(continued from Supersity 01)
The medicine wheel/sacred hoop located just above the Supersity rocks at the end of a dead end dirt road contains two main parts: a circumference marked by 51 “ground” rocks (some with additional rocks on top) and a central configuration (cairn) containing about 10 more rocks. I prefer the term sacred hoop for this set-up, as there are no “spokes” of sorts connecting inner and outer rocks. The crystalinks article on the Indian medicine wheel has this to say:
Medicine wheels were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground. Most medicine wheels follow the basic pattern of having a center cairn of stones, and surrounding that would be an outer ring of stones, then there would be “spokes”, or lines of rocks, coming out the cairn.
Almost all medicine wheels would have at least two of the three elements mentioned above (the center cairn, the outer ring, and the spokes), but beyond that there were many variations on this basic design, and every wheel found has been unique and has had its own style and eccentricities.
In the case of our Supersity medicine wheel or sacred hoop, we also have each of the 4 cardinal directions on the outer circle — east, west, north and south — delinated or accented by rocks on top of rocks, ribbons, or, as in the case below, by a bird feather, perhaps an eagle’s feather.
Here we have the central cairn of stones containing a number of interesting items, including 3 conjoined ribbons colored red, green and blue — actually more of a magenta, cyan, and indigo respectively in looking at the picture again (hard to tell the exact hue because of the shadows, though). These are the same type of ribbons that we find amongst the outer rocks.
Zooming into the cairn reveals a niche next to the pinned ribbons harboring a US quarter with a Hawaiian seal on the reverse side (reverse side up), a pink cluster of crystals, exact nature unknown for now, and some partially burned plant incense, also of unknown type. It almost appears to be fungii (?)
Let’s move back to the circumference of rocks and the 4 marked directions. I don’t carry a compass while hiking, so I’m not sure what each direction would be — if they are aligned in this way. But we can certainly guess that these 4 cardinal directions are implied, for the markings follow the traditional coloring for medicine wheels, or white…
… red…
… and then this feather already pictured above substituting for a black ribbon, which we’ll talk about more below. And when I returned the following week, there was a yellow ribbon pinned by rocks marking the last cardinal direction, although I didn’t take a picture of it during this particular visit. It would lie on the far side of the circle in the picture below, or opposite the feather in the foreground pictured at the first of this post.
So compare here for the markings of a traditional medicine wheel.
The above picture of the Supersity sacred hoop would then correspond directly with the following arrangement of colors (which, although usually red, yellow, black and white, varied in exact placement in respect to each other):
Below we have some details of other rocks in the same area as the Supersity sacred hoop but not a part of the hoop itself.
And now we return to the black ribbon, which as you can see by the picture below has either been placed outside the circumference of rocks for some purpose by its makers, or dislodged from an original placement within these rocks, which would logically be where the feather is on the near side of the circle (see 1st picture in this post). Interesting questions arise either way.
I would return to the Supersity Sacred Hoop both days of the following weekend so I’ll save more speculation of that amazing find for future posts (!).
It was a chilly but sunny day for Frank Park exploring.
Sunklands 
