagos Islands
  • Rhynie Chert, Scotland
  • Big Bone Lick, KY
  • Sue (T. rex), Chicago Field Museum
  • Waingara Fossils, Australia
  • Living Stromatolites, Shark Bay Australia, Gulf of California
  • Archaea thermophile microbes–any very hot hotsprings
  • Ginkgo trees (wherever planted)
  • Metasequoia trees (wherever planted)
  • Apalachicola State Park, northern Florida

    Steve Urse with the world's most endangered conifer, Torreya taxifolia,
    which is languishing in its Ice Age refuge along the Apalachicola River
    in northern Florida. Unlike nearby beech trees, Torreya was unable to migrate back
    to the Appalachian Mountains as the glaciers melted.

    Pilgrimage, Not Tourism

    In addition to identifying sites, we are looking for the creative assistance of those who know and love a site to introduce us to it during our travels. A visit to a sacred site of any kind is not intended as tourism but pilgrimage. How does one prepare to make such a pilgrimage? What does one read or meditate on in advance? And, when there, what ways of being are appropriate? Rituals? Chants? Practices?

    For example, Connie felt called, while visiting the preserved Coelacanth fish at Harvard's museum, to "circumambulate" it, as it stands in a glass container in the center of a room. Circumambulation, walking, commemorates this ancestor of the first vertebrates that came out of the sea onto land and invented vertebrate walking.

    At Down House in England, Connie walked meditatively the same Sand Path that Darwin would walk to ruminate on ideas while working on his Origin of Species. She first thought of a natural history question she wished insight into, then walked the path ruminating on the question.

    PLEASE HELP US EXPAND THIS WEBPAGE BY SENDING US A WRITE-UP OF YOUR OWN FAVORITE SACRED SITES OF THE EPIC OF EVOLUTION. Photos (JPEG format) are very important, as is attention to how to make a visit a pilgrimage: a way to deepen one's relationship with Earth, Life, and Cosmic evolution. Contact Connie Barlow and title your email "Sacred Sites."s

    Please feel free to download, print, and use any and all of these resources, without seeking permission, for all purposes other than publication. (Contact us if you wish to include them in a book or magazine.) And please hotlink our site to yours.

    Contact:

    		  

  • For a terrific and image-rich website of traditional (religious) sacred sites, visit http://www.sacredsites.com.


    • WWW www.TheGreatStory.org