I used Google Earth to determine, as near as possible, the direction of due east from my back yard. I zoomed in close enough to see the basketball goal, and from there drew a line due east, straight to the two young maples.
The hole was about a foot deep and three feet across, a circle, as near as I could make one. I stood a paving stone on end against the inside of the hole to mark east and then one directly across to mark west, then one for south and the last one for north. For the one facing east, I used the stone that sat beneath the coquina stone for the past three or four years.
Shortly after moving onto the estate, I discovered a piece of coquina buried in the back yard, just inches below the surface of the ground. It is a quadrangle with irregular sides and about six inches thick. Very dense, very weathered. I built a small platform about a foot square and three feet high and stood the coquina on its end with the sharpest angle pointing east. Each side is flat and smooth and the corners sharp and square. The stone must have been carved into its shape. My guess is that it was a piece that fell from one of the wagons carting stone from the quarry to the river. If so, it had lain there for three centuries. I gave it a place of honor and consider it sacred.
The circular hole for the fire pit was dug where the coquina monument stood and a dozen bricks were added, three between each of the four directional stones. There are another dozen paving stones lying flat on the ground circling the pit, and finally paving stones form a box enclosing the circle.
There is still finishing work to do, but for the most part the pit is in place. As I constructed the pit, it was important for me to recognize ritual and to be conscious of numbers and the placement of each stone: the 12 circling the pit, the exact direction of east, the careful pattern of red and white stones.
When I had the circle dug, I stood back and gazed at it for a moment and thought of the great kivas I visited in New Mexico, great round sacred places, and I though of the massive stone circle at Avebury and the one at Stonehenge. All circles, all very deliberate and consciously constructed places for a ritual.
So is my fire pit.
