THE HIGHGROUND

Meditation Garden begins to add to growing tradition of healing

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon

Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, WI) September 28, 2005

In a day of firsts at The Highground on Saturday, there prevailed a sense of continuity, even fulfillment, in the yet-to-be completed Meditation Garden. More than anything, perhaps, there was a feeling of togetherness, as the families of those whose names and lives were memorialized in the first of the Meditation Stones to be placed within the Garden shelter gathered at the veteran memorial park west of Neillsville.

The 24th of September marked the first Mediation Stone Ceremony at The Highground and there are to be more to come. A second ceremony is already planned for next year.

The Meditation Garden is the newest project in The Highground’s growing number of monuments and memorials dedicated to honoring veterans of all wars. Still very much an ongoing project, the garden was envisioned from the start as a place of solitude and thought, where visitors to The Highground could come for inspiration and renewal of spirit. The plans for the Meditation Garden, as it grows in the coming months and years, include a fountain and pond. Shrubs and trees are to cover the area around the arbor pathways and the shelter that are already in place.

But on Saturday, humanity and compassion seemed to fill any voids in the garden as dozens of family members and friends came to honor two fallen soldiers of the Iraq War, and others who will continue to live on in memory.

Gathering in front of the Mediation Shelter, they listened first to the words of Cindy Boon, a Highground volunteer and the leader of the ceremony.

“The beauty of mediation is that it is possible to rely on it to guide us through the maze,” she said. “There is no limit to the practice of meditating, but as with any other practice, it deepens and grows with constant attending, like plants in a lovingly tended garden.”

Boon spoke of the tradition at The Highground of placing Legacy Stones on the park’s elevated plaza and brought forth a vial containing soil used in honoring those memorialized by the Legacy Stones.

“This connection between the placement of stones and the present,” she told those gathered at the shelter as a veteran sprinkled the earthen contents across the shelter’s base where the Meditation Stones would be placed that day.

The Highground’s volunteer general manager, Kirk Rodman, a Korean War Veteran, said that this year represented the 50th anniversary of his service. “Fifty years from now, it will be soldiers from the Iraq War who will be coming to this place,” he said.

The first of the Meditation Stones was laid by C. W. King, Chairman of The Highground Board of Directors. King, of Chippewa Falls, and his wife Mary, placed a stone inscribed with the words, “Be Filled With Hope, All Who Enter Here.” They were followed by the families of Todd Olson, of Loyal, who was killed in Iraq last December, and Charles Kaufman, of Fairchild, who died in the war last June. Andy Rueth, and his family, came together that day to place a stone in honor of his wife, Tracey, a long-time bookkeeper at the Neillsville School District, who recently died in a motorcycle accident. “Noble Strong Happy, Promise Yourself,” her stone reads. In all, 16 Mediation stones were placed on Saturday.

With the theme of, “Let them not go in silence,” time was taken later in the morning ceremony to remember all of Wisconsin’s soldiers who died in the Iraq War and in Afghanistan. A total of 47 names were read.

The second Mediation Stone ceremony is scheduled for September 9th, 2006.

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