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Tlell Stone Circle celebrates 15th anniversary on Saturday

“I picked it, or it picked me — it just worked that way,” says Dutes Dutheil, founder of Crystal Cabin.

Holding lightly to a pair of copper dowsing rods, a skeptical Observer reporter walked the sparkling Crystal Cabin Gallery last week, searching for ley lines.

Nearing the boundary of the Tlell Stone Circle outside, the rods spun left, pointing toward a smiling Dutes Dutheil.

“Need I say more?” he said.

Eight stones make up the Stone Circle that Dutheil built beside the Crystal Cabin 15 years ago.

Each stands on a compass point, mounted in a steel brace that Dutheil designed so people can spin the stones around.

Collected over 25 years, the stones include petrified wood, crystal-lined cavities, and fossilized marine creatures that last swam around Haida Gwaii some 200 million years ago.

“I didn’t have any real plan, it just kind of evolved as I did it,” said Dutheil, who is hosting a 15th anniversary party by the Stone Circle on Saturday.

“For years I’ve been really interested in exploring different power points on the Earth that have high-energy places, and I know that Haida Gwaii definitely has one,” he said.

“I picked it, or it picked me — it just worked that way.”

Beginning with a meditation led by Firyal Mohamed, Saturday’s anniversary party will include crystal singing bowls and dowsing, plus a special guest speaker, Neil Blacklock.

A doctor of acupuncture and natural medicine, Blacklock has been tracing a network of ley lines across the Earth that resemble the meridian lines used in traditional Chinese acupuncture to map life-energy through the human body.

In a video posted on YouTube, Blacklock says the lines connect places of high energy, such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, Mauna Kea, and Haida Gwaii’s own Golden Spruce.

In fact, Blacklock believes that the southern tip of Lyell Island is home to a unique energy — the Gwaii Haanas Vortex — which is “phased locked into the harmonic beauty of creation,” something he will discuss in detail at the Stone Circle celebration.

Dutheil said however skeptical people may be, the Tlell Stone Circle has a draw, whether its spirituality, Haida Gwaii, or natural history.

“The beauty of the stone circle is that it covers all the bases,” he said.

“What I notice is that a lot of men like to hang out and look at it while their wives are in here shopping,” he added with a grin.

Dutheil is fighting a tough cancer this year, but also watching as his daughters April and Sarah hold popular Friday Rock Talks at the gallery, and seeing all kinds of islanders pick up the new guidebook he wrote with April, Agate Collecting with Dutes.

“There’s not a home that doesn’t have an agate in it on island, and nobody’s written anything about it,” he said, sitting next to a huge slice of California redwood that he found along East Beach.

“And there’s not many places in the world or in Canada where a person can walk on a beach and be guaranteed to find an agate.”

The Tlell Stone Circle Celebration will run from 1:30 to 4 p.m. this Saturday, June 10, with an optional meditation led by Firyal at 11 a.m. For more about the history of the stone circle, visit www.crystalcabingallery.com.

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A drusy quartz — a stone cavity lined with quartz crystals — shines in the Tlell Stone Circle (Andrew Hudson/Haida Gwaii Observer)
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Sun dancer Dan Galloway performs a ceremony at the Tlell Stone Circle when Crystal Cabin Gallery founder Dutes Dutheil finished the project, in 2002. (Crystal Cabin Gallery/Submitted photo)